Blue Mountains solar industry representatives and advocates had an opportunity to input into Labor’s energy policies, during a visit by the Opposition Climate Change and Energy Assistant Minister, Pat Conroy.
MP for Macquarie, Susan Templeman said the visit allowed detailed policy discussion around a wide range of areas from expanding access to renewable energy for community groups and low income households to battery storage issues and how the national energy market works.
“We have enormous expertise in the Mountains around renewable energy, and Pat’s visit was a chance to have that experience feed into the policies that we will take to the next election,” Ms Templeman said.
“It’s been a very changeable environment for small businesses in the solar space, but renewables is an area where I see we have potential to expand our workforce locally. I wanted our small businesses to be able to articulate their challenges and constraints, and discuss the things that will give them the certainty to be able to employ more people.”
Michael Skeggs, Chair of Blue Mountains Renewable Energy Co-Operative (BMRenew) said the Labor policy promoting Community Energy Hubs recognised the diverse local challenges in communities like the Mountains, rather than a 'one size fits all' approach.
“We are hopeful their commitment to renewables is adopted across politics, allowing us all to plan for a prosperous and low pollution energy future,” Mr Skeggs said.
"We rely on government at a federal, state and local level all pulling in the same direction so we can meet energy challenges with the best outcomes.
"The Mountains community strongly supports renewable energy, with thousands of solar panels on Mountains homes, hundreds of battery storage systems being installed and exciting developments such as new businesses like Nexergy focussed on our area. Renewable energy is an opportunity for us to assert local control on our energy and our environment, putting local needs first."
Damian McMahon from Blue Mountains Solar told the opposition minister that the wholesale cost of energy had increased by more than 50 per cent in the past 12 months and solar benefit to the network was largely under valued.
“We stressed the need for solar producers to have access to the spot energy prices on the NEM (National Energy Market) to improve the return for solar homes and businesses.”
Grant Young from Nexergy said Mountains residents were keen to get a fairer deal on the energy their solar and batteries can generate.
“Innovations like peer-to-peer energy trading can make this happen, but we need to get the policy and regulations right. We appreciate the opportunity to share our vision for how distributed energy approaches can contribute to a more stable and resilient grid, and reduce the cost of energy for everyone”.
Mr Conroy said the visit was very worthwhile.
“It was excellent to meet with local companies and community members to get their views on the best way to achieve Labor’s 50 per cent renewable energy goal [by 2030].
“It also was great to meet with the Blue Mountains Renewable Energy Co-op to listen to their thoughts about how Labor’s Community Power Hubs can help transform the Blue Mountains into a renewable energy powerhouse.”
Ms Templeman said the work of the co-op was a great example of communities taking responsibility for reducing their carbon footprint at the same time as managing their future energy costs.
