Media release: EEC welcomes Climate Change Authority’s call to harness existing technology to cut emissions now 05 September 2024
The EEC welcomes today’s release of the Climate Change Authority (CCA)’s Sector Pathways Review, which considers decarbonisation across six Australian sectors.
The review will inform the development of the Australian Government’s plans to cut emissions across the economy.
While the CCA outlines many pathways to reaching net zero emissions, the report highlights how critical it is that we start by scaling up deployment of mature technologies as quickly as possible.
“Achieving a net zero economy is a big task, but the CCA is clear on where to start: driving the rapid deployment of existing, mature technologies that cut energy costs, improve productivity and slash emissions.” said EEC CEO Luke Menzel.
“In every sector, the CCA finds that technologies that enable efficiency and electrification play a crucial role, and are available at scale right now.
The six sectors focused on by the CCA are agriculture and land; built environment; electricity and energy; industry and waste; transport and resources.
“From insulation to improve the thermal performance of our homes, heat pumps for electrifying our factories, and super-efficient pumps and compressors for driving productivity improvements in mining and agriculture, every single sector has technology available that it can harness right now.”
The CCA report foresees that some residual emissions are likely to remain in the electricity sector in 2050, mainly from gas catering for periods of peak demand. But even these emissions can be minimised by boosting 'flexible demand' — aligning energy use with periods when renewable supply is most plentiful. While the built environment sector pathway highlights demand flexibility via grid integration of 'smart' buildings, flexible demand has applications across the economy.
“The EEC’s members are already working with industry to unlock significant sources of flexible demand to help integrate more renewables into the grid and manage peak demand,” Mr Menzel said.
“With policies to support more demand flexibility capacity, our vehicles, homes, commercial buildings and factories could play an even greater role in providing grid services and keep investments in expensive fossil fuel peaking plant to a minimum.”
Media enquiries: Tim Fisher, EEC Head of Engagement 0414 893 313 | tim.fisher@eec.org.au