The Goulburn Post asked Community Energy for Goulburn (CE4G) where projects like our community-owned solar farm fits within the recent proclaimed Federal Energy or Climate Policies.
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This month CE4G announced the opportunity to purchase shares in Goulburn's own 100 per cent renewable energy power station:
- By July 2021, supported by a grant from the NSW Government via the Regional Community Energy Fund, CE4G will have built a 1.8MW DC community-owned proven technology solar farm backed by proven technology battery storage.
- All residents of the Goulburn Mulwaree Council area have the opportunity to purchase shares, keeping all the profits from the solar farm within the community.
- And that's not all: a percentage of annual revenue will be placed into a Community Fund to assist those within the Goulburn community who struggle to pay their electricity bills.
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In the same month our own Federal member and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor announced a massive investment....no, not in emissions reducing renewables....but in emissions producing gas.
Angus' advisory body is the National COVID-19 Commission chaired by Neville Power, who happens to be the ex managing director and CEO of Fortescue and the current Deputy Chair of Strike Energy, a gas exploration company. No conflict of interest there?
It's now 13 years since Kevin Rudd described climate change as the "greatest moral challenge of our time". Since then we have had six Prime Ministers but not one coherent effective climate policy.
A new report by the Australia Institute shows how carbon-intensive a gas-led economy could be. It estimates that if all of the new gas projects listed by the federal government are fully progressed, they would result in an average of 332 million tonnes of CO2 being emitted each year - two thirds of our current total emissions.
The UN's Production Gap Report states our government's proposed fossil fuel projects represent "one of the world's largest fossil-fuel expansions".
The International Energy Agency, the world's leading energy analyist body, says that the world has only six months to turn around its carbon emissions if it wants to have any chance of preventing climate targets becoming out of reach. COVID-19 has reduced CO2 emissions by 17 per cent but any "snap back" will see carbon emissions rebound unless strong action is implemented.
Goulburn's power station will be 100 per cent clean and pumping nothing but profits into the local community.
- Ed Suttle
Angus should use this opportunity to lead Australia to the position of a renewable energy superpower, with regional and rural communities at the forefront of the Covid-19 recovery. He should not be initiating new gas projects, which more than often not only require fracking, but also degrade prime agricultural land.
Between now and 2030 Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations will creak towards obsolescence. This is exactly when all the affected workforce could be carefully and thoughtfully transitioned into new careers whilst Australia invests in renewables, if only we had the required leadership.
But instead Angus and our government are taking the diametrically opposite path replacing fossil fuel coal with fossil fuel gas.
And then there's Angus' Low Emissions Technology Statement under the Technology Roadmap in which he states proven technologies such as solar and wind "are not the focus". He goes on to say of the $18 billion taxpayer investment in unproven technologies including clean hydrogen and low carbon steel and aluminium "the nature of R&D portfolios is that you have to place bets. We're placing a bet on a portfolio here". We're placing a bet?
What a contrast to what Community Energy for Goulburn (CE4G) is doing.
So Goulburn's solar farm does not fit within Angus' and our Federal government's energy/climate policies: instead of following Angus by betting on new technologies and pumping more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, Goulburn's power station will be 100 per cent clean and pumping nothing but profits into the local community.
CE4G will be launching the share option at Goulburn Workers at 6pm on October 21. To register, go to the CE4G website: www.ce4g.org.au or go to this link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/investment-opportunity-goulburn-community-energy-co-operative-solar-farm-tickets-120939141227
- The views expressed herein are those of CE4G only and not representative of any other agency or government entity. Ed Suttle is vice-president of CE4G.
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