Tasmania Wants To Use 100 Percent Renewable Energy By 2020 | ThinkProgress
▻http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/26/2996241/tasmania-renewable-energy-plan
Tasmania has given the climate community something to smile about after months of frowning toward Australia. Since being elected in September, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been waging an anti-climate crusade. He’s abandoned the country’s long-held emissions reduction target, taken steps towards repealing the carbon emissions trading scheme, and started an international row with the likes of Al Gore and U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres over climate change’s role in this year’s intense, early season bushfires.
Amidst all that, Abbott also found time to slash funding for renewable energy. Now Tasmania, Australia’s island state off the southeastern edge of the continent, has taken it’s own initiative in the face of Abbott’s many setbacks and released a climate change strategy aimed at achieving 100 percent renewable power usage by 2020.
Tasmania’s new plan — known as the Climate Smart Tasmania plan — includes energy reduction targets across multiple sectors with an interim 2020 target to reduce carbon emissions to 35 percent below 1990 levels.