Despite Australia’s enormous potential for renewable energy (see "100% Renewable Energy by 2020"), six months after Australia’s introduction of  legislation supposed to encourage the development of renewable energy, not a single major wind or solar project has commenced.

The failure of the scheme has been blamed on poor design of the legislation which promotes domestic solar hot water systems and rooftop solar panels at the expense of large projects.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said ”What we have is the retail market stymieing the commercial market. It needs to be addressed quickly or we have no large-scale clean generation capacity in three years.”

Projects that have stalled since the scheme was passed include AGL Energy’s 174-turbine wind farm planned for Macarthur in western Victoria

Wind turbine maker Keppel Prince Engineering said it had to decide this week whether to sack up to 150 workers at its plant at Portland in Victoria’s south-west. Managing Director, Steve Garner, said that "We’re finishing off our last project and we don’t have another wind farm to continue on with.”