The State Government's planned re-merger of Synergy and Verve is the wrong way to address concerns about the lack of competition in Western Australia's electricity market.

SEA, along with other major business chambers in WA, has consistently warned that such a move is likely to re-build barriers to market entry and significantly deter private sector investment in Western Australia's energy markets.

The reforms that lead to the disaggregation of Western Power in 2006 were, and still are, strongly supported by industry as a way of creating a competitive market. Those reforms are not yet complete.

The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia is delighted with the Federal Government's unequivocal endorsement of a largely unchanged Renewable Energy Target.

In response to a report from the Climate Change Authority (CCA), the Government has decided to maintain the highly effective scheme to ensure that at least 20 per cent of Australia's electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020.

SEA Chief Executive Kirsten Rose said it was a positive outcome, both for the industry, and as a mechanism to continue to reduce Australia's emissions.

The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (http://www.seaaus.com.au) congratulates the new Western Australian Cabinet and looks forward to working with the Ministers over the next four years.

SEA is a peak body representing more than 300 members in the sustainable energy industry. As a business chamber, it promotes the development and adoption of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies and services.

The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (http://www.seaaus.com.au) is a peak body representing over 300 members in the sustainable energy industry. As a business chamber, it promotes the development and adoption of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies and services.

SEA is today delighted to release its policy position ahead of the Western Australian State Election on 09 March 2013.

SEA welcomes most of the recommendations from the Climate Change Authority in its report to the Minister today on the review of the Renewable Energy Target (RET).

The report has wisely resisted calls from the fossil fuel lobby to dilute support for the Renewable Energy Target and recommended that it be maintained at 41,000 GWh of renewable energy generation by 2020. Keeping a fixed generation target helps provide the policy stability that has long been sought by the renewable energy industry.

Australia's commitment, made with 36 other industrialised countries, for binding emission cuts by 2020 as part of a package of agreements that extends the life of the Kyoto Protocol at the UN COP18 in Doha, Qatar, has been welcomed by the Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (SEA).

The deal, agreed by 194 nations at the climate talks in Doha, extends the Kyoto Protocol to 2020, and prepares the way for the Kyoto protocol to be replaced by a new treaty binding all developed and developing nations together by 2015 to respond to climate change.

SEA members support a market-based approach to the pricing of carbon as a part of the response to tackle global warming.

The early closure of the Australian Federal Government's Solar Credits scheme announced today by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet is both untimely and unnecessary, according to The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (SEA - www.seaaus.com.au).

The Government will abolish the solar multiplier, cutting the rate from two renewable energy certificates to one for every megawatt hour of electricity produced, from January 1 2013. This move brings forward by six months the decrease in the multiplier, which was previously planned for 1 July 2013.