Canberra Liberals leader Elizabeth Lee has come back from COP26 with innovative ideas for climate action and reducing the carbon footprint; next year, she will table motions in the Legislative Assembly based on what she learnt at COP26.
“We can be at the forefront of new technology and research when it comes to clean energy,” she said. “I’m looking forward to exploring new opportunities for the ACT.”
Ms Lee attended COP26 as a delegate of the Coalition for Conservation, an environmentalist forum for centre-right and conservative politicians who support decarbonization.
“I looked at this as a great opportunity [to] learn from some of the best minds in the world about the carbon-neutral future and what other countries are doing to reach Net Zero,” she said.
Ms Lee believes Canberra can be at the front of clean energy technology. “With six tertiary institutions, there’s a lot of smarts,” she told the GLOBE International Legislators Summit.
So she was delighted when Canberra’s Sophia Hamblin Wang, a carbon technologist and entrepreneur, won the business pitch (against 2,700 people) for her process converting industrial carbon dioxide into building materials.
“That’s phenomenal,” Ms Lee said. “I’m very excited to see her, a local Canberran, doing really well in this space.”
Electronic vehicles were another hot topic; just before Ms Lee went, the UK announced it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. Although Australia has been a hard market, Ms Lee was confident that EV take-up in Australia would take off.
“The ACT Government obviously has a lot of incentives to push up EV uptake,” she noted.
Although some people were still hesitant, their concerns about prohibitive costs, lack of charging stations, and range anxiety had been addressed significantly over the last 18 months, and would get better, she thought. Ms Lee test-drove a Tesla, which she thought was “pretty cool”.
There was a lot of excitement overseas that Australia could be a big player in offshore wind, given its vast coastline, Ms Lee said. The University of Technology Sydney recently predicted Australia could become an energy superpower. Offshore wind stations less than 100km from existing substations could generate 2,000 gigawatts – far more than current and projected energy demand, and more than from diesel.
“Too bad the ACT is a city surrounded by land!” Ms Lee said. “But for the Federal Government, I think there’s a lot of potential and opportunity there.”
Australia was also recognised as a world leader in solar power, Ms Lee noted. It is No. 1 in the world for solar power (810 watts) per capita, while, Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor said last month, more than a quarter of houses and many non-residential buildings had solar – some three million rooftop solar installations.
Seaweed was another opportunity, Ms Lee said, apparently six times more effective and efficient than trees at capturing carbon.
But fossil fuels are also a large part of Australia’s economy; it is the fifth largest producer and second largest exporter of coal, and has the third largest reserves in the world. Australia did not sign the UN’s Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement at COP26; Mr Taylor said the Coalition would not “wipe out industries”. The ACT Government, however, signed the anti-coal pledge.
The rest of the world acknowledged that Australia is resource-rich and relies heavily on exports, especially coal and iron ore, Ms Lee said.
“It is going to be a challenge for Australia, but lifting our reliance on coal needs to be done,” she said. “They know that we need to get there, and they want us to get there.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia would reach net zero emissions by 2050, but his policy has been criticised, including by the ACT’s Federal representatives. Before she went to Scotland, ACT Labor and the Greens urged Ms Lee to persuade her Federal colleagues to adopt more ambitious targets than their 26 to 28 per cent emissions reduction on 2005 levels by 2030, and a projected cut of 30 to 35 per cent by the end of the decade. Ms Lee wrote to the Prime Minister outlining the “great opportunities for the future of Australia” going carbon neutral would bring.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know how difficult it is for the Prime Minister in having to consider the far reaches of our vast country,” she said. “In Canberra, I think we are very fortunate because of our size and the fact that we don’t have 30,000 jobs that are hinged on shutting down an industry overnight. So, it is a very complex issue.”
Ms Lee came away from COP26 feeling confident about climate action.
“It’s easy to be all doom and gloom about what’s happening, because it is a serious issue, and we as the human race have to take responsibility. There’s no doubt about that.
“But I’m very optimistic about our future. This is a global problem, requiring a global solution, but I have every confidence in the world that Canberrans and Australians will take this issue seriously, and we will get to a place where we’ll be leaving our future better and cleaner for our next-generation.”
