Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about a technology that is currently being developed and trialled in the Fremantle electorate by Carnegie Corporation; a technology that harnesses the ocean swell to produce electricity and desalinated water. It is an example of the kind of innovation that will assist Australia in moving from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. It is an example of what is possible when science and private enterprise and government policy meet together in pursuit of a shared objective.

In September last year, I toured the CETO II wave power research and testing station on the North Mole side of Fremantle Port with the Minister for Climate Change and Water. In the adjacent Indian Ocean, Carnegie Corporation has already installed a system of fully submerged buoys that are tethered to the ocean floor. From sea motion alone, the CETO II system delivers high-pressure seawater ashore, where the energy is used to generate zero-emission electricity. Zero-emission desalinated water can also be produced from this process.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of a return visit, this time to attend the launch of the federal government’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program by the Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism. This $435 million program will provide competitive capital grants on a $1 for $2 matched contribution basis to fund the commercial demonstration of emerging renewable technologies. It will stimulate more than $1 billion worth of investment at the sharp end of the Australian renewable energy sector, and it is yet another election promise kept by the Rudd government.

In a recent assessment conducted by RPS Met Ocean for Carnegie Corporation of 17 suitable near-shore sites along Australia’s southern coast, researchers determined that the energy potential held in those waves is four times that of the existing national power grid. Accounting for the extraction process, and accessibility of the wave resource, it was estimated that wave power from near-shore facilities could supply 35 per cent of the nation’s current base load power. The study also indicated that Australia’s deep water—from Geraldton in WA around southern Australia to the New South Wales-Queensland border—holds the potential to provide 10 times more energy than all current installed capacity. Precisely because it is the most abundant thing on earth, and because it is constant and predictable, seawater and tidal movement make wave power an obvious green-power choice, and in my view it is one that hasn’t received enough popular attention in the course of the recent renewable energy and carbon-emission reduction debate. With one of the most extensive coastlines in the world, and one that has been identified amongst the best potential sources of wave energy, Australia should be at the forefront in support and development of this industry.

I would add that with Australia’s abundance of other natural conditions we should also be at the forefront of solar, solar thermal, wind and geothermal technologies. That is why the Rudd government is fast-tracking funding under the $500 million Renewable Energy Fund, which over the next 18 months will provide grants for the development, commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy. The key supporting platform of the renewable energy sector in Australia is now of course the government’s Renewable Energy Target that will ensure that 20 per cent of the nation’s electricity comes from renewable energy by 2020.

The wave-power technology being developed on the Indian Ocean bed off Fremantle is a looking-glass preview of the future. It is a future that is far from guaranteed but it is a future that Australia and, indeed, the global community must strive towards. We must do the hard work to challenge the old orthodoxies and vested interests and turn in a new direction.

Question agreed to.