Expansion of scheme to deliver more renewable energy

The Federal Government is massively expanding a tax-payer funded scheme to subsidise and underwrite new renewable energy projects.

Transcript

00:00 Well, the government says that this investment will put Australia back on track to hit its

00:07 target of 82 per cent of power coming from renewable energy sources in the year 2030.

00:15 The progress towards reaching that target has been slow, with the share of renewables

00:21 growing by around 4 per cent each year, currently at around 35 per cent of the nation's energy

00:27 mix.

00:28 Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has acknowledged that a more concerted effort is needed to

00:34 transform the energy grid and has today announced a massive expansion of what's known as the

00:39 Capacity Investment Scheme.

00:42 It's a program that allows the Commonwealth to subsidise and underwrite new clean energy

00:49 projects, removing some of the risk for investors.

00:54 The expanded scheme will cover and support wind, solar, battery and pumped hydro projects.

01:02 Chris Bowen says that the biggest threat to energy reliability in Australia is the nation's

01:09 ageing coal-fired power stations.

01:11 He says that this additional investment will improve reliability and speed up the transition

01:17 towards renewables.

01:20 We know that after the last 10 years, we saw 4 gigawatts of dispatchable energy leave the

01:25 grid under the Liberal Party and only 1 gigawatt come on.

01:28 And that situation needs to change.

01:30 So today, I'm announcing that we are expanding the so far successful Capacity Investment

01:36 Scheme to cover 32 gigawatts of new energy, bringing forward investment in energy, in

01:43 renewable energy, which we know is the cheapest form of energy and is also very important

01:48 to reducing our emissions across Australia.

01:51 This will see Australia get to our target of 82% renewable energy.

01:56 The initial aim of this scheme was to drive investment in 6 gigawatts of clean energy

02:02 projects as we heard from the Minister just there.

02:05 That's now been expanded to 32 gigawatts.

02:09 The Government hasn't said how much this expanded scheme will cost taxpayers, with the Minister

02:16 arguing that because the scheme is run as an auction, essentially by showing their hand

02:23 or by stating how much the Government might be willing to put towards projects, that would

02:27 not give taxpayers the best bang for their buck.

02:31 The announcement that the Government has made today has been welcomed by climate groups,

02:36 including the Climate Council and the Australian Conservation Foundation, but has drawn criticism

02:42 from the Nationals who say that it will have damaging consequences for regional Australia.

02:49 The leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, in a statement says that it will also destroy

02:55 agricultural land and has questioned what impact it will have on cost of living prices.

03:01 Noor, thank you.

03:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]