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

I might need your assistance, Acting Deputy President, in spelling out to Senator Boswell the difference between prices going down and prices going up. We can dwell here further if you think that it would be useful to do so.

Renewable energy is capital intensive, and the costs are all up-front, but your fuel costs are zero, and that goes for solar energy as well, which is why it is so exciting to see in Spain, the United States and other markets around the world the development of very large-scale, effectively better than baseload, solar power stations.

Senator Boswell interjecting—

Senator Boswell, they had a housing bubble because of rampant speculation in the housing market, and thank goodness they have got out in front and developed a robust renewable energy technology sector. We will shortly be importing componentry from them because they got out in front. It is not too late for Australia to take a lead in this industry and in this sector, but attacking the wind industry in particular and singling them out, I would respectfully suggest to our coalition colleagues and to Senator Madigan, is a rather poor way of doing that.

Wind power has actually grown faster than the booming solar industry but of course it had something of a head start. In 2008, installed wind power capacity rose by 30 per cent and it is the fastest growing type of new electricity generation. That is why the contributions that you will hear from all Greens who will speak in this debate will say that it is very important to get the planning processes right, to make sure that communities do not feel they are being cut out of the consultation processes if these things are going in their communities or close to their communities.

Currently Australia has 59 separate wind farms, which consist of 1,345 individual turbines with 2,480 megawatts of capacity. Generally you would not get them all generating at the same time but if all of those wind farms were operating at maximum output, they would produce almost 2½ gigawatts of electricity—that is, the output of two large nuclear installations. This technology is mature and it does have a very big place in the Australian energy market. I should acknowledge that there are currently over 14 gigawatts of large-scale wind farm energy projects around the country. One of the reasons the industry is finally stepping up here is that we have some of the policy settings right. We have a renewable energy target that was, I acknowledge, introduced by the Howard government.