ACT pushes for clean energy, but Australia heads for the bottom of the barrel

ACT Environment
Minister,
Simon Corbell.

Last Friday, ACT environment minister Simon Corbell stood up at the Local Energy and Micro-Grids conference in Sydney to announce that the ACT was going to accelerate its push to renewable energy, and would supply 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020, almost all of it from wind and solar.

The new target will be achieved at no added cost to the previous target of 90 per cent, and the ACT will still retain its ranking as the city with the cheapest electricity in Australia. In fact, if Canberra households embrace the renewable energy measures on offer from the government, they will hardly see a rise in their bill at all.

Corbell told the conference, co-hosted by RenewEconomy, that not only are such targets achievable and affordable, they have to happen. “The science tells us that and the decisions at the COP (conference of the parties, or Paris climate conference) tell us that. We have to keep global temperature rises well below 2°C.”

Read the RenewEconomy story - “Australia heads back to bottom of barrel on climate, clean energy.”