Turning WA into a state powered 100 per cent by renewable energy can be acheived by 2029, say the state's Green party.
WA Greens' Senator Scott Ludlam launched the Green Energy 2029 proposal on Sunday and said Western Australia cannot afford to wait decades to make the change to renewable energy sources.
The Greens say that with WA's abundance of sunlight, wind and geothermal resources, changing to renewable energy over the next 16 years will not cost anymore than what has been proposed by the Liberal-National Government he said.
"The state government is actually proposing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars refurbishing the obsolete Muja coal-fired power station and that for me is all you need to know about how wrong this government's priorities are," said Mr Ludlam.
"For that amount of money you can actually start buying serious renewable energy."
Which, for the general taxpayer, will mean energy bills are lower and will give WA "a fighting chance against climate change" said Mr Ludlam.
Mr Ludlam says the Greens plan will focus powering the state only on renewables and halving WA's total energy demand through energy efficiency, fuel switching and energy conservation by 2029.
The proposal outlines two scenario's between $57 - $62 billion which meet the state's electricity demand using a combination of solar, wind, wave, geothermal and biomass energy.
The first option relies on solar energy which is stored using large-scale concentrator-field technology that has been deployed in Spain over the last 12 months.
Western Australia would be the third site in the world to use the technology said Mr Ludlam.
Mr Ludlam says the second option considered is a more dispersed approach, that balances the lowest-cost renewables, focusing on wind and solar.
The current Liberal-National government has allocated almost $28 million towards the development of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector.
Renewable energy generation has grown to meet more than 9 per cent of electricity consumption in Western Australia's South West Interconnected System in 2011-12, up from around 5.5 per cent in 2010-11.
Key features of the Green's Energy 2029 plan:
- Harnessing WA's renewable resources: solar, wind, wave, geothermal and biomass energy
- Using 'controllable' renewable energy sources to meet gaps in baseload generation
- Flattening peak demands through demand-side management tools such as smart metering
- Switching transport, mining and manufacturing industries over to renewable energy
Conservation Council of Western Australia climate and energy program manager, Jamie Hanson, backed the launch.
"WA has amazing renewable energy resources. We can be a world leader in a burgeoning field," he said.
