Pay those who produce solar power: report

The Clean Energy Council is calling for a national scheme that would see people paid for generating solar energy.

A report by Access Economics has recommended a gross feed-in tariff to drive investment in solar energy over the next 20 years.

Under the $16-billion scheme households and businesses would be paid for the energy they produce, even if they use it themselves.

Matthew Warren from the Clean Energy Council says it would trigger huge growth in the renewable energy sector.

"While we've had this huge boom in the residential sector, we're still falling relative to the rate at which other countries are installing and deploying solar energy," he said.

"So that suggests that while we're doing very well, there's still a lot of opportunities for increased take-up of solar power."

He said it will have benefits for the power sector as well.

"They save a lot of costs in transmission losses and infrastructure build that we're used to seeing with large scale energy sources like coal-fired power stations and gas power stations," he said.

"So a gross feed-in tariff is a direct mechanism to fully compensate and reflect the value of that distributed electricity source."