Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism. Would the minister update the House on the recent announcement of projects of the Solar Flagships Program and how this furthers the government's clean energy agenda?

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Shortland for her question. I know she was delighted last Saturday to attend, with the member for Newcastle, the opening of CSIRO's solar tower research facility by the Prime Minister. This facility, partly funded by a foundation grant of $5 million from the government funded Australian Solar Institute, represents a world-class research facility. It is in fact the largest solar-thermal research facility in the country and will ensure that Australia remains at the cutting edge of solar thermal technology. But the question goes to the all-important Solar Flagships Program, a $1.5 billion commitment as part of the Commonwealth government's Clean Energy Initiative of $5 billion. Last Saturday the Prime Minister was pleased to be able to announce the successful applicants under the first round of this key focus on solar technology, a $1.5 billion program. This announcement—

Mr Hunt interjecting—

and I am pleased that the member for Flinders is taking note—provides a record $770.5 million commitment to solar-thermal and solar photovoltaic technology in Australia. The two projects, one in New South Wales and one in Queensland, will be Australia's largest solar power stations, totalling 400 megawatts. They have a capacity to actually power more than 115,000 homes per annum. But, importantly, they have enabled us as a government to leverage more than $2 billion as a commitment to solar technology development in Australia. The project at Moree in New South Wales, in partnership with the New South Wales government, will receive funding of $306.5 million in a BP-led consortium to develop a 150 megawatt solar PV plant. This plant is nearly twice the size of any PV power plant operating in the world today. It is clearly cutting-edge, leading technology.

I now turn to the Solar Dawn project in Chinchilla, in Queensland, a partnership with the Queensland government. This represents a 250-megawatt solar-thermal gas hybrid power plant and, if operating today, this would be the largest solar power plant on a single site in the world. Importantly, this represents the use of Areva technology. It is about bringing home Australian technology, invented by Dr Mills. We actually lost the technology overseas because of the failure of the Howard government to actually commit to real investment by firms in renewable energy technology development in Australia.

All projects went through a rigorous assessment initiative by the Solar Flagships Council. Importantly, they are demonst­rations of real value for money and our capacity to take forward our requirement to invest in renewable energy technology in Australia. This was reflected in an analysis, undertaken by Boston Consulting Group, which compared round 1 of our Solar Flagships Program with a Spanish feed-in tariff model. They have concluded that the government will spend between $1 billion and $1.6 billion less in present value terms than if we had offered the support on the basis of the Spanish feed-in tariff model. Clearly, the competitive tension that we actually built into this flagship program has enabled us to produce cutting-edge technology for development and best value for the Australian community. These projects are on track to actually produce on-grid energy, effective from December 2015. I commend this major clean energy initiative to the Australian community.