Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4424 ..

experimentation that is currently being undertaken by Snowy Hydro Ltd, but they have turned down that offer. The other day someone said to me, “Cloud seeding does not happen anymore. It was a failure 30 years ago.” That is far from the truth. Hydro Tasmania has been cloud seeding for 30 years. Over that time it has achieved substantial increases in rainfall in its catchment areas and, as a result, it is producing nice, clean electricity that is not generating greenhouse gases. Tasmania is no longer dependent on coal-fired power stations and it does not use coal-fired power to the extent that it is used on the mainland.

That is one of the things we should be looking at in the future. We should use this legislation to achieve a better outcome for the power industry. As I said earlier, this legislation is somewhat experimental. It is an approach that relies on financial incentives, which I think is generally better than the command and control approach. I have some difficulty assessing the strengths of incentives and relating the costs of abatement certificates or fines to income from electricity sales. There are provisions in this experimental legislation that will enable us to review it every year.

This legislation is not a complete environmental panacea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Given the cost of producing energy from renewable resources, it seems unlikely that this legislation will create a renewable energy industry ex nihilo. It is more likely that abatement certificates would be produced as a by-product of activities that would have been undertaken anyway. This legislation is not a bad thing. Activities such as greenhouse abatement would not in themselves directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions; rather, they would create a mechanism for formally documenting greenhouse abatement activities, producing a complete picture of greenhouse emissions in net terms, and raising awareness of those issues in the general community.

However, there is considerable scope for encouraging improvements in greenhouse efficiency of current industrial processes and electricity generation. Given our overwhelming reliance on coal-fired power stations, we are likely to save more greenhouse emissions from a 1 per cent to 2 per cent improvement in coal power efficiency, or cleanliness, than from a doubling of the proportion of our energy needs provided from renewable resources. Renewable energy provision is a laudable area of activity that should be encouraged. Between 90 per cent and 98 per cent of our power is generated from non-renewable sources—most of it from dirty coal resources—so the energy and effort we put into cleaning up the coal industry will repay us significantly.

I have not suggested for one moment that we should not be vigilant in the area of renewable energy, but there is some scope for cogeneration to improve the energy of houses, offices and other buildings about which I have spoken at length on a number of occasions. The marginal effect of this scheme might well make a difference, or start to make a difference, so that such activities are seen as more economic. However, there are some technical concerns. The baseline emissions rate is based on electricity consumption in New South Wales, which is lower in domestic terms than the rate in the ACT. So we have set ourselves more difficult targets than the targets that have been set in New South Wales. That will probably result in a $20 per annum increase in electricity tariffs.

Another concern that I have is whether “tonnes of carbon” is the most appropriate measure of greenhouse gas emissions. There are a variety of greenhouse gases and they all contain a degree of carbon, but a combination of some of them would be more

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .