Environment Minister Rob Stokes announces plans to make New South Wales number one in energy efficiency and environmental policy at the recent Clean Energy Week gathering in Sydney. 1 Million Women thinks it's a great first step towards action on dangerous climate change.
Plans announced to make New South Wales, "Australia’s answer to California” (a reference to California's 33% renewable energy goal by 2020) by fast-tracking the use of renewable energy and finding new ways to reduce current overall waste.
The NSW government are going to lead the way, committing to covering as many of their buildings with solar panels as possible.
Then Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Wind farm operators and others are warning they will abandon the Australian market for future investments if the mandated requirement of supplying 41,000 gigawatt-hours of clean energy by 2020 is ditched.
Mr Stokes said NSW was committed to the 41,000 GW-h goal - a target that was the federal Coalition’s pre-election commitment.
The NSW Resource Efficiency Policy will take advantage of the government’s scale - with more than half a billion dollars spent on energy, water and waste each year - to demand savings.
Investment over the next decade is likely to reach $290 million and deliver savings to energy bills of $55 million a year by then, Mr Stokes said.
“We are the country’s largest employer," he said of the NSW government. "We purchase 1 per cent of all new cars in Australia and we own half of all the land in the state – around 400,000 square kilometres."
1 Million Women applauds the NSW governments efforts to lead the country towards a more sustainable future. We can only hope that other branches of government are watching and will soon follow suit.
READ MORE: at the Sydney Morning Herald