Energy summit set to power Adelaide as new report highlights climate change inaction
FORMER Clean Energy Finance Corporation boss Oliver Yates and potential SA kingmaker Nick Xenophon are among of host of speakers who will address the Smart Energy summit in Adelaide.
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FORMER Clean Energy Finance Corporation boss Oliver Yates and potential SA kingmaker Nick Xenophon are among of host of speakers who will address the Smart Energy summit in Adelaide.
The summit comes as the Climate Council today releases a new report — Critical Decade 2017: Accelerating Climate Action — that claims Australia is failing to tackle climate change as pollution levels continue to rise.
Mr Yates’ appearance comes less than a week after he lambasted the Federal Government’s climate change policies which followed his ejection from a Liberal party fundraiser.
Mr Yates, a former banker, made his disapproval clear at the event when Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume gave Treasurer Scott Morrison a lump of fake brown coal as thanks for his keynote address.
“I’m saddened that the party has drifted so far away from core Liberal values,” Mr Yates later told Fairfax.
Mr Yates will talk at today’s summit — organised by the Australian Solar Council — about the implications of the Commonwealth’s National Energy Guarantee.
Other summit speakers include DP Energy’s Catherine Way and Richard Turner from Zen Energy.
“There are more than 4510 jobs on proposed projects in SA’s smart energy pipeline,” Australian Solar Council chief executive John Grimes said.
“The job creation potential is incredibly exciting and SA has the expertise to lead the energy transition nationally.”
The Climate Council report states that Australia is “highly vulnerable” to many consequences of climate change, from worsening heatwaves, droughts and bushfires, to devastating coral reef bleaching, while most of the nation’s population centres are also highly exposed to sea level rise.
“This is a critical warning that the window of opportunity for the Federal Government to tackle climate change is closing,” Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie said.
“The vague offering of a National Energy Guarantee will not seriously deal with Australia’s climbing pollution levels.
“Australia cannot accept anything less than a long-term, bipartisan policy framework that turns away from fossil fuels and embraces the inevitable clean energy future.”
Symbolically, the move away from fossil fuels to renewable sources will clearly be on show in Port Augusta this morning, when the two boilers at the disused Northern coal power station come crashing down.
The felling of the two 10,000 tonne structures will then allow conventional demolition processes to safely occur from ground level.
Specialist charge felling company Precision Demolition has been engaged by Flinders Power’s alliance partner McMahon Services to undertake the activity.
A spokesman for Flinders Power said “every reasonable effort” would be made to prevent dust leaving the site.
Demolition of the 200-metre high stack at Northern is scheduled for April next year.
luke.griffiths@news.com.au
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