Last week I got a call from Nick in Orange, NSW following a meeting he had with his local MP - John Cobb, national party member and shadow agriculture minister.

Nick said : "We went along and met with John and shared the results from our renewables survey. John was interested, but right away said "But renewables makes energy more expensive! Did you ask people if they are prepared to pay more for renewable energy?"

The challenge Nick was thrown from his MP is one groups have been getting across the country - "but renewables drives up power prices!" We've had it a recent meeting with Greg Hunt, when talking to Rob Stokes in Pittwater, and with the Vic upper house member Damian Drum.

It's the number one question on MP's lips and the number one frame that will be used to say that renewables is not possible. We can also see that some groups are already starting to use this line to make the argument to cut existing renewable policy (let alone see new policies that will drive stronger investment in renewables!).

This is our challenge.  But it is also our opportunity.

Instead of playing into the frame that renewables = expensive we think we need change the frame on renewable energy entirely. We need to instead go on the front foot and say apart from all the other reasons we love renewables (jobs, investment, regional development, clean air, water, health) that in fact 'we need renewable energy to deal with energy price rises'. We're picturing a new bumper sticker reading:"Stop power price hikes: renewable energy now"!

To explain this a bit further, we've developed a couple of new resources to read and share with others:

• A 2 page briefer "Renewable energy: reducing the costs of power" which shows how investment in renewables in other parts of the world is in fact bringing the price of power down (including an interesting graph from the Business Council of Australia on how the RET is lowering energy prices!!)
• A mock up graph that you can draw yourself in 30seconds to show why we need renewables to stop energy price rises (Dean from Castlemaine, Andrew from Ballarat, and Peter from Dandenog Ranges used this on Greg Hunt last week and it stopped him in his tracks!). We'll be sharing more accurate graphs of this modelling soon but this should still be useful in the meantime as a simple communications tool - get it out there!