Network powers up for clean energy future

THE Committee for Ballarat brought together local organisations, businesses, and schools last week to launch the Ballarat Energy Network project.

CEO Michael Poulton said Ballarat could be fully powered by renewable energy by connecting existing and new infrastructure.

“We can bring together thousands of energy generation assets we have in the city, and distribute the power locally,” he said.

“That network would become a community-owned asset where the profits, the buying and selling of the energy, stays within the regional community.

“Rather than spending $290 million a year on electricity with four big multi-national retailers, most of the money, ideally, would be retained within the local network.

“It’s aggregating renewable energy, building this community energy network that’s community-owned, and that invests back into the community, and that’s what buys you the social licence and the social value.”

Mr Poulton said the network would also aim to boost regional jobs, make electricity more affordable and reliable, accelerate the transition to net-zero emissions, and position the city as a sustainable leader.

Committee for Ballarat chair George Fong said electricity generated from solar, wind power, and biogas could be distributed as part of the effort.

“If we can bring all of that process together and start creating the energy and storage, what could possibly happen, and what we’re confident will happen, is that we start generating our own localised distributed energy processes,” he said.

“That way, we come literally off-grid. In the long term, if we have large and small players come in, both consumers and producers, and the infrastructure support, then effectively we can sustain our own energy.

“We’ll build it up to a point where we can transport it back to the grid and subsidise our own energy.”

Students from local high schools attended the launch last Friday, and Mr Fong said it’s important they play a key role in project leadership.

“We have a responsibility,” he said. “We don’t inherit this land from our children, we borrow it.

“What are we leaving for them? How is it going to affect them? They have told us they want change in the way we do things, and there are models that will sustain this generation in the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, to a world that they will own, that powers itself sustainably and cleanly.”