A clean green budget to save their seats?

By Sara Phillips

Much is being made of tonight's federal budget and the role it will play in the government's standing. After a couple of weeks of stinging polls, the government needs to get back on the front foot.

Most of the commentary so far has been on health, and the mining companies in the wake of the great big new tax on their profits.

But for environmental groups, the budget is the last chance for the government to regain its green credentials having so spectacularly lost them when it walked away from its emissions trading scheme.

With no financial penalty for releasing climate-changing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for at least three years, the big emitters will continue unfettered.

Today, several green groups clubbed together to release an open letter to the government asking for some of tonight's big bucks to go the way of renewable energy.

Australia's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions is our electricity generators. A switch to renewable sources of electricity is a straight-forward way of slashing our emissions. The only trouble is, it is expensive to make electricity using wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, wave and biomass compared with our entrenched coal power stations.

Hence the request for some money, please.

"Australia needs a nation-building project for climate change with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century. Such an initiative will drive our transition away from fossil fuels towards a clean, renewable energy economy," said the letter. Sentiments that were recently expressed on ABC Environment by one of the signatories to the letter, Beyond Zero Emissions.

It is true that the federal government will need to pull some magic to win back the green vote.

A piece on PM last night showed how close the Greens are to winning inner-city seats from Labor. Progressives whose vote would never swing to the Liberals, are considering moving further left as Labor moves further centre.

However the government will need to pull out some real magic, not just smoke and mirrors to keep Lindsay Tanner, Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek in a job.

Last year, the government announced billions of dollars of spending on its solar cities scheme, aiming to install 1,000 MW of the clean power. But in September the Clean Energy Council warned that the budget of $1.6 billion set aside for this job would not even get half of it done.

Last year, the government also announced the insulation energy efficiency scheme, and we've all seen how well that turned out for the government.

Green groups will be scrutinising the budget papers closely to see whether new spending or a reannouncement of the old is revealed.

Rather than simply being pleased with a green scheme, any new ideas will now be under the microscope for potential pitfalls like never before.

With the emissions trading scheme on hold and a carbon tax likely to be unpopular, the government's only other options to retain a green hue are energy efficiency spending or renewable energy.

For the first time, the government's environment budget may actually be more than green icing on a cake. It may be the difference between Green MPs or retention of some Labor stalwarts.