Speech to Investor Group on Climate Change 20th Anniversary, Canberra

Friends, I'm delighted to welcome you to Parliament House and to acknowledge that we meet on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples.

Some of you will have heard me observe in the past that 1% of Australian renewable energy has a form of indigenous ownership while the equivalent figure in Canada is 20%.

Our First Nations Clean Energy Strategy, which commenced funding three weeks ago on 1 July is designed to improve that situation. But it can't be a strategy of Government alone, and I would certainly encourage members of the IGCC to continue to engage in the task of ensuring that some of the wealth we generate in this energy transition is shared with Traditional Owners.

This can, of course be done. Two weeks ago I was in Ramingining which is about 560km East of Darwin. I was observing Indigenous savannah burning which is facilitated under the ACCU scheme and see for myself some of the 300 jobs created and the funding generated for schools on country from the scheme so this shows me that climate action and Indigenous wealth creation can be and must be two sides of the same coin.

Twenty years ago the Australian Parliament was debating whether to take action on climate change and some were making outrageous claims that action on climate would cost jobs and energy bills!

A situation unthinkable today!

If only!

Twenty years ago Barnaby Joyce was warning that it was technically impossible for our energy grid to get 5% renewable energy.

Well here we are, despite all the progress we have made together some debates are circular and some people with an unquenchable prejudice against renewable energy refuse to accept the evidence, the science, the economics and the common sense of our transition.

But that’s OK, their relentless drive against modernity sees them driven further and further to fringes of the debate and the depths of Opposition.

In all seriousness, despite the desperate rear guard action of the desperate dinosaurs of the Opposition, we have made enormous progress.

Twenty years ago, renewable energy was a tiny proportion of our grid, the Federal Government was talking about mythical “clean coal”, disavowing the Kyoto Protocol and disputing the science.

This term it’s likely we will see renewable energy will surpass coal as our biggest source of electricity and then surpass 50% of our energy, Australia is a key leader of international climate discussions and we are working closely with Pacific partners.

But there is so, so much more to do.

This term we will consolidate all the work of the first term. That includes setting our ambitious but achievable 2035 target, informed by the net zero sector plans, later this year.

This are huge opportunities for Australian innovation and industry – providing the investment certainty needed.

And the IGCC are important leaders in the public debate and partners in engendering the investment to keep this transition going.

With members who are managing some $4.6 trillion via the retirement funds and savings of more than 15 million Australians – IGCC’s role in Australia’s climate debate has been significant.

The economic argument when it comes to acting on climate change has proven to be the most effective in convincing governments and communities to act. IGCC has been critical to establishing and prosecuting this argument.

So, the Australian people gave us a clear instruction on May 3. Keep going. Keep the investment going, keep the transition going.

And that’s what we intend to do.

The second term is about consolidating, delivering and building on the work of our first term.

Our energy grid’s transition remains urgent. As our ageing coal fired power stations only become more expensive and more unreliable we need new generation now.

It remains the case, that to rebuild Australia’s energy grid, into the modern, reliable and fairer system we need to get renewables and storage online, faster.

In three short years we have seen Capacity Investment Scheme unlock record levels of investment in Australia’s energy grid and get us on track to reach 82% renewable energy by 2030.

Each of the six tenders we have held have been consistently and massively oversubscribed.

The latest NEM tender dispatchable tender (Tender 3) received 135GWh of bids compared to the 16GWh target.

Because of this we have secured 6.4 gigawatts of generation and 2 gigawatts of dispatchable capacity, which will be associated with $17 billion of capital investment.

Now around halfway through the CIS, and with the cost of deploying solar and batteries declining faster than expected, we have an opportunity to supercharge our transition.

The latest Gencost report, released today, shows firmed renewables remain the lowest cost form of new generation, with the cost of solar falling by 8%, and batteries falling by 20% in the last year alone.

This evening, I am pleased to tell you that we will be further expanding the CIS with a further 3 gigawatts of generation, enough to power more than one million households.

It's right that the sunniest and windiest continent remains at the forefront of solar and wind innovation – and this backing shows the Government intends for it to stay that way.

We will also incentivize even more storage to come online. Through the CIS, we will underwrite an additional 5 GW of dispatchable capacity or storage.

This is equivalent to supplying 4.6 million households in the National Electricity Market with energy at peak times, and will support an additional $21 billion in investment in dispatchable capacity.

This expansion will build on the significant momentum in large scale storage investment already – this year was the best annual state for new storage projects on record.

Friends, our efforts only grow more urgent.

We are living through climate change now and what we do today to drive down emissions means differences in degrees our children’s children will live with.

But it will also mean the difference between a more prosperous Australia.

As the IGCC saw some 20 years ago, the energy transition and the push to net zero is a huge economic opportunity for our nation.

Together we must keep working to seize that opportunity.