Solar Flagship shortlist comes up short

FOSSIL fuel pirates and other opportunists have commandeered Energy Minister Martin Ferguson's Solar Flagship program.

The short-listed bidders for a slice of the $1.5 billion booty, courtesy of the Federal Government, was buried in a press release issued on Budget night.

It's not that the Solar Flagship concept is wrong. It's just that the companies that have been selected for the shortlist are second-tier, or worse, in terms of global solar energy.

The shortlist demonstrates an audacious tilt by gas, oil, coal and wind specialists, who should stick to their knitting and leave the large-scale solar sector to the large-scale solar sector.

This columnist has been looking forward to Ferguson's fulfilment of the Government pledge last year to help build four 250 megawatt solar-powered electricity generators.

But this week's shortlist does not include companies with the most advanced of this type of technology, which uses tall towers that collect and process concentrated solar energy and stores some of it in molten salts for dispatch at night.

The companies that have already built these power plants and other advanced commercial solar installations are Abengoa, Solar Millennium and ACS Cobra.

Instead, Ferguson's department once again has diverted funds to his favoured fossil fools and a gladbag of solar generation novices, when that assistance was supposedly earmarked for companies that already had commercial-scale solar electricity experience.

Here's the line up Ferguson's department has selected to compete for the first two tranches of $375 million and this column's rating of each's suitability under the program's original criteria.

AGL Energy: No experience in building large-scale solar power plants. Regularly accused by the energy regulator of manipulating wholesale electricity prices. Has a commercial imperative to ensure its gas-fired power stations make profits above all else. Score: 1/5.

TRUenergy: Failed to attract capital to build Solar System's planned Mildura generator, forcing the nation's most cutting-edge renewable energy company into administration last year. Subsidiary of one of the world's richest and biggest carbon polluters, China Light and Power, which owns the Yallourn coal-fired power plant. 0/5.

Infigen/Suntech: Infigen, a listed spin-out from the troubled Babcock & Brown, is the largest pure owner of Australian windfarms. Suntech was set up in China by former Australian academic Zhengrong Shi and is one of the world's biggest makers of photovoltaic solar panels for roofs, but it has little experience in commercial scale electricity generation. 1/5.

Parsons Brinckerhoff: This is a US engineering firm and its proposal involves a joint venture with Queensland coal-fired generation company, CS Energy. 0/5.

Wind Prospect CWP: The name of this British company says it all. 0/5.

Transfield: Wants to use taxpayer funds to convert an existing, small coal-fired power station in Queensland into a solar thermal plant in what is clearly an opportunistic grab for dumb people's money in order to extract value from a polluting asset. It part-owns coal-fired power plant Loy Yang A. 0/5.

Acciona Energy: Headquartered in Spain, this is the only contender with large-scale solar experience, but even then it isn't the most experienced with elite power tower plus energy storage technology. The company operates wind farms too. 2/5.

BPSolar: Ran down and then executed a firesale of its, and Australia's only, manufacturer of solar rooftop panels to focus on installation of cheap Chinese panels. Is a subsidiary of one of the world's largest oil companies, British Petroleum. 1/5.

Would you hire an electrician who knew a little about carpentry to build your house?

If Ferguson genuinely wants Australia to have a bright solar energy sector, he should at the second round of grants choose the best experts, because he has clearly failed to do this in the first round.

Let's get off this flagship of fools before it sinks the hopes of achieving a large-scale transition to renewables.