Our region has an abundance of renewable energy at its disposal. With our amazing access to wind and solar generation – and with the development of appropriate storage and firming, dispatchable and on-demand generation such as bio-energy – this region can be a carbon-neutral economy, if we choose to work together to achieve this.
The world must continue to move more quickly towards carbon neutrality. We simply have to do it faster! Investment in innovation will help us get there and there is so much happening across the world in the development of infrastructure, technology, bio-fuels, storage, EVs, the list goes on.
In an environment where there are literally millions of energy generation assets across the country, including every home with rooftop solar, we have a unique opportunity to reshape our national energy grid and ensure it is fit for purpose.
Committee for Ballarat has a vision of an energy network that captures the potential of locally generated renewable energy being distributed, shared, and used locally – then being exported into the national grid. It is a distributed and aggregated model of energy that is commonplace across much of the world. We just have not yet caught up – at least for a city of our scale.
On Friday 2 June, Committee for Ballarat will launch our vision to be Australia’s first community-owned energy network, powering a regional city of more than 100,000 people with 100% locally generated renewable energy.
Whilst there is much to do, it all starts with a collective, multi-stakeholder view that change is possible.
To be part of this exciting event please REGISTER HERE