Page 2388 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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The auction will result in renewable energy infrastructure that will significantly contribute to the territory’s greenhouse gas abatement targets, reducing our emissions by 850,000 tonnes over 20 years, and these investments will enhance the clean energy industry in the ACT. This is abatement above and beyond the national emissions reduction effort. The auction leverages economies of scale and location, provides financial security for developers and reduces the overall costs of solar energy.
In developing this policy, the government has reviewed and considered best practice internationally and learned from past approaches, some of which have been less than successful, including the commonwealth’s solar flagship program and our own solar farm expression of interest process in 2009.
We now have a situation where the nation and the world are looking to the ACT for a new best practice model. This is reflected in the extraordinary level of interest by industry both nationally and internationally in our process and the strong support we have received for our approach from industry and industry commentators.
The government has committed to sharing outcomes from the policy with industry to an unprecedented extent. In accordance with section 22 of the Renewable Energy Feed-in (Large-scale Generation) Act, the government will table a review in the Assembly, including a range of key performance indicators that will be valued highly by industry and policymakers both in Australia and abroad, such as total proposal costs and feed-in tariff values sought, and a summary of major project cost components so that the government can look at ways to bring this down further in the future.
In addition, the independent advisory panel which has been appointed to advise the government on proposals has also been asked to advise on potential improvements that may be made to future auction processes. I look forward to these recommendations as well as providing further updates to the Assembly on the outcomes of the auction process in the coming months.
The government is also committed to showing leadership on climate change mitigation through its own actions and for its own operations. The government is currently considering options to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020 in its own operations. The framework for carbon neutrality under consideration provides for the long-term, systemic approach needed to tackle energy price rises and drive down emissions.
The government has already invested in a new sustainability data management system, or SDMS, a best practice, whole-of-government platform to improve resource management and reduce energy and other utility costs. This will provide a consistent benchmark against which to measure our progress.
A key lesson learned from many program evaluations and industry studies is that a lack of quality performance data holds organisations back in their quest to reduce energy costs and emissions, and historically this has been an issue for governments also. With the government’s investment in an SDMS coming online later this year, we
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