Victoria is heading towards the state election on Saturday, 26 November 2022 and ahead of this, we’re now seeing a range of policies for the next term. Today, the Labor Party made a massive promise to accelerate the change to renewable energy.
If re-elected, Victoria would transition to 95% renewable energy by 2035. To understand just how ambitious that target is, we need to understand our current energy generation mix.
According to the AEMO Dashboard, in the last 12 months, Victoria has generated 68% of its energy from Brown coal, 20% from wind, 9% from hydro, 3% from solar, 2% Gas and <1% from Battery.
This means in the next 13 years, Victoria would need to remove virtually all coal-fired power stations, and likely have a small amount of gas, with the new grid made up of much more renewable energy sources, including solar, battery, wind and hydro.
A transition that fast, won’t happen easily and as such, Labor has announced $1 Billion in new electricity projects that will be owned by the taxpayer. This strategy varies from the significantly past when public assets were privatised.
Minister for Energy, Environment & Climate Action & Solar Homes, Lily D’Ambrosio MP said they expect the projects will support 59,000 new jobs.
With the background of severe floods across the state, movements towards further renewable investments certainly make sense, in an effort to minimise the impacts of climate change. The challenge will be bringing consumers and businesses along for the ride.
Achieving the bold target of bringing forward their net-zero target to 2045 (5 years earlier) means going industry by industry and working to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
It is worth remembering that energy is only one part of the equation. The transport sector is also responsible for a significant portion of emissions, which means investment in electric vehicles and EV infrastructure will need to accelerate as we move from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64% of new vehicle sales over the coming decade.
Given how hot this topic is, it’ll be interesting to see what the opposition brings to the table in an effort to win votes in November.
