The federal climate minister has hit back at speculation there will be budget cuts to clean energy policies, comparing it to stripping funds from health or education.
Chris Bowen dismissed reports of cuts to new clean energy funding in the federal budget in May.
“You might as well say there’s going to be no big new funding for hospitals or schools,” he said the sidelines of the Sydney Climate Action Week on Monday.
Electric car tax breaks are also rumoured to be on the chopping block.
The fringe benefit waiver for EV leases was undergoing a long-scheduled review, he said, while labelling most of the budget speculation “wrong”.
Queried on possible savings from the home battery scheme, which has recently had a budget top-up and tweaks to stop households buying oversized systems, he defended the subsidy as “extraordinarily popular”.
Australia’s potential as a climate technology hub was also canvassed at the event by California Energy Commission chair David Hochschild.
Spruiking an Australian pilot of a Californian scheme credited with attracting nearly $500 million in investment into the US state, Mr Hochschild said AusTestBed should help more Australian ideas reach commercial reality.
The trial, which would ideally attract federal support to expand, would remove the cost of testing promising technology in laboratory equipment, providing startups with hard data to take to investors.
“You might have an entrepreneur with a great idea, but they don’t have the resources, Mr Hochschild told AAP.
“You end up leaving a lot of good ideas on the sideline.”
Mr Hochschild said his country’s clean energy and climate agenda had taken a hit but not stalled under the Trump administration.
He likened the Donald Trump-led Republican government to a “political COVID-19” pandemic.
“It has hit us all really hard,” he said.
“But also we are going to make it through this, as we made it through COVID.”
Reality was also catching up with the administration as it grappled with the massive energy needs of a fast-growing data centre sector.
Solar and batteries were much faster to build than fossil-fuel plants, Mr Hochschild said.
“You want to build a new natural gas power plant United States? That’s seven years.”
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