Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the private members' motion put forward by the member for La Trobe. For those listening to the debate, it is worth reading out the motion before I go to addressing the motion itself. The motion reads:

(1) wind energy is an important and safe source of renewable energy;

(2) wind energy generation will play a crucial role in enabling Australia to meet its existing renewable energy targets;

(3) bipartisan support for Australia's renewable energy targets is essential to reducing carbon emissions in Australia's electricity sector; and

(4) any move to diminish or abolish the current legislated renewable energy targets would have serious and detrimental impacts on investment in renewable energy, impede Australia's ability to reduce carbon emissions by at least 5 per cent below year 2000 levels by 2020, and undermine the move to a clean energy future.

It is important for this House to debate and to consider this resolution. In my electorate of Corangamite, there are three projects that have been fully approved and are in various stages of development. These projects will generate over 348 megawatts of energy at their peak, a significant contribution to reducing carbon and creating energy for our communities.

The Mount Gellibrand Wind Farm will play an important role in delivering renewable energy, having a generation capacity of 189 megawatts. This will make a significant contribution and will supply some 88,000 households or a city of a similar size to Geelong. This energy is carbon neutral and will help displace millions of tonnes of dirty brown coal power generation. Work started on this project in March 2012 and is progressing.

The Mount Mercer energy farm will have 64 towers which are currently under construction. They will produce some 131.2 megawatts of energy for Mount Mercer, which is just south of Ballarat in the top of my electorate. Work on this project is the most advanced in my electorate. Workers will have completed 39 of the towers, with some 60 per cent of the poles linking to the transmission network, in the not too distant future. This is a huge project and will have a very significant impact on Ballarat by providing clean renewable energy for that community. Further, once the third project, Mount Pollock in south-west Victoria, not too far from Winchelsea, is completed it will consist of 14 turbines producing approximately 28 megawatts of electricity.

These three projects are typical of projects being constructed throughout south-west Victoria and in South Australia and many other jurisdictions. These projects are important in terms of creating jobs during the construction period and they will play a substantial role in diversifying our electricity generation away from dirty brown coal generation. This will be important for cleaning up our carbon emissions to create new and efficient wind generation and electricity generation projects. Wind will play a very significant role in Australia meeting its obligations, both under the Kyoto protocol and under our desire to generate a significant amount of our electricity through clean energy. (Time expired.)

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