WEST Australian Premier Alan Carpenter has raised the stakes on his anti-nuclear policy, yesterday revealing plans for a $37 million industry fund to promote the development of wind, solar and geothermal energy options. The climate change package, four days ahead of the state budget, includes a 20 per cent non-mandatory renewable energy target by 2025 and minimum requirements for sustainable building codes.
Mr Carpenter said the fund demonstrated the Labor Government's view that alternative energy sources were both available and viable. "We will not support the development of nuclear technology in Western Australia ... we don't need it and I don't believe the general community want it," he said.
"We have solar, we have wind, we have bio-energy and we can have, I believe, a very significant contribution from geothermal energy."
Mr Carpenter, with Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, a week ago voted in support of the ALP's decision to lift the 25-year-old ban on new uranium mines, but maintains the mineral will not be mined in Western Australia under a Labor government.
"We've got a clear policy on uranium mining and that is that there's not going to be any," the Premier said.
"I've been explaining that policy ... to industry and the resource sector for years. I don't find industry demanding that they be allowed to mine uranium or they'll take some sort of action against the government."
A key part of the climate change package is a set of codes requiring new-home builders to include plumbing options for alternative water supply and easy grey-water recycling.
The "Five Star Plus" rating is backed up by the Building Industry Code of Australia. Earlier plans for a West Australian version of the controversial building sustainability index BASIX, designed in NSW, have now been dropped in favour of a more industry-friendly code.
Housing Industry Association support for the regulations were contingent on the abolition of BASIX, which the building industry in NSW claims has helped increase the cost of new homes.
"It really is a much more practical way of going about it," HIA West Australian executive director Sheryl Chaffer said yesterday about the new model.
"The five star program ... appears to be modelled up so that it does in fact achieve the same outcomes (as BASIX) but without all the red tape."
The Premier said the new code could in the future halve domestic energy and water consumption at little to no additional long-term cost. "One to three thousand dollars would be the general cost ... for the new requirements," Mr Carpenter said. "Depending on human behaviour, we can get from those changes up to a 50 per cent reduction. On the average bill that will save around $750 per year."
The HIA said much of the detail on the new building codes was yet to be worked out. This included which lot sizes would require a rainwater tank, a grey-water system and the grey-water approval process from the Health Department. "They aren't clear at this point," Ms Chaffer said.
It was forecast this year that maximum demand for energy in Western Australia would increase by 3.2 per cent or 120 megawatts per year, until 2016.
This was higher than the growth forecast in 2005 and was due in part to the "increasing penetration of air-conditioning".
