I received an email from our MP of Wentworth, David Sharma on Friday, who shared with me the Governments plan to invest $1 Billion into new capital investment into Renewables.
I am encouraged by this initiative to embrace the technology available and market forces and work together with Industry, Universities and Research Institutions such as the CSIRO to making the transition to a lower carbon future, possible.

Human-induced climate change is clearly a major issue

“More Renewables in the grid requires more investment  — to keep
reliability high and prices steady given the intermittent nature of solar
and wind.” said David Sharma – MP of Wentworth.

The fund will invest in the following  eligible projects:

• energy
  storage projects including pumped hydro and batteries

• transmission
  and distribution networks

• grid
  stabilising technologies, and

• eligible
  projects shortlisted under the Underwriting New Generation
  Investments (UNGI) program.

Australia’s deployment of Solar and Wind 

It is a remarkable fact that Australia’s deployment of solar and wind
energy is happening at ten times faster than the world average. In the
first weeks of 2020, Australia will tick past 25 gigawatts of wind and
solar generation, meaning we will have joined the “kilowatt per
capita” club. Only two other countries have made it thus far:
Denmark and Germany. 

New technology, market forces and human behaviour are shifting our
emissions curve in the right direction, as a report last week from the
Australian National University makes clear. The ANU report found that
“Australia’s world-leading per-capita rate of deployment of solar and
wind energy is displacing fossil fuel combustion”, and that “continued
deployment of solar and wind at current rates allows Australia to meet
its Paris emissions target at low or zero net cost”.

 

As the ANU report outlines, the main challenge for government is to
“facilitate construction of adequate electricity transmission and storage
to allow continued rapid deployment of solar and wind”.

The Government is supporting the following initiatives in Energy Transmission and Storage :- 

• Investment in Snowy 2.0, a pumped hydro storage project that will be
  the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and which will store 350,000
  MW hours of energy.

• Investment in the building of  a second interconnecter between Victoria and Tasmania,
  better connecting Tasmania to the mainland grid and giving us access
  to its considerable pumped hydro capacity.

• Earlier this week
  the Prime Minister and NSW Premier announced a joint underwriting of the
  New South Wales – Queensland interconnector, another vital piece of
  network infrastructure which will strengthen the backbone of the national
  energy market.

• The Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, is working on a hydrogen strategy and
  advising us on how we can become a major exporter of hydrogen produced
  from renewable sources. 

Down the track, they will be looking at options
for further electrification of the economy, particularly in the transport
sector, to take greater advantage of low-emissions energy.