Interview with Lisa Millar, ABC News Breakfast

LISA MILLAR: The Federal Government has green lit an expansion of its scheme for clean renewable energy generation and storage projects across the country after a pilot in New South Wales resulted in six battery storage projects being won through a Capacity Investment Scheme auction.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, joins us now. Minister, good morning, welcome to News Breakfast.

CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, Lisa, good morning.

LISA MILLAR: So is this expansion – I'm just going to start off fairly bluntly – an admission that we're not likely to get to that target you set by the end of the decade of trying to increase the renewables we're using in our energy mix?

CHRIS BOWEN: What it is, Lisa, is a confirmation of what we've been saying, what I've been saying, that we're doing well, but not well enough, we need to do better to reach that target. We've had some very good progress, but we need more progress after making up for a decade of delays. And it's also an indication that we are competing in a world very hungry for capital, hungry for supply chain elements where every country in the world really is on the same journey as us, moving to a very high proportion of renewables, and we've got to make sure Australia is as certain and as welcoming an investment environment as we can for renewable energy.

And yesterday you referred to the auction results that I announced with the New South Wales Minister, Penny Sharpe, more than a gigawatt. I mean that's more than the previous government added in their entire nine years in office in one auction.

I think that shows what sort of results we can achieve with a well designed, well calibrated policy like the one we're announcing today.

LISA MILLAR: So what kind of projects is this going to finance, what will we actually see happening?

CHRIS BOWEN: What it will support is renewable energy, both dispatchable, so that means renewable energy attached to a battery or indeed pump hydro, that means that the system can call upon it, and/or variable renewable energy as well, we need both, to move our grid into an 82 per cent renewable world.

I mean that's very important also, Lisa, for reliability. I mean the biggest threat to reliability, energy reliability in Australia today is actually an ageing coal fired powered station which has an unexpected outage, that AEMO and the market operators weren't expecting, and one day it's just not working.

And that happens quite a lot, it's happening today as we speak, and we need to ensure we're getting on new energy to replace the ageing coal fired power stations, and I don't want to wait until after the coal fired power stations are closed or suffer some sort of event where they have to close early. I want to bring that energy on quickly. 

I want this transformation, Lisa, to be faster, but also more orderly, and that's why a part of what we're announcing today is a comprehensive suite of agreements with the States which we'll negotiate, but these renewable energy transformation agreements will really put the nation on an orderly path to a more reliable, more secure and more renewable energy future.

LISA MILLAR: You've said before that you're not going to reveal what this is costing. Why shouldn't taxpayers know. Why won't we have that transparency?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, Lisa, this is an auction, you know, and if you're selling your house at an auction, you don't announce in advance what you expect to get, or indeed if you're bidding in an auction you don't send an email to the person setting the house saying, "This is what I'm going to bid." 

We want to ensure that the taxpayer gets best value for money, so we're not going to signal to the bidders, and we want them to have their pencils really sharp and put in really sharp bids. The bids we got in yesterday in New South Wales were really, really sharp bids, more than a gigawatt, really competitive bids. That's how an auction works, whether a government's operating the auction or a private sector auction. That's how we maximise the return for taxpayers.

The way this works is that the renewable energy developers have to put in their bids and say, "This is our minimum price, and this is our maximum price”, and we'll take the best bids in the best interests of the taxpayers and people of Australia.

LISA MILLAR: You've still got a lot of hurdles though, haven't you, including having enough transmission lines in the grid as we're heading into what is going to be a very difficult summer. Is the pressure now on the States and Territories to speed up approvals, to get rid of the bottlenecks, to have these negotiations with land holders and communities?

CHRIS BOWEN: I'd see it in a couple of parts, Lisa. There's transmission, which we all have to work together on; Federal, State, the private sector, local governments. We need to work with communities better than has happened in the past. We want to bring communities with us more meaningfully than has happened in the past and ensure there's community benefit, and we all have to do that, all levels of government, and we are working on that through a review at the moment.

But also, I think the broader question you raise about planning systems, yes, there are some planning systems which are quite slow for renewable energy applications. We want to work with the States through these renewable energy transformation agreements to fix that where it's necessary. It's not about making environmental approvals more lax, or you know, reducing conditions, it is about trying to get to yes or no more quickly, which gives communities comfort and certainty, gives the proponents comfort and certainty, because if it's going to be no, it's better to get to no more quickly so that then they can move on to other projects.

Not every renewable project is in the right place, not every renewable project has environmental conditions that have been thought through by the proponents. The environment approvals will always be important, but as we're seeing a big increase in renewable applications and the systems, some of the systems are groaning, as those renewable applications go up, it's perfectly appropriate for all governments to work together to try and get that happening faster.

LISA MILLAR: Minister, just finally, you're heading off overseas to speak about climate again on a global landscape. It just makes me think, we spend a lot of time on this program talking about challenges around the world, that's occurring because of climate change, we've been discussing the Panama Canal not even having enough water to get ships through. Are we at a point where keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach?

CHRIS BOWEN: I don't think we should give up on that aim, Lisa, as hard as it is. I mean the world's already warmed, you know, 1.1 according to some studies. But every increment over 1.5 makes a huge difference, particularly for Australia, probably the developed country most exposed to the impacts of climate change, less developed countries, massively exposed, particularly in our region.

So we cannot give up. I'm going to – I'm leading the Australian delegation to COP where we'll be arguing for a strengthening of the mitigation language, we'll be arguing for good progress. Last COP we had to just argue strongly with like-minded countries to hold the line, to keep what was in Glasgow.

We want to do better than that this time, we'll see how we go, you know, to contest it in difficult geopolitical environment at the moment, but we'll be working very hard, both with the COP President, and with countries who approach these matters similarly to us to say enough flowery speeches, let's get on with real progress in international cooperation to do deal with climate change.

LISA MILLAR: Chris Bowen, thanks for your time this morning.

CHRIS BOWEN: Pleasure, Lisa, good on you.