Decarbonisation – pre-panel address
Decarbonisation pre-panel address Key points: •
The New South Wales Government intends to leverage the state’s competitive advantage in renewables as part of its infrastructure-led recovery effort.
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There are significant opportunities for the private sector to invest in generation and transmission infrastructure.
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The New South Wales Government is working to ensure that projects in Renewable Energy Zones have social licences, along with streamlining processes for investors and fast-tracking priority transmission projects.
Speaker: ► The Hon. Matt Kean MP, Minister for Energy and Environment, New South Wales I would like to thank Infrastructure Partnerships Australia for the invitation to address this forum. New South Wales was an infrastructure economy leading into the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Government is determined that we will have an infrastructure-led recovery coming out of it. Reliable, cheap and abundant energy has been New South Wales’s competitive advantage for generations, and it will continue to be our competitive advantage in the recovery. What has changed is that rather than using carbon-intensive resources, we are shifting to the renewable resources that our state has in abundance. This change is being driven by economics and science. The cheapest way of producing electricity is not coal, gas or nuclear. It is wind and solar backed up by pumped hydro and batteries, and batteries are coming down the cost curve dramatically. With pumped hydro, the major cost is capital by nature. Once you have actually built the infrastructure, the marginal cost to produce the electricity is close to zero. Now the science tells us the climate is changing and that carbon emissions are the cause, and there is a need to reduce them to net zero in order to live without the damage. Science and economics point us in exactly the same direction. With interest rates at record lows – likely to remain so for the foreseeable future – now is the time to invest in the infrastructure that will power New South Wales’s future. The clear advice from the Reserve Bank of Australia is for governments to do everything we can to create jobs and stimulate the economy as we emerge from the shadow of COVID-19.
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We are accelerating the clean energy transition to ensure that New South Wales captures the jobs and growth that we will need to power our economic recovery. Now, there are significant opportunities for the private sector to invest in both the generation and transmission infrastructure that’s needed. On the generation side, we have been able to take advantage of the hard work and detail put into our state’s electricity strategy and Net Zero Plan. Our Renewable Energy Zones (REZ) are the modern-day equivalent of coal-fired power stations, and we have had a massive vote of confidence from investors in the creation of Australia’s first REZ in the Central West and Orana region. Our industry registration of interest process received 27,000 megawatts of proposals, worth $38 billion of private capital. That is nine times the amount needed. In June, I announced that in order to speed up the development of the zone, the Government will invest more than $40 million.
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