Parliamentary Speeches
Clean Coal Administration Bill 2008 ( 07/05/2008)
Mr DONALD PAGE (Ballina) [6.18 p.m.]: I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution on the Clean Coal Administration Bill 2008. The purpose of the legislation is to put in place a strategy to reduce New South Wales greenhouse gas emissions. It seeks to do this through the establishment of a fund for research into, and development of, clean coal technologies. We heard from the member for Bathurst quite a long and detailed expose of the technologies that are potentially available. The legislation also proposes the establishment of the Clean Coal Council. As has been said, the Opposition will not oppose the legislation.
I note that in the Parliamentary Secretary's agreement in principle speech he mentions the need for alternative energy sources and I believe it is extremely important that we look harder at such sources. He mentioned hydropower, biomass, landfill methane, and wind and solar energy but to my amazement he did not mention geothermal power. I believe the Government needs to look more urgently at geothermal energy production. This energy source produces low-cost baseload power without the greenhouse pollution liability.
Importantly, it is the only alternative energy source that has the capacity to replace the baseload energy of coal. It is also strongly supported by Tim Flannery, a former Australian of the Year and an environmental guru. Geothermal energy is produced by drilling down into granite rocks located around five kilometres below the earth's surface and which are between 200 degrees Celsius and 300 degrees Celsius. Power is produced by pumping high-pressure water into the drilled wells that then splits the rocks allowing the water to circulate through the rocks, where it is heated and returned to the surface to be converted into electricity.
One cubic kilometre of hot granite at 250 degrees Celsius has the stored equivalent of 40 million barrels of oil. It is estimated that there are up to 20 cubic kilometres of hot granite in the Hunter Valley—that is, the equivalent of 800 million barrels of oil. More than 9,000 megawatts of geothermal plant are already installed throughout the world. Australia has the largest hot rock resource in the world. One of the most promising locations is in the Hunter Valley, south of Muswellbrook. The benefit is that it is located at the centre of the New South Wales electricity grid. I note that the Queensland, South Australian and Victorian governments have all legislated for an enabling framework for the exploration and extraction of geothermal energy resources.
The Victorian legislation creates a licence to explore, a licence to retain the rights to explore, and a licence to exploit the hot dry rocks reserve. The consequences for New South Wales of not legislating to encourage the exploitation of geothermal power may mean that investment in this important new technology will continue to go to other States. Clean coal technology is certainly to be supported but it is not the long-term solution to climate change. I believe much greater attention must be paid to bring geothermal power on line as quickly as possible. As I said earlier, it does not emit greenhouse gases and it has the capacity to replace baseload currently made available by coal-fired power stations. I urge the New South Wales Government to give geothermal power a much higher priority when supporting alternative energy sources.
