Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to express my great disappointment with the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2006. This bill came about in theory to implement the recommendations of the Tambling report into the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 as well as adopting the provisions of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2002 but tragically it fails to incorporate the most important recommendation of the 2003 review of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act, namely that MRET be extended from 2010 to 2020, with an increased target of 20,000 gigawatt hours to be achieved by 2020. This recommendation for an extended time frame and increased target received widespread support from the renewables industry, and all of the submissions from industry reflected this, and that was acknowledged in the Senate committee report.

The government’s arguments against extending MRET are completely flawed. The first argument that the government used was that MRET is a more costly measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than it needs to be as it focuses exclusively on renewable energy sources rather than least cost greenhouse gas abatement, such as reducing energy consumption through improving energy efficiency. Nobody disputes that we should be moving rapidly to energy efficiency. We would all agree with that, but you can do both. You can have energy efficiency and reduce demand—go for demand side management—and at the same time increase supply of renewable energy. You can have both. It is not one or the other.

They have used the argument that we are not going to go with renewables because energy efficiency is the lower hanging fruit, and it is in terms of greenhouse gas reduction and increased supply as such, but the problem is that the government have not acted on that either. Several times in this chamber in the last month I have moved to have the energy efficiency audits that the government have required to be done implemented. The government have basically rejected that. We have a situation where they reject the argument and the very option to implement what they say is the reason they are not pursuing the MRET.

Secondly, we have a situation where the government argued that the MRET scheme focuses on expanding the renewable energy industry to conserve non-renewable resources, which in reality is not an issue for Australia given our abundant supply of coal and large natural gas resources and may result in unnecessary escalations in the price of energy. That actually goes to the heart of it. That is the explanation. We have got coal and gas so it is not an issue. It is an issue for Australia and I have spoken extensively on that this week. It is an issue for Australia because global warming is real, it is urgent and there is a moral imperative to deal with it quickly because the costs of not dealing with it are going to be mega.

We cannot even begin to imagine in this house tonight what the costs of global warming are going to be within 20 years, especially if there are greenhouse or climate accidents of the scale that scientists say are possible. If we have the break-up of the west Antarctic ice shelf, if we lose the Greenland ice shelf, then we are going to experience a five- to seven-metre sea level rise. A five- to seven-metre sea level rise would wipe out 44 million people around Shanghai, in Bangladesh, Manhattan, around Australia—imagine that, with our capital cities based largely on the coast. We are talking about huge costs for not dealing with greenhouse gases, not going with mitigation right now.

So to say that renewable energy is not an issue because we have an abundant supply of coal and natural gas is totally, utterly, absolutely irresponsible, and fails to internalise the costs of coal and greenhouse gas energy sources. What we should be doing is putting a price on carbon so that you internalise the externality, as it currently is, of greenhouse gas emissions. If you put a price on carbon then you would not need the mandatory renewable energy target. You would have an emissions-trading system, you would have options for various forms of carbon taxation, and the renewable energy sector would fly.

But as I indicated today in the fuel tax debate, there is no comprehensive plan to deal with greenhouse gas abatement. We are not asking what the extent of the task is. Let me tell you what the extent of the task is. In terms of stationary energy, we have had a 43 per cent increase in emissions between 1990 and 2004. How are we going to deal with that? How are we going to drop the emissions in energy, particularly in the electricity sector? The government does not have a plan for doing that.

The last argument, the main argument the government use, is that the energy market supports the introduction of a national economy wide emissions-trading scheme to abate the same level of emissions as intended through a number of separate schemes currently in operation. So they are saying: ‘Yes, we should have an emissions-trading scheme, and if we did that, we wouldn’t need MRET. Therefore, we’re going to get rid of MRET, but we don’t have the emissions-trading scheme.’ So the logic behind rejecting MRET is just not there. It demonstrates that the government are not serious about greenhouse gas abatement.

The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, said earlier this year that he believed Australia’s competitive advantage in a carbon constrained world is our coal reserves. I never understood the logic of that then, and I still do not understand the logic of that. Nevertheless, that was the minister for the environment telling the world that in a carbon constrained world, Australia’s competitive advantage is in its coal reserves, and when everybody else is moving on to renewable energy, we are focusing on carbon capture and storage, which is unproven technology. We are being left behind.

India has a 20 per cent renewable energy target. China has a 15 per cent target. The UK has 10 per cent and Australia has two per cent, which has retreated to 0.5 per cent because of the expanded economy and because of the extent of the increase in our energy demand. So we are actually going backwards at a fast rate. Apart from the clear imperative to deal with greenhouse gases and to reduce our reliance on coal and fossil fuels, there are the issues of strengthening and developing some resilience in the Australian economy, boosting the manufacturing and R&D sectors and boosting the number of jobs, particularly in rural and regional areas. That is what investment in renewable energy does. But what we are seeing is the government actually stopping that investment and driving these companies offshore. I simply cannot understand how the government can sit back and be so relaxed about so many companies going offshore.

Senator Allison has referred tonight to some of them. Roaring 40s, the Tasmanian example, has gone to China, where it has recently announced a new joint venture of wind farms on China’s east coast. It will have an operating capacity of 48.75 megawatts and is part of a target of 150 megawatts for joint development for China. This makes Roaring 40s a major player in renewable energy there. Roaring 40s has said very clearly that it is being driven out of investment in Australia because of the government’s refusal either to put a price on carbon and go with an emissions-trading scheme or to extend MRET. We are not seeing anything. The whole world is recognising the need to put a price on carbon, and I simply cannot understand why Australia refuses to do so, except that it is so married to the notion of coal and uranium as future energy sources—when neither can deal with greenhouse in the time frame we are talking about.

Ten or 15 years will not see us being able to use uranium, even if you supported that as a fuel source, because we are not going to have any capacity on stream to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and if we have not done that in 15 years it will be too late. That is what I need to convey to the Senate: the urgency of the need for dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases. While we encourage individual action and we ask people to do what they can in their personal lives, what we need is systemic change, and only governments can bring about systemic change, through a regulatory environment and a series of incentives. That is what MRET did. When it was introduced, the Prime Minister said:

Targets will be set for the inclusion of renewable energy in electricity generation by the year 2010. Electricity retailers and other large electricity buyers will be legally required to source an additional 2 per cent of their electricity from renewable or specified waste-product energy sources by 2010 (including through direct investment in alternative renewable energy sources such as solar water heaters). This will accelerate the uptake of renewable energy in grid-based power applications and provide an ongoing base for commercially competitive renewable energy. The program will also contribute to the development of internationally competitive industries which could participate effectively in the burgeoning Asian energy market.

All that is true and all that has happened, and you are abolishing it. I simply do not understand why you are not taking this opportunity to build resilience and a bit more sophistication into the Australian economy, instead of simplifying it more and more by the day, in going back to a ‘digging it up, cutting it down, quarry, farm and nice place to visit’ economy.

Of the companies that are being driven overseas, we have heard about Roaring 40s and Novera Energy. There is also Seapower Pacific. It is a Western Australian company that has left Australia and gone to the UK. The product is a renewable wave energy converter. It is the first wave power converter that sits on the seabed, where it is invisible, safe from storms and ocean forces, and self contained. It is yet another example of an Australian technology going overseas. Pacific Hydro is currently looking at the potential of geothermal energy from the Great Artesian Basin. It says that there is sufficient geothermal energy there right now to produce 25 per cent of the eastern states’ baseload for the next 100 years. Why are we even talking about nuclear when we have got a renewable energy company that has already done the survey work, has identified the capacity and can roll it out right now?

At ANU we have got sliver cell technology for photovoltaics, which will reduce the cost of photovoltaics by 75 per cent. That technology is likely to go to Germany, Japan or possibly China. It is not going to be rolled out in Australia. Why not? There is also solar thermal. With an area of 35 square kilometres in Australia we can produce all of the baseload power that Australia needs. That is 35 square kilometres to roll out the huge solar collectors to go with this technology. We have got the capacity with renewables to meet our baseload requirements. That would support our R&D sector and it would support a more sophisticated economy. All of that could be achieved by going with a comprehensive plan to look at energy provision and supply for Australia and a way of incorporating that through a series of government regulatory frameworks—whether it is a price on carbon through tax, a price on carbon cap-and-trade or through the lesser mechanism of MRET. But at least the potential is there.

But I am not seeing anything from the government that suggests that it has any understanding of either the urgency or the size of the task of reducing the greenhouse gas challenge. How are we going to stop these greenhouse gases spiralling out of control? As I indicated earlier today, in the transport sector there was an increase in emissions of 23.4 per cent between 1990 and 2004, and in energy we have had a 43 per cent increase. I do not know how we are going to deal with it. The government has not got an idea of how to deal with it.

I moved in this house this week for a full and comprehensive inquiry into renewable energy and meeting Australia’s energy needs into the future, and it was voted down. The government does not have a plan and it does not want the Senate to find a plan, because the government is intent on backing coal and uranium against the renewable sector. What it is doing is backing quarries against brains. That is the Liberal strategy. Quarries can exist as long as you have a market to sell what you dig up—assuming that what you have to dig up can last forever, and we know that is wrong. The world cannot afford to mine coal at the rate that it is and it cannot afford to use it, and the world cannot afford uranium. Even if it could, it is only a short-term source of supply, maybe 40 years worth at best; if you use the high-grade ore, probably nine years at best. So it is a transitory strategy to deal with a long-term problem, when renewables can address that problem.

In the committee stage, I am going to move for the government and the Senate to implement the recommendation that the Tambling report came forward with, and that is 20,000 gigawatt hours by 2020. It is not enough. We would like to go way further than that. As I indicated, the Greens would like to see a price on carbon. We would like to see a comprehensive emissions trading system. We would like to look at a range of measures in relation to transport fuels, such as changing the whole basis of transport fuel tax to a tax on carbon instead of a tax on energy content. But that is not going to happen. At the very least, the Senate should vote on accepting the main recommendation of the government’s own review, the Tambling report. That is what I will be moving for. I am also going to support the Democrats’ amendment with regard to this, which goes much further, and I would be happy to go further still. But supporting the Greens’ amendment would be an indication that this chamber support the mandatory renewable energy target, that we support renewable energy and that we want to see the jobs, the investment and the excitement that can come from investment in that field.

As a final word, I would just like to mention Dr Shi, the Australian scientist who has now made a billion. He is our first solar billionaire, and he has made that money by investment in China. That investment should have been able to occur in Australia as well as in China. It is great to see China, India and the rest of the world investing in renewable energy, but that should be happening here as well to meet the ever-increasing greenhouse gas challenge that we have.