Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

It is the case, through you Mr President, that gas is generally lower in emissions than coal. It has been some time since I looked at the figures, so I do not want to make a guess here in the chamber. In terms of a question about whole-of-life cycle and so forth I am not in a position to provide any information on that at this point, but I will see if I can provide some further information on that. I will say that in a number of countries where there have been carbon price or equivalent carbon price policies gas has been a transition field. The senator would know that because, in general, gas is less emissions intensive than coal fired power. From recollection, for example, in the United Kingdom gas is the transitional baseload power fuel.

Obviously we are a government that is investing very substantially in renewable energy. The first aspect of that has been the government's Renewable Energy Target Scheme which has previously been through this chamber, I think, on two occasions, increasing the amount of renewable energy in the market to 20 per cent. The senator would also know the range of investments in renewable energy that the government has proposed as part of the Clean Energy Future package in which she and other members of parliament were involved.