Earlier this week, we shared news of the NSW Government’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap and what the state’s renewable energy focus means for us. But it’s worth noting that New South Wales isn’t the only state or territory to have announced significant renewable energy policy plans this month.
The ACT Labor and Greens parties recently finalised a new power-sharing agreement in the Legislative Assembly, which will help the ACT work toward its target of net-zero emissions by 2045.
Like the NSW roadmap, the ACT agreement includes commitments to build large-scale energy storage projects and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. But it goes even further by including:
- financial and other incentives for households and not-for-profits who invest in rooftop solar panels, battery storage and zero-emission vehicles
- a legislative ban on certain new residential gas connections
- plans for all-electric commercial and residential developments
- requirements for all new legislation to have a climate impact analysis.
Given our interest in a sustainable energy future for Australia, we are of course enthusiastic about all of these governing commitments. But it is the provisions around EVs and battery storage that stand out, given our recent acquisition of Tembo e-LV B.V..
Tembo, along with our Aevitas critical power services companies, enables us to deliver a holistic suite of services in which:
- Tembo electrifies customers’ fleets
- JA Martin and Kenshaw retrofit sites to enable EV charging, and install renewable generation, battery and microgrid infrastructure
- VivoPower finds applications for batteries after they’re used in vehicles.
In this way, our solutions align well with the ACT actions on climate change. The ACT Government will ‘significantly expand the number of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs)’ by, among other things:
- setting an ambitious target for all new vehicle sales to be zero emission by 2030
- incentivising businesses and the community sector to choose ZEVs
- buying 90 battery electric buses over the next term
- creating a pathway for the ACT to use only zero emissions public transport, garbage trucks, taxi and rideshare vehicles by the mid-2030s
- building at least 50 EV charging stations across Canberra and the region, and working with service station providers on broader public charging infrastructure
- finding ways to retrofit existing commercial and residential buildings with charging infrastructure.
The government also plans to deliver at least 250 megawatts of battery storage.
We are encouraged not only to see the ACT again take the lead on efforts to reduce emissions, but also to see such broad commitment to sustainable policies across Australia and the US in just the last few weeks.
