Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

We are being followed around the world, and the phase-out of incandescent lighting is called the Australian lighting initiative. If that is not leadership, what is? 

Let me go to one further area of international leadership. I have talked about forestry, I have talked about energy efficiency and I have talked about the Sydney declaration, making that enormous breakthrough where we get China, the biggest country in the world and certainly the largest emitter in the world, agreeing to work towards setting a global goal. That is an incredible breakthrough, a vital breakthrough. We know that energy efficiency will deliver great results. We know that forestry should—if we are able to make it all happen on a large enough scale—deliver considerable abatement. But longer term we know that we have to have a world where all or almost all of our energy comes from zero-emissions sources. Whichever way you slice or dice the figures, we know that by 2050 our goal should be to have all of our electricity and most of our terrestrial transport energy at least coming from zero-emissions sources, be it clean coal, be it renewables, be it geothermal, be it nuclear—whatever it is—and it will be different all around the world. Every country will have a different mix and a different range of solutions. Those solutions and those technologies are canvassed in our paper in the Sydney declaration. We are leading the way in the most critical of those technologies. There is none more critical than clean coal.

I am very devoted to solar energy, and I notice the member for Kingsford Smith is always very keen on it. I have many solar panels in my own house. The government has doubled the solar rebate. We are funding the largest solar power station in the world at Mildura. So at every level the government is very committed to solar. But we know and the world knows and the International Energy Agency knows that the biggest technological contributor to a reduction in CO emissions is likely to be clean coal. Why is that? Coal is a widespread, cheap fuel. Countries like China and India have massive resources of their own. They will be using it for a very long time. We are the world leader in developing clean coal technology. And, above all, we are working closely and creatively with the Chinese government. The CSIRO is establishing, in partnership with the Chinese government, a post-combustion capture and storage plant outside Beijing. This is the key to the puzzle. If we are able to retrofit every coal-fired power station in China with post-combustion capture and storage, we will have made an enormous contribution to a cleaner world. (Time expired)

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