Australian Energy Week kicked off this week at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
In his first major speech since the Federal Election, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen addressed attendees at the event.
“Over the past three years, there has been a massive acceleration of investment and deployment [of renewable energy], with solar capacity and output up by around 50 per cent over three years,” Bowen said.
“In our first term, we saw 15 gigawatts of renewable energy added to the grid – that’s more than three Snowy Hydro schemes worth of renewables.
“By continuing to reduce emissions in electricity…our projections show that we can reduce emissions by more than half of what they are today, by 2030.”
Bowen said there was a lot of catching up to do over the last decade, and that it’s now time to knuckle down and get on with the job of delivering a better, fairer, more reliable, more affordable, lower emissions energy system for Australia.
Bowen also discussed Australia’s energy sovereignty, and how the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) was delivering on this front.
“We need to get more renewables and storage online for a more affordable, more reliable, more sovereign energy system,” he said.
“In three short years, we’ve seen the CIS unlock record levels of investment in Australia’s energy and get us on track to meet 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“To date, we launched six tenders worth more than half the total required capacity: 12.3 gigawatts of generation and six gigawatts of dispatchable, which will support capital investment of $37 billion.
“These tenders have all been consistently – and usually massively – oversubscribed. I take as a great vote of confidence in our energy system, in the renewable transformation, and in the CIS itself.”
Bowen then announced a reform to the CIS, which will significantly streamline the tender process.
“Today, I’m announcing that we will be reducing the amount of time it takes to finalise the tender outcomes to around six months, from the current nine months. We’re going to do this by moving to a one stage tender process, rather than the current two stages.
“This will result in faster decisions, and it will be good for everyone.
“The beauty of the CIS is twofold. It provides industry certainty, but also we can learn as we go and improve it as we develop it, and that’s what we’ll continue to do now.”
Australian Energy Week, organised by Quest Events, continues today.