Wednesday, 19 February 2020

Coal consumption

Dr READ (Brunswick) (19:15): (1894) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action I seek is for the minister to issue quarterly public reports on the quantity of coal consumed by Victorian power stations. Responding to a question on notice last year, the minister revealed that Victorian power stations burnt an average of 59 million tonnes of coal each year over the preceding decade. Victorian coal is brown coal, the most polluting type of coal, and it produces more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated than the black coal used in other states. This makes Victoria’s power stations the most polluting power stations in Australia. About 70 per cent of Victoria’s electricity comes from coal.

The climate-driven drought in New South Wales, northern Victoria and Gippsland, culminating in this summer’s catastrophic fires, shows us how quickly we must get this state off coal. We have burnt over a billion tonnes of it in Victoria in the last 20 years, and most of that carbon dioxide is still up in the atmosphere. Australia, and indeed the world, is paying a high price for those emissions, and people expect action.

As we build more solar and wind power we would hope to see a decline in the amount of coal we burn, but the real measure of the success of our renewable energy program will only be if it displaces coal and we do see a decline. To achieve this we also need to use energy more efficiently by making buildings more energy efficient and other measures. More solar panels will not help our climate unless we see a decline in coal and gas. Hopefully this will happen and we will see this reassuring decline in coal consumption, and that is why I am asking the minister to issue timely reports on coal consumption.