Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We heard the previous speaker talking about 2,400 gigawatts of power coming on with new wind in the last two years and not a single bit over what we were doing two years ago actually going into the grid in the last month, because they are transient, they are flexible and they do not always deliver what they should. In fact, the best rate of plate capability to actual delivery of power comes from one windfarm in Australia that delivers 43 per cent of what its plate rate says, not the actual rate that it says, because that is what it does.

Up my way we have the Tomago aluminium smelter, which currently uses 950 gigawatts of actual, firmed power. They're in the market for renewables, because that's what they have to do to meet so many of these compliance things. They're after three gigawatts, which is more than three times the plate rate of power, because it is no longer dispatchable; it is no longer firmed. This is where nuclear comes in.

If we're going down this path of emission-free power—let's get down to it—under this government's policy, what we're going to see is coal plants going longer. We'll see more emissions from older and older coal plants as they stretch them out, like the Labor government did in New South Wales.

We'll see gas peaking plants needing to be built to fix this gap, because they won't be getting to the 82 per cent goal by 2030. They're going to be nowhere near it, let's be honest, because they're playing with unicorn technology. They're talking about floating offshore wind. Let's go there. They want to talk about things that don't exist. Show me a floating offshore substation anywhere in the world. I know those on the other side cannot show me, because it does not exist.

The only floating offshore wind in the world is 11 floating turbines from Hywind and five that are powering gas and petrol extraction plants off the coast of Norway. How long did they last? Let's go back to that. They're being pulled out after seven years of operation. That is the length of energy security. They are coming in for long-term maintenance after seven years. That is what renewables gets you. It gets you a short-term, non-commercial rate of return.

So what do we want to do? We want to put 300 of these off the Port Stephens coast. We want to put 300 of these off the Illawarra coast. We want to put them around. So, if these things don't work, what do we do? We go to the only non-emission—