Page 4604 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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Every administration, conservative or not, and every agency or private trust I spoke to across these three nations accepted that direct government intervention was essential to produce the required outcomes. The market alone cannot and will not do so.
I was particularly interested in how this understanding impacted on the development of distributed energy generation. This is relevant because encouraging the growth of distributed energy will be a key plank of the ACT Labor government’s energy policy.
Distributed generation technologies offer the potential to make a significant contribution to energy policy goals, of tackling climate change, ensuring reliable energy supplies and providing affordable energy. Distributed energy generation is a collective term spanning a wide range of heat and electricity generation technologies which operate at a distributed scale. For example, they generate energy close to the point of use. These can include wind turbines, photovoltaic cells and combined heat and power systems which generate both electricity and heat.
In the UK I was advised of a number of detailed studies, commissioned by the Energy Savings Trust when I met its chief executive in London. A very short summary of that study shows that at 2008 fuel and technology prices, with no additional policies, community distributed energy generation could economically meet 4.3 per cent of total UK energy demands, if householders were to act collectively. This represents 13 per cent of total annual UK household energy demands.
At projected technology prices for the year 2020, with no additional policies, community distributed energy generation could economically meet 5.9 per cent of the total UK energy demand if householders were to act collectively. This relatively small increase in the economic potential suggests that technology cost reductions alone will not be sufficient to drive an increase in technology uptakes and that policy measures will be required.
Direct government intervention to drive change that in the long term is needed to ensure that such technologies will become cost-effective in the more traditional sense is appropriate. That is what we need to understand and accept here for the ACT. That is why I am particularly interested in what potential there is for site or precinct-specific combined heat power within the ACT. It is another initiative that I have instructed my department to focus on in its future policy development.
Another area of interest for members, I think, will be the UK government’s policy when it relates to climate change risk assessments. The Climate Change Act commits the UK government to carry out an assessment of the risks to the UK of climate change every five years. The first cycle is required to report to parliament by the end of January 2012.
The climate change risk assessment will provide evidence and analysis which will enable all of the UK administration to understand the level of risks, threat and opportunity posed by climate change, compare the risks of a changing climate with other pressures on the government, prioritise adaptation policy geographically and by sector, and assess the costs and benefits of adaptation actions and support the case for resources to address them.
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