Page 1669 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2016
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both behind the metre and on the network, and the country that could define how storage is more widely implemented. That is due to our huge rates of penetration of rooftop solar.
To illustrate the opportunities, investment bank Morgan Stanley has forecast the home battery storage market in Australia could be worth $24 million, with half of all households likely to install batteries to store the output from their solar panels. It also forecasts around 2.4 million households in the national electricity market will have solar by 2020, more than double the 1.1 million households that already have solar in the NEM.
In addition, with an ageing fleet of fossil fuel generators and excess capacity due for retirement, storage will be key to ensuring the reliability of the NEM into the future. This government is positioning the ACT to capitalise on its imminent investment boom. Already more than 10 per cent of households in the ACT have rooftop solar. That is 15,000 houses. In combination with our policy initiatives, this positions the ACT to take advantage of rapidly emerging technologies, such as electronic vehicles and low cost storage.
The ACT has taken the national lead in filling the policy vacuum left by the federal government by providing a stable political and investment environment for renewable energy technology and the supporting industry. Other states are now recognising the benefits being accrued by the ACT and are following our lead. This is why we are still in a prime position to act and act swiftly to achieve 100 per cent renewables. We have first-mover advantage on the renewables market, but for how much longer is uncertain.
The ACT leads the way in responding to this challenge, and we will continue to do so as long as we grow a sustainable, diversified and increasingly resilient economy as well as a secure energy system while combating carbon emissions and climate change.
The government is attracting significant local investment that is positioning the ACT economy as an innovation and investment hub for renewable energy in Australia. With this bill we confirm our leadership position in this field through enhanced target setting and by progressing low cost renewables for our city. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (6.03): I intend to keep my remarks short, given the lateness of the hour, but I am very pleased to be debating the Renewable Energy Legislation Amendment Bill 2016 which seeks to increase the ACT’s renewable energy target to 100 per cent by 2020 and bring forward the ACT’s long-term climate change target of net zero emissions from 2060 to 2050.
The moral argument for action on climate change is just as relevant for this bill as it was for the Greens and the ALP supporting a 40 per cent target for the ACT when we first passed the climate change bill in 2010. There have been many scientific studies since that time which show an increasing rate of impacts of climate change on this planet. I could go into some detail of those studies. Many of them have been in the media in recent times. Certainly the one that particularly struck me in the last week was the extraordinary graph of the Greenland ice sheet melt happening so much earlier than it ever has before.
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