Page 1901 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR SPEAKER: The clock will show 7½ minutes.
DR FOSKEY: Thank you. In the ACT, the scope of an EIS needs to be brought into the age of climate change awareness. It is clear that climate change implications have to be part of any contemporary EIS. Oddly enough, the plume study consultants threw in a bit of climate change analysis as well, but this appears to have been unread by the project spruikers. I have some excerpts in my speech from the PAE document. It is available on the web, I believe. It talks up the cogeneration and the resultant reduction in power. We applaud this, but why was it not used to sell the project?
Hugh Sadler, who is a man who knows a lot about energy, rang the ABC a few weeks ago to make precisely this point. He said that ActewAGL had been incompetent in the way they had gone about selling and “telling” the larger project because cogeneration is a win-win story. Not only does it make sense; so does covering acres of roofs with solar panels and taking advantage of the generous feed-in laws that we might be passing today, offsetting 337 tonnes—I think I must have that wrong—of greenhouse gases, gaining credit in the emissions market. Reading the PAE study does show that the Belconnen coal-powered and diesel-backed-up data centre cancels out—and then some—any climate change benefits that will be gained on the Hume site.
Do not boast about a coal-fired data centre. It is contradictory and it does not make sense. If ActewAGL, whose business is energy, could not seize this opportunity to gather the maximum amount of renewable energy and low carbon energy from the project without compromising the health of ACT residents, to give the ACT an independent source of power if we are cut off from the New South Wales grid, it is not a responsible corporate citizen in this climate-challenged world.
The ACT government seems to have forgotten its greenhouse strategy and reduced its hope of achieving even its own weak emissions target of 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050, by not requiring a climate change assessment of the gas-fired power plant and data centres. It is an equation. If we are going to produce more greenhouse gases in one activity, we have to reduce it in others. Instead, our government is talking about energy-intensive water recycling and other projects.
The minister for economic development is also minister for the environment. I have yet to see him take off his economically approving hat and don his environmentally responsible cap to consider the impacts of a great big building with 300 workers arriving every day, emitting nitrous oxide and making noise at some level 24 hours a day. I would not have been alone in applauding the minister for the environment if he or the Minister for Planning had announced that an EIS was being conducted. These are all points made in the ACTPLA assessment of the PA.
The minister for the environment is also the minister for climate change, energy and water. The data centre project uses a huge amount of energy—up there with aluminium smelters—and quite a lot of water. We have been calling for an energy plan and an energy policy for a long time. We are yet to see an energy policy. We need to see a plan for transition to a low carbon capital. It is the least that Canberra people can expect from their government.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .