Energy

(Adopted March 2014; Updated May 2017; Updated July 2018)

Principles

The Queensland Greens believe that:

1. The need for lower greenhouse gas emissions makes it necessary to plan a managed reduction and ultimately a cessation of dependence upon polluting fossil fuels. 

2. The technologies for clean energy production distribution, efficiency, and storage offer huge opportunities for job and wealth creation.

3. The energy systems must incorporate public, community and privately owned generation and storage entities, with publicly owned retail, smart transmission and grid distribution system.

4. Creating distributed, diverse and competitive energy generation and storage systems would contribute to minimising the cost for households and businesses.

5. Clean mobile energy for transport and other activities are developments offering great opportunity for Queensland.

6. Demand management planning and implementation will contribute greatly to reductions of the use of polluting technologies, and to the ease of transition to clean energy sources.

Aims

The Queensland Greens will:

1. Set the following Queensland provisions and targets for expansion in the use of clean energy:

1.1 A mandatory Queensland Renewable Energy Target (QRET) of 100% to be met by 2030 for electricity power generation.

1.2 Mandatory provisions to ensure that electricity distributors draw, to the greatest practicable extent, upon all clean energy sourced electricity available to the grid.

1.3 Provide fair and reasonable grid feed-in-tariffs which incorporate the value of greenhouse gas offsets and reduced transmission needs.

1.4 Transfer subsidies and government support (including research and development) from fossil fuel based energy to fund research and development on improving energy efficiency, storage, and large-scale clean energy sources such as geothermal, solar thermal and wind.

1.5 Support research into sustainable low-impact renewable, where sustainability includes avoiding competition with food production and does not require land clearing or impacts on biodiversity.

1.6 Undertake the construction of base and peak load clean electricity generating plants.

2. Introduce the following demand management measures to facilitate more sustainable consumption of electricity:

2.1 Introduce new and effective Mandatory Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for all residential and commercial buildings, including public and rental housing, incorporating passive solar and solar hot water, in stages to new construction and renovated buildings.

2.2 Offer full rebates for retrofitting existing houses and buildings, including rental properties, with energy saving devices and measures.

2.3 Extend Mandatory Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) to cover all appliances, large electric motors and internal combustion engines.

2.4 Introduce mandatory energy labelling for all electrical appliances that includes both the operating and standby power consumption.

2.5 Support a program where government funds the purchase and installation of solar panels to all houses then recoups the cost through savings in household energy bills over a 10 year period.

2.6 By a mixture of incentives, subsidies, taxes and regulation encourage energy efficiency improvements in construction, maintenance and improvements of dwellings.

2.7 Enact legislation to charter and support non-profit clean energy generation and storage co-operatives.

2.8 Assist the adoption of technologies, planning practices, product standards and economic incentives that promote energy efficiency and minimise the socio-economic impact of climate change GHG abatement strategies.

3. In relation to electricity generation and energy intensive manufacturing:

3.1 Maintain public ownership of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure as well as current electricity generation infrastructure.

3.2 Place a moratorium on the issuing of licenses for new coal fired power stations, the opening of new coal mines and expansion of existing mines until such time as “clean coal” technologies in all its stages (capture, transportation, sequestration, storage security) can be demonstrated at an industrial scale, based on sound science and engineering.

3.3 Reform Queensland's light metals sector by mandating increased energy efficiency of aluminium smelters, increasing recycling and supporting strategic investment in low-energy alternatives.

3.4 Ensure that any desalination plant is fully powered by clean energy sources specifically constructed and dedicated for this purpose. Such plants may supply power to the grid but can draw no power from the grid except to maintain an emergency standby state.

4. Assist affected communities in the transition from dependence on coal mining and coal-fired power stations. This would particularly emphasise the establishment of manufacturing and fabrication in regional areas in association with the construction of solar thermal power stations.

5. Prepare Queensland for the challenges associated with dwindling oil stocks (and increasing petrol prices) without switching to other polluting energy sources such as shale oil or coal-to-oil.

6. Ensure a binding ban on nuclear fission energy.

7. Encourage the installation of clean energy generation infrastructure by agricultural producers, business owners, community groups and householders to feed electricity into the grid.

8. Facilitate the establishment of small scale, local, clean energy generation and storage cooperatives to supply electricity to cooperative members and feed power into the grid.

9. Subsidise the installation of clean energy generation and storage for social housing, low income households, and the not-for-profit sector.

10. Progress rapidly to a system where all energy supply infrastructure development costs and consumption by new or existing large energy users is not subsidised directly or indirectly by smaller scale users.

11. Support more flexible business models for the ownership and operation of rooftop solar and household energy storage.

12. Plan for a transition from transport dependent on fossil fuels, to transport efficiency and mobile energy from renewable sources.