Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

so wind electricity is therefore cheaper—cheaper is the word that I will use—than coal or gas. And both coal and gas technologies have important negative health consequences for the people living near them. Most of the focus has been on coal dust and the impacts of the coal industry, but I would also invite senators to contemplate the plume of toxic organic chemicals that come from, for example, Woodside's gas plant on the Burrup Peninsula that then shrouds the populations of Karratha, Dampier and Roebourne. The gas industry has its health impacts as well, and they need to be called to account.

Senator Edwards—I found this enormously amusing—blamed wind energy for increases in electricity costs in his home state of South Australia. I am from WA, where, because of blocking actions by the Barnett government, we have not seen as great a deployment of wind energy as we have in South Australia. They are starting to get the picture, so we are seeing some installations, but SA, nonetheless, are still further ahead than we are. When you are calculating in a deregulated market like SA the merit order effect of who shall we bring on because there is a supply gap, which generators can supply energy at the least cost, wind energy generators are generating electricity at night for an effective marginal cost of zero, of nothing because, once you have put the capital in, the energy of the wind is delivered for free. And so the Essential Service Commission of South Australia—the ECOSA—which regulates retail electricity prices in South Australia, has recently released a draft price determination that proposes an 8.1 per cent reduction. Senator Boswell, that means the price is going down by 8.1 per cent in the electricity standing offer because you have such a high degree of wind installation generating electricity effectively at the cost of nothing at all. And that, ECOSA proposes, is likely to translate to a reduction of $27 per megawatt hour. What that means in South Australia is a fall in electricity bills by an average of $160 per household. Senator Boswell, that is prices going down, which is different to prices going up.

Senator Boswell interjecting—