Speech to Gippsland New Energy Conference, Traralgon, Victoria

Stretching from the Great Dividing Range into the Tasman Sea, these lands and waters have been under the stewardship of the Gunaikurnai for millennia, a fact we acknowledge and celebrate.

While acknowledgement and celebration are right and proper, they’re not sufficient.

First Nations people, particularly in remote Australia, suffer energy poverty and crippling disconnection rates.

More positively, the energy transition provides an opportunity for First Nations people to share in ownership and dividends from renewable energy in their communities and on their lands.

Later today, I’ll be at the launch of the Gippsland Offshore Wind Alliance, which includes First Nations representatives.

Traditional Owners - represented here today by the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation - rightly have an important role to ensure economic and jobs opportunities flowing to this region do not bypass local First Nations people.

And the opportunities are big, so long as we choose to take them.

It’s wonderful to be back in the Gippsland region today, and thanks for the invitation to this excellent conference on new energy and the region.

More than once I've been told that in renewable energy circles, this is the best ticket in town. Second only to AFL qualifying final tickets this weekend.  Well, I'm lucky, I've got tickets to both!  I get to be here today and I get to watch my beloved GWS Giants take on the Swans on Saturday.

Now, you don't need me to tell you: Gippsland is at the heart of our new energy transition.

Gippsland is also a case study in what can go right and what can go wrong.

The best example of a disorderly transition, of communities being ill- treated was the sudden closure of the Hazelwood power station.

Inadequate notice and planning left the community and governments scrambling to adjust and respond, and too many people paying the price.

But in many ways, the best examples of an orderly transition are happening here right now too.

You have the most developed offshore wind plans in Australia.  

And both the Federal and Victorian governments are working with proponents and the community to ensure these projects provide good, well-paying jobs for people who currently work in the traditional energy sector and for future generations.

So for me it comes down to this.

This transition is going to happen: the climate demands it, and economic reality demands it.

But will it be orderly or disorderly?

My goal since becoming Minister has been to make the transition faster and more orderly.

In no small part because this is the best way of giving regions like yours the best shot at maximising the massive economic opportunities of this transition.

This transition plays to your strengths and knowledge about electricity generation, workforces, supply chains and how the agriculture and energy industries can, and should, coexist.

I’ve talked a bit this morning about the need for an orderly transition.

And the key to an orderly transition is certainty.

This region needs jobs.

Jobs need investment. Investment needs certainty.

It’s a simple as that.

Our policies are designed to create that certainty.

Certainty as to our destination. And certainty as to our road map to get there.

The policies of others are designed to undermine it. I’ll say a little more about that a bit later, but I want to spend most of this speech giving you a progress report on our plans to unleash more dispatchable renewable energy, more investment and more jobs through a stable, welcoming and certain policy environment.

This area is a case study for practical progress and the benefits it creates.

Over the next few years we’ll see industry, supply chains and jobs ramping up to support the rollout of Australia’s first offshore wind zone. First generation is expected to come online by about 2030.

Our declaration of the offshore wind zone and issuing of feasibility licences supports the Victorian Government’s target of 2 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2032.

We’re already seeing businesses and locals pivot to take advantage of these opportunities.

Dean Carter, who’s here today, is a utility worker at Yallourn. He and some of his colleagues are already thinking about adding to their skill set so they can stay working locally and be part of the jobs boom for offshore wind.

EnergyAustralia has said publicly that all of the jobs they have in their Yallourn plant have the ability to transition into offshore wind.

In the most recent sitting week in Canberra, the Senate passed legislation to create our Net Zero Economic Authority.

The Authority’s sole job is to bring together and help coordinate regional bodies, unions, industry, investors, First Nations groups, and communities like this one, through this period of transition.

It will help facilitate the jobs and benefits of the economic transformation that comes with moving to net zero.

And it will help coordinate retraining and redeployment of workers in traditional energy industries to ensure they have access to the new jobs being created.

The policy settings – like this – that the Albanese Government has put in place, to support the rollout of new onshore solar and wind, and to get on with delivering offshore wind around Australia, are providing jobs certainty now.

This in turn provides certainty for communities in the Gippsland region that their economic and social future is secure.

About ten minutes from here, the Hazelwood Solar Farm is set to become Victoria’s largest solar farm, with a large on-site battery that can store the same amount of energy that the solar farm will produce, which would be enough to run 170,000 homes for four hours.

That will be completed this decade. Not the next decade, not the decade after that, but this decade.

Construction will start in a couple of months and provide jobs for up to 500 people working across specialties including building, engineering, site maintenance and agrisolar, setting the site up to accommodate the sheep that will share the land.

Hazlewood Solar Farm is just one of the new clean, reliable renewable projects set for Victoria.

When we came to office just over two years ago, we knew that under the previous coalition government 24 coal plants had announced they would close before 2035, taking 90 per cent of the coal generation out of our grid.

Four gigawatts of dispatchable electricity left the grid over the past decade but only one gigawatt of new electricity came on to replace it.

There was no policy regime to encourage the new investment needed.

The previous Government promised a capacity investment mechanism to do so, but they couldn't deliver it.

We've designed a Capacity Investment Scheme, and we are delivering it.

And it’s already working even better than expected.

This reliable renewables plan is about unlocking private investment to build at least 32GW of solar and wind generation, and storage, in grids across Australia between now and 2030.

We know from the experts who operate the grids, that that will be enough to not only replace any coal that retires before then, but also meet increased demand from households and businesses using more electricity.

And we’re getting on with delivering it now.

In December last year, we opened applications for new dispatchable capacity, such as big batteries, to be built in Victoria and South Australia.

This was a pilot auction for the broader scheme. And that pilot has been very successful.

The market response for this was huge. Massively oversubscribed.

We wanted 600 megawatts.

We received bids for 19 gigawatts – 32 times more than what we asked for.

Today I’m pleased to announce the six very high-quality battery projects that have been successful.

They will deliver nearly 1000MW of storage by 2027. That is considerably more than the 600MW we went out to tender for.

We are able to over-deliver on our promise because of the high quality of bids received.

This is a huge indication of the strength and quality of the projects underpinning our transition.

These projects will soak up cheap, clean energy from renewable generation, ready to be discharged into the grid as needed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

One of the projects supported in this CIS auction is Energy Australia’s Wooreen Energy Storage System, will be built here at the Jeeralang Power Station just out of Morwell.

The 350 MW utility-scale battery can power over 400,000 households for up to 4 hours at a time.

It's scheduled to be operational in 2027 and will employ 80 people, and rely on local suppliers.

It means between this and the Hazelwood Solar Farm batteries, both within a 10km radius of where we are now, there’s the equivalent of a mid-sized coal fired power station worth of energy at your fingertips, ready to go.

Gippsland’s transformation to a national powerhouse for reliable, clean renewable power is well underway.

The second successful project in Victoria is the Springvale Energy Hub, on the site of a what used to be landfill in south-eastern Melbourne.

The 115 megawatts 2-hour Battery Energy Storage System, to be developed by Progress Power will be online by mid-2027.

It will provide 50 full-time and part-time jobs during design and construction, and seven ongoing jobs.

In South Australia, the successful projects are:

•    The Clements Gap 60 MW battery operated by Pacific Blue, at the Clements Gap Wind Farm, in the mid-north
•    The Hallett 50 MW battery owned by Energy Australia, in Canownie
•    The Solar River battery storage, part of a hybrid project of 256MW, operated by Zen Energy, located between Burra and Morgan
•    And the Limestone Coast West 250 MW lithium-ion battery storage operated by Pacific Green, on the Limestone Coast, near the border with Victoria

These projects will improve reliability, put downward pressure on electricity prices, and help us move to a net zero economy.

But they also deliver major benefits to their local communities.

Importantly, those benefits will start flowing now, not in twenty years' time.

This is a key feature of how we’ve designed the reliable renewables plan.

Projects that can demonstrate genuine, deliverable, meaningful community benefits will be prioritised over those that don’t.

We aren’t looking for the cheapest projects.  We are looking for projects that transform the electricity sector and transform local communities.

We’re seeing that in action in these projects announced today.

The Wooreen project for example includes a $500,000 Light the Way Community Future Fund, to fund initiatives developed in consultation with the local community.

Additional funds will be provided for engineering scholarships and placements at Federation University - which has specialised renewable energy sector training.

There’s also funding for fire service equipment and training.

Ten percent of workforce hours during construction will be local apprentices and cadets, partnering with TAFE Gippsland.  

And 25 per cent of the project contract value will meet local content requirements.

An additional $500,000 has been set aside for training of First Nations peoples.

The Government takes these commitments seriously and they will be contractually binding under the scheme agreement.

This first stand-alone state focused tender for reliable renewables has delivered great outcomes for local communities, but this is very much a first step.

Our first national tender which we launched in May includes even more requirements aimed at delivering even better outcomes for local communities,  and we will continue to consider even further improvements to future auction rounds to ensure we are maximising community benefit.

The Albanese Government’s plan to increase reliability, reduce emissions and energy bills by bringing more cheap, clean, reliable renewable generation into the grid is working.

Our plan is the only one backed by credible experts to deliver Australians the power they need, when and where they want it.

Last week the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, released its forecast for supply and demand in the grid over the next ten years.

It proves that the path we’re already on, that Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley is already on, is the right one.

For years, these statements of opportunity issued by AEMO have shown reliability gaps.  Every single ESOO issued under the coalition showed a reliability gap.  But the reliability gap in this ESOO is smaller and further away than it has been before.

But it also showed there's a huge risk to system reliability if Peter Dutton gets his way in implementing an anti-renewables nuclear strategy.

Having talked so far about the progress we have made I am now going to spend a few minutes on what is at stake in this debate -  and the massive risk that the Coalition’s alternative plan, to build nuclear reactors, represents.

I mentioned earlier the importance of certainty and a welcoming environment for investment.

The Opposition's nuclear plan is the exact opposite.

It's a recipe for uncertainty.  And I believe deliberately so.

Nuclear energy for Australia is, at best, decades away.  And it is so expensive that the even the Coalition has admitted it would have to be built and funded by the government, rather than through private, commercial, investment.

Why would a renewable energy company want to invest in Australia if they know they will be competing with a Government distortion of the market in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars?

It’s a recipe to drive away investment in clean, cheap, renewable generation.

And it’s a recipe for unreliability.  The Liberals and Nationals say they will "sweat the coal assets for longer".

Gippsland locals know better than most that our coal fired power stations are coming to the end of their safe lifespan.  As they get older they break down more often.

There hasn't been a day in the past year where we haven't had to deal with an unplanned outage in a coal fired power station.

“Sweating the assets” out to 2040 or 2050 as the Coalition want to do, puts our energy system at risk of more unplanned outages the older the fleet gets older.

Unplanned outages cause wholesale prices to spike, which translates to higher bills.

Parts of the Yallourn power station are more than 50 years old.

Loy Yang A is 40 years old.

The idea these and other coal assets might need to be sweated for longer is a recipe for massive system instability.

This region understands the economics and engineering of coal fired power.

It knows how often these plants are out of action. And this area knows that banking our future on their extension is a risky plan.

The operators of these coal fired power stations have plans to close them within the decade. The exit of just these two alone, will leave a gap of 3.6 GW in the east coast grid.

Peter Dutton and David Littleproud’s plan to fill that gap is a recipe for unreliability.

It’s one that if they ever had the chance to implement, would see energy investment fall, developers walk away, and local and global capital leave Australia because of too much risk and uncertainty around energy policies in the new climate wars.

Delay, uncertainty and inaction are not an option.

We must be implementing sensible solutions now, not in a decade, or two decades, to be certain that Australia’s energy needs will be met.

The Liberal Party and National Party say they want to stop renewable energy investments and stop offshore wind.

They want to stop investment, stop jobs, and stop benefits in favour of waiting for a nuclear fantasy that may never come true.

We know that we need to stay the course.

Governments are staying the course. Victoria’s Energy Minister was here yesterday talking to you about her plan. It doesn’t include nuclear.

We’ve had every State government come out and say they will not support nuclear. But the Coalition is determined to push it through against the will of the states.

There will be a big fight if that’s their plan. It will create division and uncertainty.

It is the opposite of what we have now.

The Capacity Investment Scheme shows what happens when you have co-operation between the states and the Federal Government.

We’re supporting private investment to deliver more renewables by 2030.

And we’re working together to better address some of the challenges around planning and community engagement to get these projects built in the right place, with the right benefits.

And I want to continue to partner with you, with every organisation in this room to ensure this transition continues Gippsland and regions like it, not only survive economy but thrive and prosper of the back of this transition.