Page 5994 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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region in effective ways. I do not think we need to be unnecessarily parochial here; I think we can accurately recognise that we live in a region.
I find Mr Seselja’s concerns about sending the economic benefit elsewhere convenient for the purposes of the argument. Our current electricity comes from the La Trobe or Hunter valleys, but we seem quite comfortable purchasing energy from there and shipping that economic benefit off to some far distant place in Australia. I am afraid that I have not spent time on Google Maps to come up with the number of kilometres or apparent travel time to get there. Suffice it to say that that economic benefit is being shipped somewhere else. The argument really does not stand a lot of stead in this context.
I also wanted to talk about the change from two megawatts to 200 kilowatts. I think this is a good change. It allows for greater flexibility and diversity when it comes to the sorts of installations that can come in under this legislation. It also allows for a diversity of participants. There is no doubt that there are some very large players keen to invest in the ACT in this program. But at the same time there are some smaller and growing developers and investors who would like to participate but are not ready to do something such as a 20-megawatt system or a 10-megawatt system. Having the capacity to have that flexibility in the way the entitlements are allocated is a welcome part of the scheme.
As I said in the in-principle debate the other day, I think we also want to ensure that we make the best use of the roof space in the ACT. The larger installations in the 20-megawatt and 10-megawatt size range are going to be land based. Land-based systems are recognised to be more expensive in some senses than a roof-based system, because you have got to lease the land. They are also more efficient in other ways. But land is valuable in the ACT, so we also want to make sure that we have the incentives in place to make the most of those many rooftops in the ACT that could be taken advantage of.
In discussing this with the minister and the directorate over the last week or so, we have taken on board the concerns that have been expressed. I welcome the commitment from the minister to undertake the independent assessment of the impacts on the grid of a reduction of thresholds with this down to a 200-kilowatt system. I am not convinced that it is as big a problem as is feared, but I do not claim to be an absolute expert in this.
There are varying views on this. I know, for example, that there is a conference taking place in Melbourne today to discuss exactly this matter with distribution companies across the country. There is a recognition that changes will need to be made to the grid in order to facilitate this. There is a clear benefit in diversification and decentralisation of power supplies. The work does need to be done to ensure that we can allow for this to happen and consider perhaps what upgrades to the grid might be necessary in order to allow for those different means to generate power.
The minister touched on the fact that the draft disallowable instrument which came from the first legislation stands. The Greens agree with that. Given that it has been made clear that this first tranche will be a minimum of two megawatts, we support
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