David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to talk about our electricity system and the dreams of the other side. They have fallen for the dream of this renewable energy superpower hook, line and sinker. We have so much more solar resource than anyone else. Well, I hate to disappoint them, but the capacity factor of solar systems in Australia is only 24 per cent. That means we would only be a renewable energy superpower, if we were based on solar, 24 per cent of the time. The rest of the time we'd have blackouts. And the capacity factor of wind is about 40 per cent, just like it is on the rest of the planet. If you want to run a whole system using intermittently- and randomly-generating, incredibly diluted energy systems that use more minerals and essential supplies that we need to use in other parts of our economy—it's wasted on a system that has a lifespan of 20 years maximum—you are dreaming. You are burning up Australia's wealth by producing an incredibly expensive energy system. That's what a renewable energy superpower would look like—lots of blackouts and ridiculously expensive electricity. And we wouldn't be able to run our cities. We wouldn't be able to run our economies.

We would have renewable sewerage that would only work when the system is generating energy. We would have renewable electric trains that would only work when it's sunny and windy. For these things called cities, with 4½ million people—I know you all go to sleep at night and turn your lights off. In New South Wales there are seven gigawatts of energy, alternating current of the right frequency and voltage, in the wires all the time, and similarly in Melbourne. That amount that is always there is called baseload. Renewables that only work 24 or 40 per cent maximum time can't deliver a baseload energy system. Germany has tried. Texas has tried. The grids around England and Europe have all tried. They've spent trillions of euros, US dollars, Canadian dollars. We have spent billions and billions already, and we're just going to waste more, because it's the system that delivers your energy, not the generator.

Sure, renewable energy should be cheap, because it's only available when it's perfectly sunny or windy. I wouldn't want to pay too much for it. But your grid costs go through the roof because the amount of land you have to take up goes up exponentially. You destroy nature. You destroy farmland. Your grid goes up because you need all these unnecessary grids that will only be carrying electricity 24 per cent of the time at best. Lots of times they'll be carrying none. You've just signed off on $9 billion to expand unnecessary grids. Seveny-five per cent of the time most of them are coming from big solar farms way out west. Seveny-five per cent of the time there won't be any electricity because there is no solar energy. But let's go and spend $90 billion anyhow! Is that sensible? You've got to wake up. The system is what costs you money, not the generation. And that's only one thing.

You've also got to put the full system levelised cost into your calculations, which means the cost of all the batteries; the cost of all the grids; the cost of building it every 15 to 20 years; the cost of destroying virgin bush and land, of destroying animals—the eagles—and of destroying nature at sea and on land. That is why it's expensive.

It's a subsidy merry-go-round. We are now subsidising solar and wind with large generating certificates, renewable generating certificates. We are now subsidising the cost of energy with bill relief. And hey presto! All of a sudden New South Wales and Victoria have recognised you need baseload power, so now they're subsidising coal. We should get rid of the whole subsidy merry-go-round and let people called engineers run our grids, rather than pie-in-the-sky academics who think we're going to be a superpower by destroying our energy system. (Time expired)

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