ENERGY MOTION
Second Reading
Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 14 March 2024]
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Hon Dan Caddy; Hon Darren West; Hon Stephen Pratt; Hon Shelley Payne; Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Kyle McGinn; Hon Dr Brad Pettitt
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done towards developing their planning policies and a lot of these big projects. Narrogin, for example, probably has $2 billion worth of renewable energy projects in the pipeline, and it has shown that it can really be a potential hub for the future clean and renewable energy industry. There is a $500 million solar project. There are two wind energy projects worth $800 million and $500 million, as well as a big $250 million biodiesel plant. All these projects together are really going to be a good boost to regional places like Narrogin. We are working right now to look at how we can accommodate some of the construction camps required for these big projects and how local governments can retain a legacy from these construction projects for which a lot of this development is happening. It is not up north, where there are remote places with mine sites. There are a lot of towns around the sites of these construction activities where we can accommodate people. These towns should be able to get a legacy out of some of the construction that will happen to accommodate these construction workers, as well as the housing required for people to be in the towns to run this renewable infrastructure. I think we will get some really good outcomes.
We talk about energy security, and I want to mention the government’s investment in and commitment to our electric vehicle charging network with the move to these vehicles. Our EV network is the longest in Australia and one of the largest in the world. We have committed to 98 charging stations across 49 locations, covering 7 000 kilometres from Kununurra to Esperance. I commend the government. We are halfway through that process now; we have reached the halfway mark. Esperance has its four great new charging systems where people can fast charge in 20 minutes. People with electric vehicles can now have confidence that they can make it all the way down to Esperance, as there are many places such as Ravensthorpe, Jerramungup and Lake Grace where vehicles can be charged quickly. I commend the government for that and the policy it has developed to support electric vehicle infrastructure to make sure planning is done well and considers EV needs in all our new development projects moving forward. We are making sure we take a coordinated and streamlined approach to the approval of EV charging
infrastructure, which will be very crucial for the future.
I also want to say how great it is that all our central area transit buses are transitioning to electric and that we have a commitment towards electric bus charging stations. We have engaged JET Charge through a contract worth $1.65 million to build this electric charging infrastructure. It will be very exciting when the first new electric CAT bus starts this year. I feel very good about that.
I do not have that much longer to go, so I want to talk about our big investment in clean energy, and part of this is what Hon Dan Caddy talked about. There is $3 billion in our state budget to help transition our energy system to a low-carbon future. Of that, $700 million will go towards the south west interconnected system. These upgrades that will happen are really important. I talked about the huge number of wind farm development proposals around Collie to help us with our energy transition. I commend the government on establishing PoweringWA, which will coordinate the delivery of the new electricity infrastructure at the pace needed for our decarbonisation. This is really great. The government is really getting on with positioning Western Australia as a clean energy powerhouse. Earlier this month we announced that we are proposing a new clean energy centre of national excellence here, which is fantastic. It will help with our energy transition and skills development and will make sure we have people trained and ready to help with this big transition. It is expected to be worth in the vicinity of $200 billion and generate around 350 000 jobs between 2025 and 2050.
I think members all remember the WA Energy Transition Summit we had just before Christmas. Again, that was another great initiative of our government and brought together key players to discuss WA’s role in our energy transition.
The last thing I want to mention is our investment attraction fund, which is open now. We are putting $60 million into a new industries energies funding scheme to basically drive investment into new energy projects. That expression of interest is open now. There is funding for projects for batteries, critical minerals processing, renewable hydrogen and advanced manufacturing in wind and solar, along with carbon capture and new storage. If members know any businesses out there that can apply for this, there is $60 million available. I commend the government on all its great initiatives.
HON DR STEVE THOMAS (South West) [12.08 pm]: It seems like it is an energy day. Let us make it a high-energy day! A number of things have been said. This motion concentrates on batteries and battery storage, so I propose to spend most of my time dealing with that issue, but I am happy to diverge to other issues as we get the opportunity. The government has invested more in battery storage, which is a good thing. I have said repeatedly that my policy around energy is that we need to transition to a lower emissions future, as I think everybody agrees. I have committed personally to the target of net carbon neutral by 2050, as has the federal opposition and just about everybody else. I think that we are well down that path. The question we are debating is how we get there and how we deliver this. The government’s current plan has problems. It has insufficient generation, not enough distribution and not enough storage in its plan. Those three components of the transition are well underfunded and wholly inadequate.
Let us look at batteries, because I want to focus on this for a bit. The government has said that it will ultimately expand its battery storage. There is currently 200 megawatt hours in Kwinana big battery 1, 800 megawatt hours
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Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 14 March 2024]
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Hon Dan Caddy; Hon Darren West; Hon Stephen Pratt; Hon Shelley Payne; Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Kyle McGinn; Hon Dr Brad Pettitt
will be added with Kwinana big battery 2 and 2 000 megawatt hours with the Collie big battery system. There will be 3 000 megawatt hours. Hon Dan Caddy used the measure for big battery 1 at Kwinana at 160 000 hours for two hours. We have to be careful about its numbers, because it obviously takes a fairly optimistic view on how many hours there are. With 200 megawatt hours at Kwinana battery 1, 800 at Kwinana battery 2 and 2 000 at Collie, it has 3 000 megawatt hours. At about 7.30 on Thursday night, which was not a hot night, consumption was 2 900 megawatt hours. If we have no other energy generation, we will have enough to run the south west interconnected system for an hour and then everything, including the lights, will go out. Obviously, that is not how the government intends that to happen.
When we look at other generations, we see that we have coal, gas and renewable generation. On a relatively still night, we are generating almost zero renewables. Not zero, but not very much. As the 900 or so megawatts of coal-fired generation will be closed down by the end of 2029, we will be relying on gas for what we used to call base load, which is now called dispatchable energy. We can get up to 2 000 megawatts of gas, but if there is
a disruption to that, we will have a real problem on our hands, particularly once the government closes down those coal-fired power stations. With some maintenance, 1 800 to 2 000 megawatts can be pumped out every hour with the rest of the gas units going. Some of those will expire in the not-too-distant future. If we need 3 000 megawatts of additional energy on top of our gas supply, its 3 000 megawatt hours will give us another three hours. We will have to start having brownouts and blackouts three hours down the track. The simple issue is that the government has some options that it needs to face. Its current plan is completely inadequate, and I think Hon Dr Brad Pettitt will say something quite similar. The current plan is inadequate. If it is only going to have 3 000 megawatt hours of battery storage, it will need a massive increase in generation capacity of maybe ten-fold. Wind-generated power will add only 410 megawatt hours. I would be interested to see whether the government privatises that like it privatised the previous wind generation, but let us see. It will probably need 10 times that amount, with 4 000 megawatt hours of wind to get even close to the delivery of a reliable system by the end of 2029. We are not even close to that.
At estimates yesterday, which Hon Dan Caddy was at, on distribution I questioned the 4 000 kilometres that was originally put out in the whole-of-system plan for energy, and the answer was that it does not really know. We will do the work. If it is 4 000 kilometres, at between $2 million and $8 million a kilometre, that is another $8 billion to $10 billion that is completely unfunded at this point, because as we heard yesterday, the $3 billion from the federal government is going mostly into the north west interconnected system. The government has insufficient generation and massively insufficient storage. I want to make some of these comments around Collie in particular.
I knew the previous member for Collie–Preston, Hon Mick Murray, who was a champion for the coal industry in Collie. He walked into Parliament with a wheelbarrow full of coal, as I remember. The current member for Collie–Preston, Jodie Hanns, appears to be completely lost. She is not a champion for the coal industry, not even really a champion for Collie. The coal industry has been abandoned in Collie, and the transition plan is not working. She is asleep at the wheel because the transition plan is not working and the people of Collie understand that. The transition plan is not working. The government is shutting down coal in Collie. Yes, it is building a 2 000 megawatt hour big battery in Collie. That is a part of this transition, which we all need to embrace. Well done; it is building big batteries. Congratulations. But it is absolutely not replacing jobs in Collie. Once that big battery is built, almost no jobs will be associated with it and it will largely be remotely run and monitored from Perth. Who is building it? Who is going to manage it and monitor it? It will come out of Perth, so almost no jobs will go back into Collie. It is a tough transition. The government’s current time frames do not work and Collie is the victim of that.
It gets worse than that. I think Hon Dan Caddy said that the government is investing billions of dollars into this transition and it is and that is well done. It is putting a quarter of a billion dollars into a subsidy into Griffin Coal Mining Company to subsidise the fact that it does not want to increase the price, because it has a problem in Collie, a problem in the coalfields and it does not want it to fix it.
Hon Dan Caddy interjected.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: A nuclear plan? That is very good. He raised nuclear plans. Hon Darren West said earlier that there are no small modular reactors.
Hon Kyle McGinn interjected.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: I am coming to the answer, I do not have a lot of time, Hon Kyle McGinn.
The issue about small modular reactors is that no commercial ones are available at the moment. The first one is being trialled in Canada. I have said repeatedly, publicly and I will say it again: any new nuclear reactor in Western Australia will need to be of a size to fit into the Western Australian marketplace, which will need to be around 300 megawatts, which is the size of the largest of the coal units, the Collie coal unit. We would not want to make it any bigger than that, because when it goes out, we would have a problem. The currently economically viable power stations are, in my view, 2 000 megawatts-plus. We might get down to 1 000 megawatts, and again,
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Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 14 March 2024]
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Hon Dan Caddy; Hon Darren West; Hon Stephen Pratt; Hon Shelley Payne; Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Kyle McGinn; Hon Dr Brad Pettitt
a couple of those are being constructed, but right now, small modular reactors are not commercially viable. They may well be in some time and the state of Western Australia should look at them if that occurs.
What will happen is that the Labor Party will close down all coal-fired generation. It seems to be absolutely attacking and undermining the privately owned Bluewaters’ coal stations as well. It is refusing to allow it to even tender the replacement contracts for Synergy and Western Power. I assume that this state government putting Bluewaters Power Station out of business in 2026 seems to be its plan. Again, Hon Dan Caddy was at estimates yesterday when Synergy said precisely that. It expects it to be gone by 2026–27. With the active government campaign to get rid of it, it will probably be successful. All of that coal getting removed will be gone. A replacement in nuclear will take 10 to 20 years at the very least.
Hon Kyle McGinn: When does the Liberal Party want to close Collie?
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS:I am on the record in my opinions on the 2021 policy—that policy does not exist anymore. Hon Kyle McGinn interjected.
The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon Steve Martin): Members! Thank you.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: There will be no immediate nuclear power station in Collie, but there will need to be a massive increase in investment by this government in generation and storage. Well done—it has 3 000 megawatt hours on the books. It will either need 10 times as much generation from wind and solar or it will need 10 times as much storage and it will need to increase its distribution network, all of which in my view is at least a $15 billion exercise that it has not funded. Before the government starts congratulating itself on its transition, its members need to understand and admit that its current transition plan does not work and will not work.
HON KYLE McGINN (Mining and Pastoral — Parliamentary Secretary) [12.18 pm]: It is good to hear the word “transition” from the opposition, because in 2021 I did not hear that word as part of the Liberal Party policy for what it wanted to do with Collie at the time, which was to shut the door and walk away. Was that the policy? That is how it was put across by the opposition. I think the leader at the time, Zac Kirkup, wanted to close the door and walk away instead of having a just transition. Let us be honest.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas interjected.
Hon KYLE McGINN: That is fine. Hon Dr Steve Thomas has always spoken his mind, and good on him, but the party that he is a part of wanted to close the door and walk away. The party that I am a part of has been transitioning and working with the town to make sure that there is a future, and I am very, very proud of that. I could get stuck into that one, but I will briefly talk about a great project that I had the pleasure of going out to yesterday, and that is the Bellevue Gold project. This is a really great story that sits in line with the motion today, which I thank Hon Dan Caddy for bringing to the house. This project is north of Leinster where Bellevue has been doing a lot of work. The mine site that it has now reopened originally started mining in 1900 then closed in 1996. Bellevue did
a fair bit of work to resurvey it to see whether there was still gold in the area. It turns out—using the exploration incentive scheme, which is a fantastic scheme—that it discovered three pockets of gold between 2017 and 2019. It has now got over $252 million worth of investment to restart the mine.
The reason I am bringing this up during this debate is that Bellevue Gold is also trying to achieve a couple of really good things. The first thing is the way Bellevue has worked very closely with the Tjiwarl Aboriginal Corporation has been fantastic. Colleen was out there yesterday doing a welcome to country. It was amazing to see that there was genuine engagement with the First Nation people of the land, and that there is a future out there for them to protect their land. The second thing is that Bellevue has a target to have net zero emissions on the mine site by 2026. It has a target to create “green gold”. Bellevue wants to be running off the grid with net zero emissions by 2026, and it is on target to do that. Running completely off the grid is something that should be commended.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: What is their demand? What is their total energy use?
Hon KYLE McGINN: I do not know off the top of my head. If I find out, I will let the member know. But Bellevue is a decent-sized mine; I can say that. Yesterday there was a fair bit going on. But basically it is looking to produce 1.8 million ounces of gold over the initial 10 years of the mine, with a mineral resource of 3.1 million ounces at 9.9 grams a tonne, which is pretty impressive. This is a great story in respect of going back to somewhere that was explored so long ago and utilising the exploration incentive scheme process to create 230 jobs, which is fantastic. Bellevue aims to be net zero, as I said, by 2026 and have the lowest greenhouse gas intensity of any major gold project. This will allow the company to market what it is going to call “green gold”. People are starting to wonder where things come from and there seems to be a bit more of a price tag sometimes on creating a new market, and Bellevue has really focused on saying that it wants to be leading the world on green gold. I think it is very admirable. Darren took us out there yesterday and when he got up and opened the mine, he thanked every single person involved