New research, recently launched in the New South Wales North West town of Narrabri, that offers hope that renewable energy development could deliver hundreds of lasting jobs in the district.
Narrabri is the proposed location of a highly controversial coal seam gas proposal by Santos, but the research conducted and released by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, and commissioned by Lock The Gate, reveals that in comparison to Santos’ gas field, renewable energy could deliver more numerous and more lasting jobs.
Read the report here.
Summary of the report’s findings
- The NSW Renewable Energy Action Plan supports the former national target of 20% renewable energy by 2020. According to this plan, the NSW Government’s vision for a secure, reliable, affordable and clean energy future is estimated to create 6,000 jobs in regional NSW.
- To produce Renewable Narrabri, the Institute for Sustainable Futures undertook modelling of the renewable energy potential of Narrabri Shire, producing two scenarios of renewable energy development in the region; an Advanced Renewables Export Scenario (RE-ADV-X) and a Renewables Export Scenario (RE-X).
- Mapping of solar and wind resources, industry price and employment data were used to estimate the investment and employment potential of the two scenarios, and the area of land needed to provide those jobs. In both scenarios, the Narrabri Shire plays an important part in New South Wales’ energy transformation.
Advance Renewables Scenario: This scenario models the role that Narrabri could play if there was a rapid transformation of Australia to a wholly renewable energy system by 2030. This scenario would:
- Involve $6.5 billion of financial investment
- Install 3,800 MW of solar photovoltaic electricity, and 600 MW of wind power capacity
- Export most of this capacity to the national energy grid
- Use just 17% of the land area required for the proposed Narrabri Santos gas field
- Create 3,600 jobs during the construction and installation period, and 2,840 ongoing maintenance and operation jobs by 2030
- All ongoing jobs would be local to Narrabri because fly-in/fly-out workforce is not feasible
- New opportunities in vocational education and skills development will be developed
Renewables Export scenario: The second scenario is more modest and is highly achievable given current NSW policies relating to renewable energy. This scenario would:
- Involve $1 billion of financial investment
- Install 622 MW of solar photovoltaic electricity, and 175 MW of wind power capacity
- Allow for surplus energy to be exported to the national electricity market
- Use just 4% of the land area required for the proposed Narrabri Santos gasfield
- Create 500 permanent local jobs in operation and maintenance by 2030.
- These would all be local jobs because a fly-in/fly-out workforce is not feasible.