With the new Federal Parliament settled, it’s time to look at whether our new batch of politicians will clean up Australia’s energy system. The global renewable energy sector is booming – it was worth a staggering $285.9 billion last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Will the federal government get on board?
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The Prime Minister’s decision to combine the environment and energy portfolios was a promising start. The merger allows Minister Josh Frydenberg to take climate change into account when setting the future for our electricity system. But the good news was immediately undermined when the government cut $500 million from ARENA – the agency charged with increasing our supply of renewable energy.
In Australia, we’re only building clean energy projects. But we need more to limit climate change and replace the country’s old and inefficient coal-fired power stations.
While China has been building two wind turbines an hour, uncertainty about federal policy is continuing to delay the building of new wind farms here.
Wind power is the cheapest source of new electricity generation available – its cost has dropped by more than 50 per cent over the last seven years.
Latest research by EY and the Climate Council shows more than 28,000 jobs could be created across the country if Australia generates 50 per cent of its power from the wind, sun and waves by 2030.
While 1.5 million Australians have solar on their roof, South Australia gets 37 per cent of its electricity from wind farms. The ACT will be generating enough renewable energy to cover all of its power use by 2020.
Our state and territory politicians get it – voters want renewable energy.
Now we just need our federal representatives to get serious.
Andrew Bray is national co-ordinator of the Australian Wind Alliance.