Page 488 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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partnerships that will develop and further strengthen the capacity and the global recognition of our tertiary institutions; and growing the local corporate footprint of national and international renewable energy businesses.
In the immediate term, and in particular having regard to the announcements made by the government last week about the deployment of large-scale wind as part of our 90 per cent renewable energy target, all parties that submit proposals through this auction process will have to set out how their projects contribute to the priorities that I have just mentioned, and their proposals will be closely evaluated and scored in regard to these matters as well as the others set out in the auction documents.
The bottom line is that all proposals for feed-in tariff support for large-scale renewables will be required to demonstrate and compete on the basis of what local economic development benefits they bring to the ACT. They may be in the form of using local contractors, setting up local offices, or investing in research partnerships or our trades training capacity.
Whatever it may be, the framework is built around a vision of how Canberra can be an internationally recognised centre for renewable energy innovation and investment. The priorities in the framework build on our strengths as a strong and forward looking knowledge economy. The framework also seeks to nurture and grow the capacity of our renewable energy industries to take advantage of the enormous level of investment that is occurring globally in this sector. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has projected that the expected level of investment in the industry globally over the next 20 years is expected to exceed $US7 trillion. This highlights the very significant level of investment that is occurring globally and the importance of the ACT sharing in some of that growth.
Through the application of the framework in the wind auction and beyond, the government expects to see more local trade jobs and more companies transferring their design, logistics or corporate functions to Canberra. We expect also to see new research and development partnerships formed here, generating local intellectual capacity and property which can then be exported to global markets. This all contributes to the government’s plans to diversify the ACT economy and support new avenues for sustainable economic growth.
Renewable energy projects create jobs not just in the short term but in the long term. For example, right now there are approximately 100 people working on the Royalla solar farm project, with more working in design, engineering, research and development. We know that wind projects typically employ one person per four megawatts during operation, and many more during the construction phase. Capital expenditure is around $1 million per megawatt of capacity. So the government’s policy settings on large-scale renewable energy investment will create jobs—jobs in construction, maintenance, research and development, logistics, sales marketing and corporate functions. All of these will provide support to our local economy and the economy of the surrounding region.
A great example of how this is already starting to happen is the recently announced windscape institute announced by the ACT start-up Windlab. Windlab were winners
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