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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Clean Energy Security Bill 2009 deals with amendments to the renewable energy target legislation and seeks to add two very important components. The first is a restriction on the amount of certificates available to any special or separate form of renewable energy—that is, wind versus tidal versus hot rocks versus solar. This is designed to make sure that a single technology does not dominate the marketplace due to its maturity, for instance. Therefore, it will make sure that investment will be attracted to other more efficient, reliable and suitable technologies.

The Kimberley tidal power region in Western Australia, on advice I received years ago from CSIRO, has the capacity to replace all of the energy, including energy of mobility, throughout Australia. What is more, that has been confirmed by the World Energy Council. That well-established international organisation highlighted just two inlets of the myriad inlets in that region that could produce 120 per cent more energy than is presently produced in Western Australia from the established technologies and the established generators. It could easily replace all of the energy consumed in Australia in times to come.

The second schedule relates to the efficiencies and, therefore, the renewable characteristics of a transmission system. The world has discovered that shifting electricity over longer distances—anything over 500 kilometres—is more efficiently achieved using currently available high-voltage DC transmission. The Chinese, who are not investing or participating in an emissions trading scheme, have been boasting to Minister Wong, who is in the Senate, about their attempts to build a 2,000 kilometre high-voltage DC transmission system to shift their renewable energies, such as from the Three Gorges Dam and some wind farms in their western deserts, to the manufacturing sector on their east coast. We, of course, in Australia have such a wire now running between Tasmania and Victoria, which interconnects the available power in those two states. This is very important.

The Europeans, with a highly qualified inquiry, have just established that they can shift from the Sahara solar generated power over 3,000 kilometres to Europe with only a 10 per cent line loss. They go on in that report to say that, if they attempted to do that with the established technology of Australia—high-voltage AC transmission—it would consume 45 per cent of the power generated. We should use this technology and recognise it as a virtual renewable resource because, if you can get twice as much electricity out of the other end of the pipeline, you have halved the relevant emissions associated with the generation of that power.

It is, therefore, most important that this sort of technology be given the recognition it needs. It is not cheap. By the way, it can all be installed underground and give great advantage to Australia. It should be included as a renewable resource, notwithstanding that it does not generate electricity; it simply saves it. I recommend this bill to the House and to members of the government as a worthwhile improvement in the renewable energy sector.

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