Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is, as Senator Polley says, a great system. In my view, this legislation would have been enriched if there had been carve-outs allowed for the encouragement of hydroelectricity power, with existing technologies and existing assets, and large-scale solar power. There is also a wonderful project being undertaken by Carnegie at Garden Island, off the Western Australian coast. Carnegie, using wave motion energy, are providing a significant proportion of the power to HMAS Stirling at Garden Island, as well as providing them with water desalinated through the heat of the generation sets.

So I think this is an opportunity missed, and ministers and others are well aware of my views that we could have had and should have had an allocation for the development of those opportunities.

The commentary in this area has been interesting. The other day, I spoke on radio in Perth, and some fellow rang in and said that he was used to windmills on farms and they did not make him sick. Someone else said they were aware of very, very small turbines on people's roofs in the Canary Islands, and those people were not reporting illness; and, therefore, what I was talking about was a load of nonsense.

It may not be known, but it became patently obvious to the committee through our inquiry, that the modern industrial wind turbine has a pillar of some 100 metres in height, and the blades themselves are 100 metres long. So we are looking at the height equivalent of a 60-floor CBD high-rise building and, with the size of the blades, an area greater than an Australian Rules football oval—just the one turbine. They are enormous.

The Mayor of the Goyder Regional Council in South Australia, when he appeared before the committee the other day—and the region for which he has local government responsibility has a very heavy concentration of industrial wind turbines—made the observation, probably the plea, that when this technology was first developed years ago the opportunity was there for governments, Commonwealth and state, to sit down and discuss where these turbines might be placed so they were unlikely to have any impact at all on humans.

In the context of my own state, there are four major wind farm developments. There are two outside of Esperance, on the south-east coast, where it blows like a dog off a chain, but they are placed at nine and 10 miles away. It will come as no surprise to learn that the names of these wind farms are Nine Mile Beach and Ten Mile Lagoon—because they are nine and 10 miles from town. In Albany, those who saw the commemoration of the Centenary of Anzac would have seen the wind turbines in the distance. As the Mayor of Albany said the other day, nobody lives near them; they are about 20 kilometres from town. Walkaway wind farm is about 30 kilometres from either Dongara or Geraldton. The Collgar Wind Farm is about 35 kilometres from Merredin—probably a good distance if you are worried, as I am, about wind farms' possible adverse effects on people.

One of the other comments that are often made with regard to wind turbines, and I think it is one that needs to be stated, is that they will be able to immediately reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If you actually sit down and do the mathematics, you come to the realisation that the manufacturing itself of each turbine requires more than 250 tonnes of coal to produce the steel; and, when you do the carbon dioxide analysis, the payback is not for about 15 to 20 years. In other words, if a turbine operates as expected, for maybe eight hours a day—that would be optimistic—it will have to generate electricity for up to 15 to 20 years before it pays back the carbon emissions that were used in its construction or, indeed, in its being put into place. And you would understand, Mr Deputy President, that any structure which is 100 metres in height and of the width I mentioned a moment ago needs massive amounts of concrete and steel to support it. Those are points that very much need to be made.

The economics are of great interest. Why are we focusing on industrial wind turbines? It is because, in the time we have to achieve the objective of 33,000 gigawatt hours, it is industrial wind turbines, in the main, that are going to contribute to that renewable energy source. Conservatively, it is going to require somewhere around about 1,000 new wind turbines, possibly even more, depending on their size. Therefore, it is reasonably for us to examine the economics of these circumstances. The arguments go backwards and forwards. We were told in Adelaide and in Melbourne that in fact greater use of wind turbines and renewable energy, particularly through turbines, were driving the price of electricity down for the residents. I recall asking someone, 'Which state of Australia has the greatest number of turbines?' The answer is South Australia. Which is the state that has the highest cost of electricity to residences? Of course, it is South Australia. If you go to Europe, which country has the highest number of industrial wind turbines? It is Denmark. Which country has the highest cost of domestic electricity? And yes, you guessed it. Of course, it is the same place: it is Denmark.

You can also ask the question: if in fact wind turbines are driving the price of power down, why do they need any sort of financial support from the federal government? From this point of view, if they are so successful, surely it is not required. Only then do we come to learn that, in fact, the claims made about the price of power going down as the amount of renewables increases come about as a result of the very generous Renewable Energy Certificates. As we all know, under the Constitution, land management, under which these sorts of planning decisions are made, is quite rightly the role of the states, not of the Commonwealth government. But people need to be aware that, on average, depending on how much electricity they generate, besides being paid for the electricity that the turbines generate there is also a system of Renewable Energy Certificates. It is the Clean Energy Regulator who oversees the allocation of certificates, and it is true to say that these certificates actually do not cost the taxpayer anything, because the certificates find their way through to the retail price of electricity. Therefore, that cost is met by consumers. But the last time I had a look there would not be too many taxpayers who themselves are not consumers. So I think it is a very moot point to say that these costs are not borne by taxpayers. Indeed, they are.

The Clean Energy Regulator and I had had some spirited discussions in Senate estimates, and she continues to tell me that whilst the act seems to require the Clean Energy Regulator to be satisfied as to the compliance of industrial wind turbines, and indeed other forms of clean energy, in fact it does not. At the moment, the only requirement under legislation that the Clean Energy Regulator has is to be satisfied on the economics. In other words, if the wind turbine operator said, 'We generated X amount of electricity last year,' so long as the Clean Energy Regulator is satisfied with that part of the audit process the certificates flow. I would plead very strongly that there is a greater role, and based on the Clean Energy Regulator's submission and appearance before the committee, I think she is also of that view. In other words, that greater role should be that the Clean Energy Regulator needs to be satisfied with compliance.

This afternoon's discussion does not allow me to go into any detail at all about compliance, except to say there is a long and sad history of lack of compliance: of turbines being wrongly placed and of approvals being given in arrears or backdated. This does not do very much for their credibility or for the levels of confidence within the wider community, particularly the community of effected people. Therefore, I think we need a lot more discussion on the overall economics. I plead that we need to widen the argument.

One of the other areas is biomass. I know that will be discussed in the committee process, and I look forward to contributing in that area, because I firmly believe that if we can use wood waste, particularly from the plantation industry, and if we can use the waste from the sugarcane industry in those areas on the east coast where the sugar is grown, then that will be of tremendous benefit.

In the last few seconds I want to pose this question to the sceptics: why is it that a family who have been in the same farmhouse for five generations would all of a sudden pretend to have some adverse health effect? Why would somebody who has made a lifestyle choice to shift to the Barossa Valley and found their life destroyed lay these claims? Consider a turbine host who has been receiving multiples of the $10,000 per annum that most get for having turbines on their properties. Why would they put their hands up and say, 'I'm sorry, I can't accept the funds any more'? Consider the farmer who cannot spray his crop anymore because of the turbines, and consider the retirees who leave their communities with no value in their land. There are questions to be asked.