Page 2300 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 August 2015
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The reverse auction mechanism makes sure that ACT electricity consumers get value for money and the lowest cost renewable energy at the best possible price. It ensures there is competitive tension between those renewable energy developers competing in the auction process. In our first solar auction process, we saw very competitive bids. Indeed, those bids blew away expectations by achieving a weighted average price of 18c per kilowatt hour for large-scale solar, the same price households in the ACT pay for electricity from the grid.
At the time of announcing the success of the Royalla Solar Farm proposal there was a very reputable finance journalist who wrote that the facility could not be delivered at that bid price. I am pleased to say that we have proven them wrong. Go out to Royalla today. It is on the ground, it is generating carbon-free electricity and it is delivering at the price bid.
In February this year, the government built on the success of the solar auction process by announcing the three winning proposals from the government’s 200-megawatt reverse wind auction. Those three projects, two in Victoria and one in South Australia, will deliver some of the best wind resources for the ACT community. That keeps to our commitment that large-scale renewables should be delivered at the lowest possible price for consumers. With prices as low as 8c per kilowatt hour, the wind auction has delivered record low prices for renewable energy.
This is all in marked contrast to the position of the federal Liberal government, who are doing everything possible to unwind effective action and support for the transition to renewable energy. They have wrecked national investment in renewables, but because of that we have been a beneficiary. All of a sudden the ACT has become the only game in town, and national and international renewable energy investors are taking significant interest in the ACT’s processes.
As a result, competition drove prices down and pushed up innovation. Businesses have come to our city, as they see it as a safe home for their headquarters, for investing in our research institutions as natural partners, for investing in education and trades training centres, and as an ideal base to train the next generation of renewable energy workers. And as a result we have seen the ANU establish Australia’s first wind energy masters course, attracting new national and international students to live and study in Canberra. We have seen investment in Canberra’s skills training sector, with the establishment of the national renewable energy skills centre of excellence at our very own Canberra Institute of Technology.
And local Canberra businesses are also the beneficiaries, because they are getting opportunities to tender on all the work packages, building on the significant local capacity here in Canberra in engineering, consulting and construction. The innovative Canberra-based company Windlab is directly benefiting and will continue its growth as a growing national and international player in wind energy development and resource mapping, providing asset management services across the country and around the world—all from their headquarters here in Canberra.
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