Still smoking…International Power’s Hazelwood plant.

A confidential submission released accidentally by the federal government shows the owners of the the heavy-polluting Hazelwood brown coal power plant will resist energy efficiency efforts because they could hit their bottom line.

International Power’s submission to a taskforce developing an energy efficiency policy also states that energy efficiency is only about power use, not energy production.

”International Power rejects any proposal to introduce climate change policy under the guise of energy efficiency measures, which has the potential to destroy the value of existing investments in the generator sector,” the submission says.

International Power’s assets include Victorian brown coal power plants Hazelwood and Loy Yang B, both among the highest carbon-emitting plants in the developed world.

The Environment Victoria campaign director, Mark Wakeham, said: ”Having successfully weakened the emissions trading scheme, International Power now has energy efficiency in its sights, urging the government to slow its efforts and threatening that their business could be destroyed by energy efficiency policy.”

The release of the confidential submission is the latest error by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, after making at least two mistakes in last week’s federal budget.

The first was allocating $17 million in 2009-2010 and $13 million in 2010-2011 for a $30 million climate change advertising campaign. The department has since revised the allocations to $7 million in 2009-10 and $23 million in 2010-11. The second was committing $132 million to the cancelled Low Emissions Assistance for Renters program.

Yesterday the department posted a correction on its website stating that the $132 million is actually for ”Green Start,” a program to succeed the bungled Green Loans scheme that helps households reduce their energy and water use.

A spokeswoman for the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, said the department was not aware of any more mistakes in the budget papers.

Senator Wong’s Coalition counterpart, Simon Birmingham, said: ”Not only can’t Minister Wong … and her department manage programs effectively, but they can’t get their budget papers right, reviews on time and keep submissions confidential.”

Insiders say morale has collapsed among Department of Climate Change staff, who are facing potential job cuts after the shelving of the ETS.

In further changes to Green Loans, Senator Wong announced yesterday long-promised $50 green rewards cards to buy small energy saving products will now require households to send in receipts to claim cash back.