Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Good news from the great state of Tasmania today—and, in mentioning Tasmania, I'd like to point out to the House that Tasmania makes up just one per cent of Australia's landmass. We receive nine per cent of Australia's rainfall, but we have 26 per cent of Australia's fresh water in storage. We store this water in our 54 Hydro dams, which were created as part of the hydro-electric scheme in Tasmania—some, more than 100 years ago—on which we have 30 power stations, currently generating clean, green, renewable and dispatchable energy for the great state of Tasmania. In fact, they generate up to 80 per cent of Tasmania's energy requirements, and they're doing so right at the moment. The remainder comes from our thriving renewable industries, with technologies such as wind and solar. We even have wave trial technology on the King Island coastline, to determine whether that will be a viable complement to our already great suite of renewable generation equipment in Tasmania.

Tasmania has already achieved 100 per cent renewable status. In fact, we're making more renewable electricity in Tasmania than we know what to do with. Right at the moment, we are transmitting 436 megawatts of clean, green, renewable energy across Basslink, our 500 megawatt connector between Bell Bay and the mainland in Victoria, and that energy is going into firming—filling up the gap that is left by Australia's great rise in renewable technologies per se across the NEM. Tasmania is doing its bit with dispatchable energy, and there are not many states that can say the same.

Our state government has ambitiously set a target of 200 per cent renewable energy by 2040. The reason for that is: in Tasmania, we believe that we can provide a viable income source, a revenue source, for the state, as well as providing that dispatchable energy, that firming, to fill up that great gap that is left by our rise in renewables and our phasing from fossil fuels. In order to transmit that energy from Tasmania—in fact, from our proposed site of Cethana, on the north-west coast of Tasmania—we are going to need a second Bass interconnector. That will come in the form of Project Marinus, which is a dual, 750-megawatt high-voltage DC cable which will connect the north-west coast and the synchronous/asynchronous converter there with the opposite in the Latrobe Valley on the Victorian side. This great cable will enable Tasmania to turn the Cethana hydro power station into a Battery of the Nation generator. Deep storage, and long-term deep storage, is what we're talking about here. Again, this will provide eight to 10 hours of 750 megawatts plus of clean, green, hydro energy to the mainland.

As well as that, it will allow those other great technologies we have in the state, such as wind and solar, to grow to sufficient mass to get over the fiscal threshold of making their businesses more viable, and then we can branch out into other technologies. We've got this in place already in Tasmania, and the state government is kicking this along, full force, with our hydrogen production. We already have proponents on the ground down there going through R&D processes in order to ensure this occurs.

As the federal government, we've backed this in. Project Marinus is a $4 billion investment in the national electricity grid, and the federal government has contributed $93.9 million into the R&D and R&A progression of Project Marinus. In order to project this into the national electricity grid, we've provided $60 million to the special-purpose vehicle which is the government mechanism and the coordination function, the conduit between Hydro Tasmania, TasNetworks and the national electricity grid. Above all, we're doing our bit in Tasmania. Our energy generation at the national level must be efficient, environmentally sound and cost effective, but, above all, it must be reliable. I can assure Australia and I can assure the NEG that we are reliable in Tasmania with hydro.