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

First, the bad news: last week climate scientists reported that for the first time atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration figures exceeded 400 parts per million. It is estimated that the last time CO2 levels were so high was during the Pliocene geological era between three and five million years ago, prior to the evolution of humans. Climatologists estimate that the last time CO2 concentration levels were this high, global average temperatures were around three to four degrees Celsius higher than today, and sea levels ranged between five and 40 metres higher. Concentrations of CO2 are the same now. They are increasing rapidly and world leaders are still procrastinating about future climate treaties, when we are supposed to have negotiated a global treaty by no later than 2015.

At the same time, we have coal ports and a massive surge in coal exports and exploration of coal seam gas. That is why we are in a climate emergency right now—and we are in a climate emergency. In the real world—the physical world that we live in, the world of ice, of oceans, of atmosphere and of ecosystems—we are in crisis. We are in an emergency and it is a critical decade. If we do not reduce CO2 levels rapidly then we are leaving to our children and their children, to all future generations, a planet which is increasingly unliveable. Lord Stern said just this week that there will be continent-wide collapses in agriculture, with millions being forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in other places. That is the kind of world that we are facing unless we get on with acting on climate change. Unfortunately, when the 400 parts per million record ticked over it did not receive the same kinds of headlines that it should have got around the world and particularly here in Australia. I suggest that is because people simply do not want to know—their heads are not in the real world; their heads are in the world of the profits being generated by the coal companies, by the resource based economy, and they do not want to see an alternative future.

It is in this context of the obvious need to get on with building a 100 per cent renewable energy future that I want to talk about the absurdity of cutting funding to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. After the last election the Greens insisted upon the creation of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee to negotiate a range of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Within the MPCCC we argued that more money was required to support renewable energy research and development as well as commercialisation, and that the allocation of funds should be depoliticised. ARENA was established as an independent statutory authority because this government, and in particular the previous energy minister, Martin Ferguson, were unable to effectively administer many renewable energy programs. He was a coal and gas man through and through, and we saw a constant raiding of the funds available for renewable energy.

A classic example is the Solar Flagships program. What a fiasco that was. It started in 2009 with $1.5 billion, and Labor will go to the 2013 election with not a single panel or heliostat installed, despite more than 50 projects worth some $80 billion jostling for a bite of the action. It beggars belief that just a single project, a 150-megawatt solar PV facility at Broken Hill and Nyngan, will eventually be built with flagships funding. It is a shame, a disgrace, that that has been allowed to occur. The main failure of the scheme was that it insisted upon very large projects, and these projects could not negotiate power purchase agreements. It should be remembered that the industry warned the government about these problems at the outset. I am confident that ARENA, together with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with whom it will collaborate closely, has absorbed those lessons.

The Greens have set up two statutory authorities, starting from the earliest research and development through to the pilot stage, which is the ARENA funding, and then an overlap on the pilot stage and out to delivering and leveraging private sector finance through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. These were meant to be independent statutory authorities beyond the ability of the fingers of governments to raid them, because these are the technologies we need for the future. It has now been reported that around $100 million, it could even be $200 million, will be cut from the ARENA budget tonight.

There is also the view that the government is out there saying that these carbon-pricing schemes were designed to be revenue neutral—that is, receipts from the sale of permits should equal expenditure on assistance measures and industry development. This makes absolutely no economic sense. Why should expenditure on climate related programs be revenue neutral? Should we not be making the building blocks of the future, the race to 100 per cent renewable energy, a priority in this nation? If we are going for a society which is low economy, new jobs and new innovation with a sustainable planet and life and wellbeing for the people on it, then the race is on and it makes no sense to cut these programs.

We have a situation where, in this climate emergency, we will not be able to contribute equitably to the global challenge of limiting global warming to two degrees unless we get on with it. Australia's carbon budget is going to be tight as we proceed, and we will ultimately require complete decarbonisation of the electricity sector. That is why it is important to get on with it now, as it is apparent that renewable energy is reliable, and not more expensive than the status quo, and we should seek to capture the benefits of long-term transition planning and driving down costs with well-focused R&D. That is what ARENA's job was to do, and I can inform the Senate that the Greens will not be supporting legislation that cuts funding to ARENA. It will have to come through as separate legislation. We set it up in such a way that that would be the case. We will not be supporting legislation and we challenge the coalition to not support it either and, if the coalition goes into government, to not go ahead with those cuts.

AEMO recently reported on how we can achieve 100 per cent renewable energy. That report is special because for years it has been argued that we could not go ahead with 100 per cent renewable energy. We listened endlessly to people in here saying we could not have 100 per cent renewable energy. AEMO undertook the study as a result of the work we had done in the climate change committee, and they have come up with this finding that 100 per cent renewable energy is possible and now it is just a question of cost. The AEMO report estimated that there was the potential for increases in wholesale electricity prices, but the problem is that AEMO did not look at a business-as-usual increase in electricity prices as a comparison. For the life of me I cannot understand why they refused to model business as usual as opposed to the cost of going to 100 per cent renewables. We can only assume that AEMO's bias is against renewables—but no matter.

Other assessments have also projected that we can get to 100 per cent renewable energy right now. That is exactly what we should be doing. The carbon price modelling commissioned by Treasury, particularly that which assumes that the world will adopt policies to achieve the agreed objective of limiting global warming to two degrees, and the current CSIRO eFuture modelling both project wholesale electricity prices that are similar to the AEMO study. Of course it is important to remember that wholesale prices are a relatively small component of retail prices.

The point I want to make very strongly today is that we can be getting on with it; we can deliver 100 per cent renewable energy. It is technically feasible to do so; it is just a matter of political will, of timing, of the amount of money we put into it. Now is not the time to be cutting and slowing down our move to 100 per cent renewables. I had the good fortune, with my colleague Senator Ludlam, to be in Spain last year when we went to the Gemma solar plant—a large solar thermal plant with molten salt in storage—and we stood in what Australia still thinks of as the future, but it is the present in Spain. Other places are doing it. We should have large-scale solar thermal in Australia. I want to see ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation delivering for Australia, and I want to see AEMO getting on with the job of driving and working with the community and with business to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy. (Time expired)