ACT Greens leader looks to use scheme to cut 'energy poverty'

Mr Rattenbury, also the territory's Climate Change Minister, on Friday released a review of the ACT's energy efficiency scheme, which essentially endorsed the policy and branded it a success to date.

But the review has also highlighted the need for more to be done around the territory's priority household targets for Canberrans on the lowest incomes facing what can be crippling energy bills.

The review shows the scheme was on track for emissions to be 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, a government commitment made prior to its separate, but aligned, 100 per cent renewable energy target, finding it has fulfilled its aim against a backdrop of national energy policy stagnation.

But it also highlighted some barriers to further improvements to energy efficiency, including the "split incentive" of landlords not making investments in efficient appliances because renters paid the bills.

It also found there was still a lack of deep behavioural change as energy users were not deeply invested in the program and financial barriers where co-contributions were needed and low income households could not afford them.

The review posed several detailed scenarios for the future of the scheme beyond 2020, including the potential for it to be used, post-2020, to help address "energy poverty" affecting some 32,000 households in the capital, rather than just curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

It also found residential participants in the scheme were saving, on average, $5.65 a week, with businesses saving $57 a week - or across the territory, a total saving of $240 million since it began in 2013.

While Mr Rattenbury would not cite a specific mechanism for widening or increasing the current 20 per cent priority households target, he said the review had highlighted an issue he had long wanted to do more about.

He said he introduced a bill when a cross-bencher in 2011 to help reduce energy poverty, but neither Labor nor the Liberals backed the bill, and he hoped with the review in hand, he may be able to convince his Cabinet colleagues this time around.

Mr Rattenbury said the policy, initiated by then Labor minister Simon Corbell, had addressed much of the "low-hanging fruit" it could, and post-2020, once it had achieved its renewable targets, there was wider potential for the scheme to help address social policy questions.

The review comes as all state and territory governments are assessing what more to do to improve renewable energy outcomes nationally, after an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report highlighted the fact low income Canberrans were bearing the higher costs of the ACT's solar feed-in-tariff scheme.

ACT Council of Social Service executive director Susan Helyar said the council wanted three specific things to be done to help lower income Canberrans facing rising power bills.

The first, she said, was to apply a mandatory rule in the territory's building code that all new homes were built to a five-star energy rating, while the second was extend the energy efficiency scheme to the 35,000-odd working households in the city with an income below $500 a week.

Ms Helyar said the third key thing the government could do was to expand the scheme to the use of efficient portable heaters, to allow renters access, as landlords would often not pay for better heating, and renters could take them when moving house.

She also said a key thing the government needed to do was also set up a program for low income residents to get in person coaching on how best to heat their home efficiently and cheaply without incurring a large electricity bill.

The territory government is currently producing a regulatory impact statement to progress minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties, a document expected to be released some time this year.