Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Hindmarsh made some quite interesting comments in his speech. He talked of an acquaintance who has put in a photovoltaic array to supply electricity to his home, and he said that that was ‘electricity for life’. He should know that included in that package, which is extremely expensive for the amount of electricity that is provided, would be a significant bank of batteries which must be recharged during daylight hours, hopefully on bright, sunny days, and that they have quite a limited life. So the photovoltaics on the roof are a good idea—and I might mention later how they could be better utilised—but unfortunately they are not ‘electricity for life’.

It is interesting that the member for Hindmarsh talked about products of New South Wales Forests. Why they have not been charged with fraud, with their carbon credits scheme, I do not know. But I just happen to recollect one of their wildfires burning into Canberra and burning out 400 houses. Who are they paying back for all those carbon emissions that their benign neglect of their forests created? I note that they are selling carbon credits and, as the member for Hindmarsh said, also getting a return for their wood products. When they cut the tree down, do they pay back the carbon credit? Obviously, part of that tree is going to be destroyed. Certainly, with a little bit of luck, some of it will be retained, and the sequestered carbon might be utilised in a home and stay there. The offcuts will be burnt, and they will emit carbon dioxide. So it is pretty interesting.

It is a pity that the member for Hindmarsh has left, because I thought this was the ripper. He has given Labor Premier Mike Rann a big lift. I read in the paper that Labor Premier Mike Rann the other day participated with his minister in releasing all these balloons filled with some lighter-than-air gas, probably helium or hydrogen, to demonstrate to all the householders how much CO2 they were emitting each day. I guess that is a pretty good media stunt, and I hope that the rubber did not pollute somewhere when the balloons eventually burst. But the reality is that the entire residential sector of Australia uses 13 per cent of our energy. To be quite honest, I think there are better ways of addressing greenhouse emissions than by starting with the 13 per cent—when, for instance, transport uses 50 per cent of all the energy consumed in Australia. I will take the opportunity to speak a little more about that in due course.

It is similar to the speech of the member for Grayndler, which I have had the opportunity to read. He went on to say that, by not extending the MRET in the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2006, the government is endangering regional jobs. When we refer to the second reading speech relevant to this legislation, we learn for a start what MRET is. The MRET, which is Australia’s mandatory renewable energy target, came into operation in 2001. It is set at a percentage, which is two per cent. Obviously the member for Grayndler thought that possibly we should increase that. The reality is that energy consumption in Australia and energy generation is increasing as our population increases and, might I add, as our workforce increases. (Quorum formed)

The reality of all of these matters is that, as described in the second reading speech:

MRET uses a market based approach to drive higher renewable energy uptake. Renewable energy generators accredited under the measure may create one tradeable renewable energy certificate for each megawatt hour of energy they produce.

In other words, we have a system which grows not by increasing the percentage amount that is identified but by the fact that it has to reach 16,000 gigawatt-hours by 2020.

It is interesting that the member for Hindmarsh also said that the South Australian government—he lives in South Australia—is going to create another great big wind farm. Of course, these certificates are available for wind generation, and that is clearly a renewable resource. I refer to the parliamentary secretary’s second reading speech, in which he said:

To help address this issue the bill provides a process for granting provisional accreditation from the renewable energy regulator at the pre-commissioning stage.

That is, of the installation of a renewable energy facility. But I am very interested to know: what exactly is the number of renewable certificates based on? Is it based on the actual amount of energy generated or the energy capacity of each generator? They are two entirely different things.

Just how much of that energy is generated when nobody wants it? There are a few factors known about the wind. There has been many a song written about the variations of the wind, connecting it to the variability of love and all these sorts of things. This variability is a known factor. Another one which always strikes me is that the wind often blows strongest just as the sun goes down. So what are we doing with that energy at that time? The Labor Party would say that it is all being used by the slave labourers employed in all our factories who work all night and on Saturday and Sunday. When I drive through industrial areas, there seems to be a tremendous amount of darkness about those particular facilities.

So we have a lot of power being generated by the wind when we do not need it. That is not necessarily to say that we should not have wind generation, but the House has heard me say, particularly as it applies to remote areas, that that surplus energy might be converted by the simple process of electrolysis into hydrogen. In a remote area, if you have 1,000 kilowatts of wind generation capacity on the top of the tower, you have to have 1,000 kilowatts of diesel generation sitting at the bottom and ticking over. It has to be ready to handle any of the fluctuations.

There was an article in the Australian recently on one of the big set-ups in New Zealand producing 150 megawatts—that is about half as big as a typical coal fired power station—and it was experiencing 100 megawatts of variation in energy generation over five-minute intervals. The New Zealanders were actually more worried about when the generation went up than when it went down, because it was frying everybody’s computers. You cannot have a grid system with those sorts of variations. What happens when you have a coal fired base load? You have to keep burning the same amount of coal as you did before the wind farm was there simply to fill the gaps. They always keep turning because they have to turn at a constant speed, but they do not always generate the same amount of electricity. Their fans adjust.

The BMW company have motorcars now with reciprocating motors that run on hydrogen. They have just done a deal with Total to start installing hydrogen service stations.

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