SOUTH AUSTRALIAN RESOURCES AND ENERGY INVESTMENT CONFERENCE

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:30): I rise to discuss the South Australian Resources and Energy Investment Conference which was held from 4 to 6 May. South Australia now leads our country, with an extraordinary array of operational environmental initiatives in hot fractured rock geothermal exploration; wind technology; the use of solar energy in public buildings, including this one; tree planting programs; recycling of glass and plastic bottles through a deposit scheme; the widely supported supermarket plastic bag ban; and our feed-in tariff arrangements. This is entirely due, I might add, to the forward thinking of the Rann Labor government. We are on the brink of an explosion in a variety of renewable energy technologies right here in South Australia. Indeed, we have attracted nearly 60 per cent of investment in geothermal power technology in Australia for the period 2002-13, enabled by the government's visionary and highly effective Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act.

The concept of geothermal power has been discussed by scientists for some decades now. For the benefit of those opposite who might not know what a hot rock is if they sat on one, I thought I would take the opportunity to spell out exactly what this means. Essentially, the idea is to pump water underground to heat it. The steam produced goes into a turbine which drives a generator. The result—clean electricity production. No fossil fuels burned, no need to transport or store those materials. That is something we all want. This is a technology that could bring enormous benefits to our state and our nation.

How does it work? Simply put, the deeper we go into the earth, the hotter the earth gets. Scientists need access to hot rocks, but cost implications mean that they need to be accessed at relatively shallow depths. In the remote north-east of our state, a promising area has been located. The area is well known to scientists due to the proximity of the Cooper Basin gas reserve, which provides natural gas to a number of state capitals, including Adelaide. The temperatures in a body of granite some four kilometres below this area are sufficiently high—about 250°—making it the hottest proximate non-volcanic rock ever found and consistent for the desired purpose. The geothermal stress fracture conditions are ideal, the drilling conditions familiar.

One expert, Dr Chopra of the Australian National University, has said that 'there's enough energy in that volume of rock to power the whole nation for more than 100 years—with greenhouse gas free emissions.' While this may sound ambitious, Professor Tim Flannery writing in The Sydney Morning Herald in September 2005 said:

This one rock body in South Australia is estimated to contain enough heat to supply all Australia's power needs for 75 years, at a cost equivalent to that of brown coal, without the carbon dioxide emissions.

So vast is the resource that distance to market is no object, for power can be pumped down the power line in such volumes as to overcome any transmission losses.

We all know that those opposite—and their federal counterparts—have had their head in the sand with regard to these matters. Indeed, who could forget Senator Minchin's extraordinary comments on climate change on Four Corners in November 2009, when he said:

For the extreme left (climate change) provides the opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world...

Sorry, Senator Minchin (soon to be ex-Senator Minchin), that remark was not only ludicrous, but it was deliberately fearmongering.

Climate change and its ramifications are not the product of a left wing conspiracy. They are real, and the Rann Labor government is taking action on the issue while looking towards the unparalleled community and economic benefits such technologies can bring to South Australia. That is why this conference was so timely.

The prospectivity of South Australia continues to draw attention from explorers and miners around the world, with the state government's incentives acting as a catalyst for action. There have been several important new discoveries, along with a scramble of joint venture deals being done as confidence in the state grows. Those who attended the conference were executives of major mining companies, investors, representatives of mining service industries, government representatives, mining consultants and a wide range of media. A technical forum was also held during the three day event. When outlining last year's budget, premier Rann stated:

The Rudd government has asked every state to reach a 20 per cent target for renewable electricity generation by 2020. We had a much more ambitious target in South Australia—to reach that 20 per cent by 2014.

We are going to reach our target ahead of our 2014 deadline, and years ahead of the national deadline. So (our new) even tougher target of 33 per cent by 2020...will keep us at the forefront internationally of jurisdictions supporting renewable energy.

Time expired.