Page 5558 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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The ACT Government should be congratulated for being the only Australian state or territory to put in place gross feed-in tariffs.
He went on to say:
Woolworths is committed to significantly reducing its carbon emissions and so we welcome the ACT’s decision to back commercially viable, on-site renewable energy generation. This is the type of policy framework which other states could introduce to drive the necessary incentives for businesses to have commercial-scale installations.
What a strong endorsement from a leading corporate player in Australia about the policy settings of this Labor government to encourage clean energy for the future. Woolworths intends to place two large-scale solar arrays on its petrol stations in Belconnen and Hume. They will both be 30-kilowatt capacity solar arrays, generating as much as 42,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy a year between the two service stations. That will cover approximately 15 per cent of the demand for those stations.
This is a very pleasing development. I encourage other commercial businesses in the territory who are looking to offset and replace their reliance on fossil fuels to look at the feed-in tariff as a real opportunity to create that and to drive that. I welcome Woolworths’ announcement last week.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Le Couteur?
MS LE COUTEUR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, you mentioned that 30 kilowatts is effectively the limit for the feed-in tariff at present. When will the government do the work to extend the feed-in tariff beyond 30 kilowatts, particularly bearing in mind that inhabitants of bodies corporate are, under the current regulation, forced to have their systems amalgamated so are not in a position to put in smaller individual systems?
MR CORBELL: I will be releasing this month a discussion paper on options to expand the feed-in tariff regime. A broad range of issues will be looked at as part of that discussion paper. That includes some of these issues around bodies corporate or unit title premises there and also issues in relation to the overall cap size that we have at the moment and opportunities to expand the regime to large-scale generation capacity.
MR SPEAKER: Supplementary question?
MR HARGREAVES: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I can just almost hear myself think. My supplementary question to the minister is this: would you please outline the current and predicted generating capacity provided by solar generation in the ACT, and for those opposite, even if their solar-powered lights go on, will there be anyone at home?
MR CORBELL: I do not know whether anyone is at home on the other side of the chamber. But in relation to generating capacity, as at 30 November this year there is
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