Page 1125 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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renewable energy; the opportunity is also there in terms of economic diversification, creating a green collar industry in our city and establishing the city as a leader, as the solar capital. That very much is the government’s view.
The government has supported this legislation from day one, and worked with the Labor MLA who introduced it, Mick Gentleman, to get it to this point. But this is a complex scheme and it has long-term impacts. It may be attractive to move an amendment at this point to say, “Well, if you don’t get on with it, it is going to be 0.75 of the premium rate from 1 July.” But you are talking about that policy being in place for 20 years.
It is the government’s view that we really do need to make sure that we as an Assembly and as a community understand costs and benefits before we expand the use of the tariff to larger scale generation. I am supportive of expanding it to larger scale generation, but I want to have a robust analysis to back up that decision. Without that, there will not be support for this scheme moving forward, and that is what is important. That is what is important—a well-argued, well-reasoned assessment of expanding this scheme beyond the existing cap as proposed in this bill.
There are a range of issues that should be considered. The bringing forward of the implementation date for the feed-in tariff act by four months as a consequence of the agreement entered into between the Labor Party and the Greens means that a range of other work that could have looked at large-scale generation could not occur. That is not a critique; that is just a fact. We also know that there are other issues at play. Commonwealth reforms to the mandatory renewable energy target are still in play. The implementation of their solar rebate scheme is still in play. We need to understand the impacts of those measures as well.
As I have said, stage 2 will allow for the introduction of the tariff for larger scale generation. There are a range of issues that will need to be considered before stage 2 can commence. Obviously, financial impact on electricity consumers is a significant factor, but there are also other issues, such as the appropriate premium price percentage to apply, different scales of generation and the possible introduction of whole-of-scheme or annual augmentation limits. They all need consideration. These are all policy options that have been used in other jurisdictions and internationally, and they are issues that we will need to consider further here.
All of the government’s modelling of impacts on ACT households has been done on the basis of the cap as proposed in the bill. The removal of that cap or the proposal to remove that cap without solid data and further, more detailed modelling is, as I have said, reckless and could lead to significant cost imposts on the community.
Let me just give some facts and figures here. For a single kilowatt installed by a householder, the cost across the community will be about $1,074 per annum: across the community, not per householder. A kilowatt installed at an above 30 kilowatt site would cost about $805. However, this differential becomes critical when it is understood that industry does not install single kilowatt systems. Industry has previously discussed the minimum installation of one megawatt—1,000 kilowatts. That would impose an annual whole-of-community cost of $805,000 per annum. The
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