Page 3243 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 November 1992
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CONSERVATION, HERITAGE AND ENVIRONMENT -
STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Renewable Energy
MR MOORE (10.39): I present the report of the Standing Committee on Conservation, Heritage and Environment on "Renewable Energy - The Case for Energy Efficiency in the ACT", together with a copy of the minutes of proceedings. I move:
That the report be noted.
Madam Speaker, in presenting this report to the Assembly today we have the opportunity either to cocoon ourselves in the present or to consider not only our future but also our children's future and their children's future. The basic concept behind this report is not new. It is a notion of sustainability; the notion that we should be relying on renewable energy sources and that we should be moving towards renewable energy sources.
Madam Speaker, at this point I would like to offer the thanks of the committee and my personal thanks to Mr Bill Symington, the secretary of the committee, for his constant support and hard work; to members of the public who gave their time and presented submissions to us; and in particular in this case to the public servants and those from ACTEW who gave us a tremendous insight into what they are already doing and into how open they are to debate and discussion on these issues.
I think it was very refreshing for members of the committee to realise that the public servants were very keen to work with us, and for us to work with them in trying to put into the public arena a series of ideas that need to be considered and discussed. Those ideas have been presented in this report as both medium-term concepts and long-term concepts. One might well ask why we do not have anything to do right now. I guess the answer to that is that we are not going to solve any of the problems tomorrow. Things that can be done right now are being done by ACTEW. I think that is a quite positive comment on that organisation and it is appropriate that it should be made now.
I would also like to thank the deputy chair of the committee, Annette Ellis, and Lou Westende for their contribution and efforts in putting this together. It would be remiss of me not to refer also to the original solar energy and solar cogeneration of electricity discussion paper which probably should be read in conjunction with this final report of the committee on this issue. In doing so, I thank the members of the committee that put that discussion paper together. It includes current members - Mr Humphries and Mrs Grassby - and previous Assembly members - Mr Jensen and Mr Collaery.
The recommendations, divided into long-term and medium-term, can be found quite early in the report, and I think that they speak for themselves. I would like this morning, Madam Speaker, to run through some of the issues that we have dealt with in terms of possible renewable resources as far as electricity goes. The first and most important is one that exists at the moment, hydro-electricity. The ACT gets a fair proportion of its electricity from this source. Along with hydro-electricity, we have dealt with the concept of cogeneration of electricity,
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