Page 5679 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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I thought one of the most interesting analyses was around the situation in the developed world. Of course the developing world’s emissions have increased quite substantially as well but they found in the developed world carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1.3 per cent in 2008, then fell again by 7.6 per cent in 2009 but then rose again by 3.4 per cent in 2010. And that clearly points to what has been known to be the effect of the global financial crisis and the impact it has had on developed economies particularly in those couple of years.
What was interesting was that in 2009 global emissions fell by 7.6 per cent but when you go to the ACT’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory our emissions increased by 1.3 per cent in 2009. So at a time when the global economy was experiencing a significant slowdown the ACT’s emissions continued to rise. I think that underlines the challenge that the ACT faces in turning our emissions around. And I think that is a really important context for this legislation.
I think Mr Seselja’s entirely ideological speech reflects a failure to accept that very basic science. It was almost as though he said, “Frankly, we should be doing nothing,” and the way he spoke in a broader sense about the ACT’s efforts to turn its emissions speaks to that and, I think, ignores that global scientific consensus and that global scientific reality of the things that we need to do.
The other context I think for this legislation is the tremendous success of the small and medium-scale feed-in tariff scheme. What we now have in the ACT, and is in the process of being installed, is 30 megawatts of installed clean energy generation capacity. That has leveraged private investment from across the community, private investment that has been put on the table to deliver a community good. We have done that in an average pass-through cost of just $27 a year for the average household, somewhere in the region of just over 50c a week.
We have created jobs through that scheme. We have driven innovation and efficiency. And that efficiency has particularly been evidenced by the drop in cost which we saw towards the end of the feed-in tariff scheme where the installers were basically saying that when the scheme started off it took a feed-in tariff of around 50c a kilowatt hour to make the systems viable but, by the end, the installers were arguing to members of the Assembly—and I hear they argued to all the parties in this place—that a feed-in tariff of 25c a kilowatt hour would in fact make the continued installation of systems viable. So that is half of what the feed-in tariff started off at and, I think, underlines the efficiencies that were derived by the industry in the ACT as they increased their capability and increased their expertise. It was obviously also assisted by the federal scheme and the very significant increase in production. But all of these things go together as part of building an industry and building a new way of generating our energy supplies.
I think all of those points that I have just made underline the fact that I believe the small-scale feed-in tariff scheme was particularly successful. I think there were some problems with it in the end. Certainly the federal government’s alteration of the multiplier had a significant effect of accelerating the scheme in the ACT and I think this was exacerbated by the fact that when the ICRC recommended a drop in the feed-in tariff the minister declined to follow that advice. And I think that was unfortunate. I
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