Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Renewable energy

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:55): (1969) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Lily D’Ambrosio in the other place. The action I seek from the minister is in line with a minority report that I wrote and indeed the minority report’s recommendation 13 from the inquiry into the closure of Hazelwood and Yallourn and the assessment of the Latrobe Valley Authority. It goes to, I think, a very important point about stewardship of the environment and the passage of renewables through that landscape in the environment. The action I seek from the minister is to investigate world’s best practice on the introduction of bonds—and I am going to say similar to those of retiring coalmines and coal-fired power stations—for large-scale solar energy, wind farms and large-scale battery facilities to ensure that there are sufficient funds available for site rehabilitation at the end of the working lives of those renewables.

Now, being on that inquiry and also on the Environment and Planning Committee one on renewables, we heard about the push and the need to go to solar and wind. Whilst I endorse that, if we want to be truly, truly carbon neutral we have to look at a cradle-to-grave analysis of how we produce CO₂ emissions at the manufacturing point and in the mining of the various materials all the way through to the decommissioning and recycling of those renewables.

Indeed the Clean Energy Council in Australia has put out some information, and it shows that we in Australia only produce 11 per cent of the onshore components in those renewables sectors. So I think there is a huge opportunity in Victoria and in my patch in Eastern Victoria Region to look at component manufacturing and recycling. But one of the key things with those large-scale solar farms that are covering the earth, the ground—all the renewables—and the on-land and even offshore wind turbines is what the government is going to do about ensuring the proper remediation of those structures to return the environment, the landscape, back to good working order in a full stewardship cycle. So I call on the minister to investigate the way that bonds are put down in world’s best practice and report that back to the community in my Eastern Victoria electorate.