Tuesday, 2 December 2025

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (13:55): Victoria burned about 39 million tonnes of brown coal in 2023–24, just 3 per cent less than four years earlier, and coal emissions fell by about the same amount. But the percentage of renewable energy made by renewables in Victoria went up by 13 per cent in that time. While we applaud Victoria’s increase in wind and solar, it is barely cutting our emissions because we are using more electricity, and Victoria’s construction of renewables appears to be slowing. No wind farms have reached financial close in Victoria in this term of Parliament. Gippsland’s offshore wind auction has just been delayed. Onshore wind projects are bogged down in planning processes, and construction of the Western Renewables Link has not even begun. If we fail to reach our target of 95 per cent renewables by 2035, that will be because the Allan Labor government failed to act now rather than in the 2030s. Victoria’s Labor government can and must (1) cut electricity demand by investing in and mandating more energy efficiency in homes and businesses (2) facilitate and invest in wind power, particularly onshore, which is cheaper and faster to build, and (3) build those high-voltage transmission lines. Because every day Labor delays, we burn another 100,000 tonnes of the world’s most polluting coal and we make climate change worse. That is not the kind of climate action we need.