The recent John Freebairn Lecture in Public Policy delivered by Professor Ross Garnaut AO is now available via video.
Professor Ross Garnaut AO is a Professorial Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Melbourne.
He is the author of a number of influential reports to Government, including The Garnaut Climate Change Review and The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia and the Global Response to Climate Change.
Video of Professor Ross Garnaut’s speech is available here.
During the Lecture, Professor Garnaut highlights the massive changes under way in the energy industry.
“With solar photovoltaic costs continuing to fall and Australians like other consumers finding ways to use less electricity, demand for power from the centralized system is likely to continue to shrink,” he says.
“The centralized system was once a major growth industry. It is time to think of it as an important but shrinking provider of services that are complementary to an expanding decentralized system.”
He also mentions the intended demise of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA); axed by the Abbott Government.
“There is nothing new about Government breaches of election promises… The surprise is not the breach of a commitment, but that ARENA had never been discussed as possibly being slated for abolition.”
Professor Garnaut says a head-in-the-sand approach and desperately clutching to old ways when it comes to energy was simply won’t work. He warns continuing major investment in coal is risky; a point highlighted in a recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
“The reality that others are moving to reduce the energy intensity of economic activity and the emissions intensity of energy use has large implications for Australia, even if we try to ignore them.”
“The actions of others have brought down the costs of renewable energy to the extent that the economic foundations of the old centralized power systems have been shaken and cracked,” he says.
“Australia has immense advantages as a producer of energy. We now must use these advantages in the low carbon world to which the rest of the world has been travelling gradually and along which it will continue to travel slowly or fast. This is the world for which Australians must construct energy policy for the future.”
The full transcript of Professor Garnaut’s speech can be downloaded here (PDF).
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