Former ACCC tsar Rod Sims, now chairing a new think tank, says Australia must accelerate the rollout of renewables and use it to make green metals, fertiliser and fuels.
“The current argument by gas companies that increasing amounts of gas supply are necessary to support the growth of renewables is wrong. I see this simply as the new frontier of denial of climate change realities,” he said.
He declared himself disappointed by commentary that assumes the economy can only be burdened by climate change and cannot benefit from the clean energy transition. He said the debate had to shift from “‘gosh, how are we going to do this costly transition? It’s a burden on the economy’ to one where we have a real opportunity here.
The Superpower Institute has initial funding from four large donors for projects to use satellites in partnership with the University of Melbourne to monitor methane emissions from gas pipelines, which Mr Sims said were poorly measured, and to ramp up the OpenNEM project, which publishes data on the eastern states’ National Electricity Market, which he said was misunderstood.
“Renewable energy is not easily exported so it makes sense for industry to relocate to the energy source; that is, by economic logic more of Australia’s minerals should now be processed in Australia,” he said. Mr Sims said becoming a clean energy superpower could also help with diversity and security of supply chains, and noted that the world relies heavily on China for silicon for solar panels – another mineral that could be processed in Australia using cheap, clean energy – and on China, Russia and Ukraine for the raw materials for urea.
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