Page 4385 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 25 October 2017
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The ACT government, as has been noted in the debate, has some of the most ambitious renewable energy and greenhouse gas targets in Australia and, indeed, the world. The government continues to take responsible steps to manage climate change and the environment through a number of programs and commitments. They have been spoken about tonight. They include a commitment to 100 per cent renewable electricity, a commitment to zero net greenhouse gas emissions, and a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. In respect of that last one we took serious short-term action. We have a net zero emission target that brings the ACT in line with the Paris climate agreement. At a time when the US government is talking about getting out of the Paris climate agreement and most other jurisdictions are actually going forward, the ACT is certainly doing its part.
I have to say that the federal government’s eight-page description of their new national approach to the national energy market gives me no confidence that the federal government is serious about meeting Australia’s Paris climate agreement. Again, I will come back to that later.
The ACT also has a climate change adaptation strategy because we must start to prepare for some of the changes that are coming towards us. We are driving innovation and investment in the clean energy sector and we are supporting the rollout of 36 megawatts of energy storage across up to 5,000 ACT homes and businesses by 2020.
These are just the headlines of some of the things we are doing. Climate change and energy are among the broadest and most complex policy areas. Ms Lee made some churlish comments about the length of Mr Steel’s motion, but it is an incredibly complex area. It crosses a lot of territory. I think there are very few people in Australia who actually understand the complexity of the labyrinthine national energy market. I genuinely think there are only a handful of people in Australia who can fully explain it and understand the rules. That is just one part of the matrix of things that we need to deal with. It is flagged in the new national energy policy, as much as we understand any details of it. It is kind of ignoring some of the key issues in transport space and agriculture as well. I will come back to that.
I will, for now, focus on energy storage and batteries, because I think this is a very interesting area. Our next generation energy storage program is one of the largest of its type in the world. It began in April 2016 with a pilot scheme that aimed to test the market and inform the design of a wider program. The pilot scheme made grants of up to $200,000 available across three companies to support the installation of energy storage systems. The grants pay on successful installation of a storage system.
The grants were awarded through a competitive process to ensure the best value for money for ACT customers and that strict safety and installation requirements are met. The benefits of battery storage technology are wideranging. They include financial savings to customers and benefits to the wider electricity network such as providing electricity to the grid during times of peak demand that will lead to reduced network costs and provide a benefit to all electricity consumers.
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