Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009 is to establish the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy and the position of chief executive officer. ACRE is an initiative under the Clean Energy Initiative. It will complement the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the expanded renewable energy target by supporting the research, development and demonstration of low emission and renewable energy technologies.

It is very timely that we have a debate about renewable energy today. Whatever the political pressures we are under concerning a move away from carbon based energy, and no doubt they are significant, we have a duty to take a science based, evidence based approach. I note that Senator Nick Minchin recently said on Four Corners that climate change:

For the extreme left … provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left, and the, and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion.

Let me observe that I do not hear anyone proposing that we de-industrialise the Western world, and I hope that Senator Minchin looks closely at this bill when it gets to the Senate. Proposals to move to solar, wind and geothermal energy, or for greater energy efficiency or for electric cars, do not represent an atom of deindustrialisation. Proposals for solar panels and rainwater tanks promote the kind of household self-reliance one would expect a champion of rugged individualism to be enthusiastic about. More worrying, it suggests that Senator Minchin is so stuck in the Cold War battles of the past, locked in time with the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, that he is going to see this issue through ideological blinkers rather than look at the science, look at the evidence, look at the facts. Apparently he would rather see his own city of Adelaide sizzle and burn than admit that the Left might be right about this issue.

Contrary to the propaganda of commentators like Senator Minchin, most people who seek to protect the environment do not want to lower their standard of living; what they seek to do is to put their lifestyle on a sustainable basis. It is true that some aspects of our lifestyle have become extravagant and excessive and that there is plenty of scope to reduce our consumption of electricity, water and vehicle fuels. But our need for electricity, for water and for cars is not going to go away, and it does not need to. What is needed is to generate that electricity, deliver that water and power our vehicles from energy sources in a way that does not trash the planet. That is why we need to move to renewable energy and that is why we need this bill.

It is said that renewable energy is not capable of meeting Australia’s baseline power needs. This is quite misleading, on three counts. First, much of the increase in power use, and therefore the increase in carbon emissions, arises at peak periods—for example, the use of air-conditioners on hot summer days. This is precisely the time at which solar power works best. Renewable energy which meets peak demand is extremely important in meeting our future energy needs. Secondly, while any given renewable energy source may be intermittent, the fact is there are many different energy sources located across many different areas of Australia. In combination, they are capable of meeting large chunks of Australia’s power needs in a predictable, reliable way. The existence of the national electricity grid facilitates this. Thirdly, it is not a matter of all or nothing. For example, wind power can operate in concert with gas fired power stations to produce power with much fewer carbon emissions than our present coal fired arrangements.

People who claim that renewable energy can only operate at the fringe of electricity generation are quite wrong. Professor Ian Lowe has pointed out that renewables now account for a quarter of the installed energy capacity of California, half of Norway’s and three-quarters of Iceland’s. Grid connected solar energy is growing at 60 per cent per annum worldwide and renewable energy industries now employ nearly two million people. These are examples of just some of the renewable technologies which are presently being applied.

Solar thermal power plants generate electricity using heat. Much like a magnifying glass, reflectors focus sunlight onto a fluid filled vessel, generating heat that drives a turbine to produce electricity. The United States and Spain are developing this technology—ironically, originally conceived in the early 1990s at the University of Sydney—with plans for over 5½ thousand megawatts of new capacity to come online by 2012. The output from these plants would be enough to power one-quarter of Australian homes. Solar photovoltaics, solar PVs, use semiconductors to convert sunlight energy into direct current electricity. Excess energy is stored in batteries for later use. It can also be fed back into the electricity grid. Australia receives enough solar energy in one day to supply half a plant’s annual energy use, but countries like Germany and Japan are way ahead of us in using this technology. There is solar hot water, which is mandatory in Israel. There is wind power. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy.

The Texas state government is driving an effort to build 23,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, the equivalent of 23 coal fired power plants—enough to meet the residential needs of half of Texas’s population. It would take 4,200 wind turbines to meet all of South Australia’s energy needs. Denmark, which is two-thirds the size of Tasmania, has already installed 5,000 turbines. Then there is bioenergy generated from organic matter. This is suitable for electricity, heating and transportation. It is important to note that growing crops for bioenergy purposes should not compromise global food production or degrade native forests. Unfortunately, there is evidence of this occurring in emerging countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

I want to say a little bit more this evening about geothermal energy. It does not get discussed much in the parliament, but it is potentially the largest source of energy in the world today. Unlike solar energy, which comes to the earth from the sun, geothermal energy comes from deep within the planet itself. Like solar energy and wind power, geothermal energy could, if properly developed, match all of the energy available from coal, oil and gas combined. Indeed, the amount of geothermal energy potentially available is, according to the United States Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, effectively unlimited. And Al Gore’s most recent book says that the amount of geothermal power available is so frequently underestimated primarily because its use as a source of electricity has long been associated with the few locations where hot water bubbles or spouts to the surface. In fact, the global geothermal resource base of stored thermal energy is very large. According to the United Nations world energy assessment report, the geothermal resource is roughly 280,000 times the annual consumption of primary energy in the world. Moreover, geothermal power has numerous advantages over any other form of energy. Unlike coal, oil and gas geothermal energy has virtually no CO2 emissions. Geothermal plants are modular and scalable. They have the smallest environmental footprint on the surface.

Like solar power, geothermal resources are available virtually everywhere on earth. It is underneath developing countries as well as wealthier countries. It is not intermittent. Once it is in place it provides power 24 hours a day. There are two kinds of geological areas where geothermal resources have traditionally been most easily located. The parts of the earth where the temperature beneath the surface gets hottest are usually located at the boundaries where tectonic plates come together and where active volcanoes are often found. There is a new and growing excitement about geothermal electricity, based on new technologies, that makes it possible to exploit sites deep in the earth that have enormous amounts of heat but lack one or more of the characteristics found in hydrothermal reservoirs. For example, many of these sites do not have water. Capturing the energy from these new non-hydrothermal resources has led to new approaches. This new technology for making geothermal power is called ‘enhanced’ or ‘engineered’ geothermal systems.

By using new technology that exploits the advances in drilling and reservoir stimulation—developed in part as a result of the frenzy of oil and gas exploration in the 20th century to create active reservoirs that emulate the properties of hydrothermal systems—geologists and engineers believe that they have found ways to produce extremely large sources of geothermal power from regions several miles deep in the crust of the earth. The geothermal resources worldwide are usually associated with volcanic activity, but we also have geothermal resources in Australia associated with heat-producing granites. Development work is underway in the Eromanga Basin in South Australia and Queensland as well as in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. The potential geothermal resource is estimated at 450 times Australia’s total energy needs. Geothermal energy could directly replace coal fired power, as it provides a constant power source.

I think that this parliament and this country need to put a greater investment of energy and effort into exploiting this great potential resource. The fact is that Australia has a lot of potential—a lot of unrealised potential—in relation to renewable energy. Australia currently sources just eight per cent of its electricity from renewable energy, down from 10 per cent in 1997. Australian electricity consumption has increased more rapidly than renewable electricity supply. This compares very unfavourably with Germany, which has 25 times more wind energy installed than Australia. Even though their wind sites are less windy than Australia’s worst commercial sites, they have six times more wind energy per person than Australia. Japan and Germany each have 24 times more solar-electric panels installed than Australia despite having significantly poorer solar resources. At the end of 2005 both of those countries had 1,400 megawatts, compared to Australia’s 60 megawatts.

So, although Australia has unrivalled solar, wind and geothermal resources and led the world in the development of solar technology, we have not been using these natural advantages in the way that we should. We have had companies move overseas for want of market support. In a 2006 review of international markets’ attractiveness to renewable energy investors, Australia ranked 16th—that is, fourth from the bottom. This is unfortunate. Globally, there is a lot of investment in renewable energy. In 2005, worldwide investment in new renewable energy was worth US$38 billion. In 2005, grid connected solar-PV power grew by 55 per cent and wind power grew by 24 per cent.

I also believe we need to look at vehicles. In June this year we saw General Motors in America go into bankruptcy. This company basically failed to see where petrol prices were going and failed to see where consumers were going. Our car manufacturers need to think seriously about manufacturing cars that run only on electricity. China, Israel and Denmark are doing this. There are companies that have produced a business plan involving the construction of car battery recharging stations at parking spaces and billing motorists online for the electricity they use. Fully charged cars would be able to travel around 160 kilometres, and for longer trips motorists would pull into stations resembling car washes and exchange their spent batteries for new ones.

The Silicon Valley based company Better Place has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and entered into agreements with Israel, Denmark, a number of governments in the United States, Renault and Nissan. Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car from the French auto maker Renault or the Japanese car maker Nissan and then purchase miles on their electric car battery in the same way people purchase mobile phone time from a mobile phone carrier. The cars are sold at a relatively low price and owners are charged operating fees. The total cost of owning an electric car, including the upfront prices and ongoing operating expenses, is expected to be less than for a conventional car.

China is seeking to become the leading producer of hybrid and all-electric cars within three years. It is behind the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making gas-powered vehicles, but it is skipping the current technology and hoping to get a jump on the next one. Of course, electric cars that use electricity from traditional sources produce carbon, but, if we move to renewable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal and other carbon-free methods of producing electricity, we could obviously get around this problem. That would give drivers freedom from petrol price fluctuations, and Australia would get a sustainable future for our car industry, an improved trade balance and energy independence.

Finally, I want to note that it is not just about renewable energy, it is also about energy efficiency. It is important that we have a balanced approach to this issue. I commend to the parliament the formation of the Australian Alliance to Save Energy, which intends to raise the profile of Australia’s opportunities in energy efficiency in a concerted and sustained way. Its operating model is drawn directly from the Alliance to Save Energy, headquartered in Washington, DC, and it has had senior representatives from Washington advising it during its formation phase. The Alliance to Save Energy has been at the centre of energy policy debates in the United States for over 30 years and has helped design, implement and evaluate a range of domestic and international demand-side programs and distributed-energy programs.

The government has been very active on the renewable energy front. We have had the initiatives in the 2009-10 budget, including a $4.5 billion clean energy initiative. We have had the renewable energy target legislation, which we debated and passed earlier this year. And, finally, we now have the establishment of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy. I commend the government on its renewable energy initiatives and I commend the bill to the House.

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