Page 2342 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
… the territory’s bold 100 per cent renewable energy target … is poised to deliver massive savings to consumers in the nation’s capital.
Indeed, if current wholesale electricity prices continue as they are across Australia, the ACT will not just have zero emissions electricity by 2020, it may also be getting most of it for free.
It goes on to say:
This extraordinary situation arises out of the nature of the contracts that the ACT government has written with the project developers who have won its unique reverse auction tenders.
It goes on to quite a bit of technical detail, but I have pulled out the salient parts for members today to try to keep it brief. It says:
The ACT has locked in fixed prices at between $77/MWh and $92/MWh for a total of 400MW of wind energy capacity so far. If the wholesale price is below those contracts, the ACT government pays the difference. If it is above, the ACT electricity utility ActewAGL receives the excess.
In the past two months, wholesale prices across Australia have gone through the roof, mostly because of soaring gas prices (at record levels in most states), and supply constraints. Some of these rises have already been passed on to consumers.
The article talks about the fact that we have seen wholesale prices of up to $247 a megawatt hour, and consistently over $100 a megawatt hour. It concludes with the key point where it says:
ACT consumers will thus be protected from having to pay for extremely high wholesale prices because of the hedging provided by the renewable electricity contracts for difference.
By 2020, the ACT government’s policy will mean that electricity prices in the Territory are much more stable and predictable than anywhere else in Australia.
That is ironic, really. We received a lot of flak from the Liberal Party for passing the large-scale feed-in tariff bill back at the end of 2011. I would like to take the opportunity to quote from Zed Seselja’s remarks on that bill. He said:
The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this bill today. This bill does not support the economic development of the ACT; it does not support the families of the ACT; it does not support the environment or reduce emissions.
He went on to say:
There is the potential under this bill that not one dollar is spent here in the ACT, not one job is created and not one industry attracted.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video