Press conference in Berrima, NSW

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, it's great to be here today in Berrima at the Boral facility to open the chlorine bypass facility. Now this is good news for Australian manufacturing, good news for the Southern Highlands, good news for jobs.

This new investment by Boral will reduce their carbon emissions by up to 150,000 tonnes a year. That's a lot of carbon that won't be going into our atmosphere. That means that this facility is one that is fit for purpose going forward. Cement is very important to our industrial future. It's very important to our transformation. There's more cement in a wind farm than there is steel and I want to see that cement being Australian made. And here at Berrima they've been making cement for 100 years almost. And this investment means that they can continue to make cement and they can be showing their consumers, their investors, their insurers, their staff that they have a serious plan – Boral has a serious plan to reduce emissions and that's what the market will increasingly demand. So, that makes this facility secure into the future.

This is about working together, business and industry. Our safeguard reforms were designed and have sent a clear signal to industry about expectations for carbon abatement and provided a secure, certain, sensible policy environment so that companies like Boral can make investments like this. So, I very much welcome this investment. I congratulate Vik [Bansal, CEO] and the Boral team for this investment. It's a good day which will see emissions come down and in due course, jobs come up because this facility will be viable for the next hundred years as well.

JOURNALIST: Has Boral or has the Federal Government co-funded any of this upgrade?

CHRIS BOWEN: No, not this one. There's been some investment by the state government, which I congratulate the Minns government for. We're working with other things with Boral. But this investment, I'm sure Vik would say has been made more certain because of our safeguard reforms.

JOURNALIST: And just in terms of cement as a source of emissions across the country, are other cement producers doing implementing similar emissions reductions?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, I was at – I don't want to talk about Vik’s friends or competitors – but you know, I was at Cement Australia's Railton facility in Tasmania a couple of months ago doing similar things. It's hard to abate cement, abate carbon and cement, it’s what we call a hard to abate sector, but it's a vital sector, so investments like this are necessary.

JOURNALIST: Just on another topic, just in terms of the cost of the renewable energy transition: the Frontier Economics costings, are they correct and should costs like maintenance and fuel be added to the $122 billion figure that you've relied upon?

CHRIS BOWEN: This is a report commissioned by the Liberal Party to justify their own nuclear fantasy. They released it when the Prime Minister and I were overseas in an act of great courage, to their selected newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. The one thing I note about costings is that we base our costings on AEMO's work. AEMO says that the net present value of the transition is $122 billion and the Frontier Report says that's correct.

JOURNALIST: Just heading into summer. In terms of grid reliability, we've seen some sort of jitters recently in terms of NSW and demand on the sector. But [AEMO] said batteries played an important role in stabilising the grid and have actually grown 58 per cent in the past year. What sort of role do you see batteries playing in stabilising the energy market?

CHRIS BOWEN: Very important. And I said this to Parliament last week, that batteries played a very significant role in getting through Sydney through that period, which was a bit tight. It makes sense because we have a lot of electricity during the day and then at night we call on the batteries which have captured that excess electricity during the day. So, grid scale batteries played their role, community batteries played their role and household batteries played their role. I said that in Parliament. The Liberal Party laughed. They don't understand batteries. They say, you know, the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Well, the rain doesn't always fall either. But we drink water every day because we store water in dams and we store renewable energy in batteries. I'm pleased with the increase in uptake in batteries. There'll always be more to do.

JOURNALIST: We heard a figure from the state government earlier this morning that to use domestic batteries as a stabilisation for the grid, it would take around a million domestic batteries in NSW. There's about more than 10 million people in NSW. Do you think that's a realistic number?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yes, but we also – it's not just about household batteries. We also have grid scale batteries, the Waratah battery in NSW being the most prominent. But not just that, there's increasing number of batteries spread around the country. I funded, announced funding through the Capacity Investment Scheme, [for] several in South Australia and Victoria several weeks ago. I'll be making more announcements about the Capacity Investment Scheme in the next couple of weeks.

JOURNALIST: And just in terms of who, I guess the system's working for. Some energy experts that we've spoken to have said that it's set up to benefit the big energy companies rather than individuals who have domestic batteries. Do you think there are improvements in the way that the incentives are structured?

CHRIS BOWEN: I think that's captured in our Consumer Energy Roadmap, which state and territory Ministers agreed with me in our last meeting, and we're meeting again on Friday. Consumer Energy Roadmap outlines how we'll put consumers more in charge of the resources they own. Solar panels on their roof, the batteries in their garage, the batteries in their driveway, increasingly in their electric vehicle. A battery in your driveway is five times usually more powerful than the battery in your garage. And I'm delighted that the first action under our Consumer Energy Roadmap is Standards Australia approving the standards for bi-directional charging so that people can charge their car and can also use their car to charge their house in the grid.

JOURNALIST: Last time you were down this way, you said that you'd soon have an announcement on the offshore wind proponents that would be receiving licences. It's been over a month now.

CHRIS BOWEN: That's not long.

JOURNALIST: When is soon?

CHRIS BOWEN: That's not long. We get this right, we work through all the applications. I'll make an announcement when we're ready, when we've done the work, not before and not after.

JOURNALIST: Given that a federal election could be caught as early as next month and the Coalition have basically said they're going to overturn the offshore wind zone, how important is it that you give out a licence before the election?

CHRIS BOWEN: I'll give out a licence when all the due diligence and work has been done. I won't be distracted by other timetables. If the Liberal Party wants to create sovereign risk by ripping up contracts or cancelling zones, that's the matter for them to explain. I'll be getting on with the job. They've said they will honour the Gippsland zone and David Littleproud said, “because it's smaller”, when it's 15 times bigger. So, you know, I don't get too distracted by whatever the Liberal Party is saying on a particular day.

JOURNALIST: But are you concerned that your legacy, which is, you know, the offshore wind declarations is a big part of your legacy, might be undermined?

CHRIS BOWEN: I hope and intend to be Climate Change Minister for several years to come, so I wouldn't get too stressed about that.

JOURNALIST: And what about just in terms of how this is playing out ahead of that federal election, in terms of seats like Cunningham and Whitlam which have been safe Labor seats. Are you concerned that there might be a swing against you because of this issue?

CHRIS BOWEN: Stephen Jones and Alison Byrnes are first class members of Parliament who work very hard. They see the jobs opportunities from offshore wind to replace jobs that will change over coming years and create new ones for young people. And that's a good thing. They'll be making that case to the people of the Illawarra and I'm quietly confident that they will receive a positive message back from them on election day.

JOURNALIST: The Illawarra Renewable Energy Zone currently has zero projects. It was supposed to have 1 gigawatt of energy generation. There's nothing in the pipeline at this stage. Does that zone rely on the declaration on offshore wind being is that the critical [indistinct]?

CHRIS BOWEN: Renewable energy zones are created and declared by State Governments, not Federal Governments. But offshore wind will play a vital role for the Illawarra going forward to complement other projects will come forward in due course.

JOURNALIST: But there aren't any other projects. So, this is just offshore wind.

CHRIS BOWEN: Renewable energy zones are a State Government initiative. I'll let the State Minister give you an update.