Press conference, Newcastle

And we're here because Newcastle City Council has been taking the lead on renewable energy for some time, but this is really going to kick the City of Newcastle into a whole new league. We've got an amazing solar farm here at Summerhill Waste Management Centre, but we're about to add a community scale battery. This is a battery that can generate or store rather up to 10 megawatts per hour.

That's going to be one battery, part of a very important network of batteries across the city of Newcastle. So there'll be another 11 batteries taken right across the city, ensuring that the City of Newcastle is able to power all of its public utilities on renewable energy but driving, importantly, big costs down. We know that solar and wind are now Australia's cheapest forms of power, part of more than 50% of the energy mix in our national grid and the City of Newcastle has been the lead in making sure that they apply all of that power smarts to local government areas.

I think the significance of this community scale battery will really be that it starts making for Council some of those big energy users in civic infrastructure like the beautiful Civic Theatre in Newcastle but all of the public swimming pools, the community libraries, the art gallery, all of these places that Novacastrians love and treasure, are now going to be powered on 100% renewable that is actually generated here, stored here and then distributed through the local feed system into those venues.

So that's going to help drive costs down big time for Council. And so it's been terrific to partner. The Minister will have more to say about where this money is coming from, but of course we have a big renewable energy grant system through ARENA and that has been having these partnerships with local government is really important for us now.

Driving the clean energy projects forward and driving down costs. And of course, this builds off the back of some really critical work that Albanese Labor Government's been doing around household batteries. More than 10,000 households in our region now have a battery connected to their home.

More than 2,500 in my electorate alone at Newcastle. This is making power cheaper, it's more reliable and its clean energy going into our households. Novacastrians have taken that up with great gusto as have people across the region.

So, I know they're going to just love having these big community scale batteries now, making sure that we are really leaning in to be the leaders that we will be. You know, we have generated power for all of our time here in Newcastle and the Hunter region. And now we're generating, storing and distributing power in new forms of energy.

And that's a great thing. I am full of optimism about the future of our region and I know that we will lead Australia when it comes to what that transition looks like. So getting it right here in Newcastle means we help all our colleagues and friends right across the nation to help get it right too.

On that note, I'm going to hand across to Minister to just announce exactly what the funding arrangements have been to make sure this project happens. Over to you, Minister Watt. MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Well, thanks very much, Sharon.

It's an absolute pleasure to be back here in Newcastle with you. And I know that you've been such a champion for the funding that sits behind today's announcement. It's also an absolute pleasure to meet for the first time the new Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Gavin Morris.

And as Sharon said, we're really delighted to have been able to fund this project in partnership with the City of Newcastle. I think all Australians want to see their governments work together to solve different challenges. And that's exactly what's happened when it comes to today's announcement.

As Sharon has said, I'm very pleased today to be able to announce that the Albanese Government will be providing $5 million in funding to jointly fund a new battery right here at the Summerhill Solar Farm. This project, as I say, is being funded jointly with the City of Newcastle and we're very grateful to the nearly $7 million of funding that has come through the City of Newcastle.

And this shows that all different levels of government right across the country are facing up to the challenge that we have when it comes to delivering the cheapest, cleanest possible forms of electricity that we can for the future. I think all Australians know that the Hunter has been an energy powerhouse as a region for our country for generations, has been and is a major coal producer and it's also going to be an increasingly important generator and supplier of the cheaper, cleaner, renewable energy that we know Australia and the world is going to depend upon going forward.

As Sharon has mentioned, it is absolutely beyond doubt, it has been scientifically proven that renewable energy is the cheapest as well as the cleanest form of power that we can produce as a country going forward. And that's why the Albanese Government is stepping up to fund projects like this. Every day this solar farm is generating lots of power to be used in council facilities.

But of course, some of that power isn't able to be harnessed and used at times when we're reliant on other forms of power. Building a battery here, as we will be doing with the City of Newcastle, means that that excess power that's generated at this solar farm can be stored in these batteries and then ploughed into use in those city facilities like theatres, pools, libraries and childcare centres.

And that's good news both for the City of Newcastle as a whole but for Newcastle residents, because it means that this is the way that we can bring power prices down by increasingly using those cheaper forms of power like renewables and of course it also means that we can reduce the emissions that we're generating through our power usage as well. So two good reasons: cheaper bills, lower emissions for governments to be funding these kinds of projects.

It's why we're really proud to do so with the City of Newcastle. And I might just mention, of course there are some people in the political scene around Australia at the moment who are saying that we don't need to worry about net zero by 2050, that we don't need to invest in renewable power. What that is saying to people is that they want higher power prices as well as higher emissions.

The Albanese Government is for lower power prices and lower emissions and that's why we're investing in important community projects like this battery here in Newcastle. I'll just invite the Lord Mayor to have a chat with you as well and then we're obviously happy to take questions. GAVIN MORRIS, CITY OF NEWCASTLE LORD MAYOR: Thank you.

Well first of all thank you so much to the Federal Government for this incredible initiative here. This is extremely exciting for us. Newcastle City Council is absolutely spearheading the attack towards renewables, and this is really going to help us reach net zero for our infrastructure by 2030.

So we say thank you. Yes, we have committed the $7 million towards renewables and this $5 million gives us that 12 million. How is it going to work?

Well, it's quite brilliant. We will be generating a lot of power here during peak times and during peak times now we can store that energy and then it'll be pumped back out into the grid during peak periods of use. And with all of the other batteries, with our entire network, take the Civic Theatre, for example.

It's really quite brilliant. A lot of the time the Civic Theatre is sitting there not in use, but we'll be able to store that energy in the battery, say at the Civic Theatre, and then when we've got the shows, we'll be able to draw that energy from the batteries. And it's a very similar process now at our museums, the art galleries, and also the swimming pools.

So, thank you, it's an absolute joy. It was a lovely phone call from Sharon that I received yesterday giving us the news. And what an incredible achievement that Newcastle City Council may be able to accomplish by 2030 that we are at net zero as far as our infrastructure is concerned.

Last night we had the Environmental Action Plan, it was a public briefing, and this helps us remain on target for that. The exciting part of this project is that we're going to actually share the knowledge that we acquire in the coming years and we'll be helping other councils right throughout our community here in the Hunter, but right throughout Australia because we plan on spearheading the movement towards renewable energy.

JOURNALIST: Minister, just any idea of a timeline on this battery first of all? MURRAY WATT: Yes, so one point we probably haven't made clear is that this project as a whole, the $12 million, as I say, will be building a big battery here at the solar farm, but it will also be building 11 separate batteries at other council facilities as well. So it's a complete network of those projects.

For the battery that's being built here, we expect that to be up and running over the next couple of years. Some of the other projects may take a little bit longer, but I was informed just before we stepped up to do the press conference that we expect all of those projects to be completed by 2029. JOURNALIST: One Nation is saying that they'd like to see more coal-fired power stations built, clean burning coal-fired power stations.

How do you respond to that? MURRAY WATT: Yeah, well I think that's another example of where One Nation like to say things to people that they know they can't actually deliver. There's a reason that no one in Australia, government or private sector, has built a new coal-fired power station in Australia for many years and that's because it's a much more expensive way to deliver the power that we need.

One of the reasons that we are investing in these renewable projects is to reduce emissions. But it's also the cheapest form of new power available. I mean, if you were building a new house or renovating your house, you wouldn't use materials that have become more expensive over time.

You'd use the cheapest, most efficient materials and that when it comes to energy is renewable energy. I think One Nation, I know they're out and about promising lots of things to people, but what we see from One Nation is when they go to Canberra, they don't actually back up their words. They don't vote to support working people.

They vote for higher power prices by supporting new coal-fired power stations. They vote against wage rises. They vote against extra funding for the health care system.

They vote against extra funding for housing. In every possible way, they vote against the interests of the working people who they say they defend. JOURNALIST: You mentioned that there was going to be some savings for Council, whoever's best placed to speak on this, but has there been any analysis done on how much a project like this could save Council?

GAVIN MORRIS: How it is going to work for Council that we're able to get the cost down, if we're using renewable energy generated by the sun at our museums, at the Civic Theatre, at the swimming pools, the art gallery, etc, it means that we're covering those costs and we're not in that position, we're not forced into that position to put those costs onto the table for ratepayers.

So, the objective here is to make sure that we keep our costs down as low as we can, so we don't have to force those costs onto ratepayers in the future. JOURNALIST: So, does that mean those services, whether it's pools or the Civic Theatre, we can expect the cost to be lower for people that are attending and using those services? GAVIN MORRIS : At this point what we're focused on is keeping the cost for us down, not per se the price of a ticket.

We've got to cover the cost from all of our infrastructure and that's been quite expensive. If you're looking at the pure cost of diesel trucks per se, the cost of diesel over the past six months has risen to the point that it has made it quite expensive and that has to go into the budget. The more that we can rely on renewables as we move into the future, the less susceptible that we are as far as the fluctuating prices of fuel are concerned.

JOURNALIST: Is there a specific figure or any modelling that's been done to say how much this will save Council in the next five years or so? GAVIN MORRIS: Look, we haven't looked at all of that but you know our plan is to be completely at net zero for all of our infrastructure by 2030 and this is going to help us remain on target for that. So, if we can look after our own energy costs that everything is self-reliant obviously that makes for a very successful council.

And we are a council that is leading the way in this realm. So, this is really exciting for all of the workers, and they've done an incredibly hard job and are working very hard to focus on making this a more secure future for our Council as far as energy is concerned. JOURNALIST: There was some discussion this morning around the public pools and whether this would potentially allow pools to stay open for longer.

Is that something Council would consider as a benefit for this? GAVIN MORRIS: We are looking at having one pool as a trial to be open all year round, but that's not during the nighttime hours. It's purely during the day.

So, look, this opens up a lot of possibilities, and those kinds of possibilities are something that we could potentially look at in the future. JOURNALIST: Just a question for Minister Watt, if that's okay. Minister, there's a lot of chatter at the moment about the Upper Hunter, about AI data centres strategically placed out there because they're near renewable energy projects, but also very close to a lot of waters, whether it's our dams or lakes.

What work is the Government doing to make sure that people in that region get access to that water first? MURRAY WATT: It's a really important question both for this region and the country as a whole. Our Government is very supportive of seeing those new data centres being built in different parts of the country, we want to attract that kind of investment and the jobs that come with it.

We need to do that though in a way that it doesn't end up producing a negative result for households when it comes to energy and water supplies. We know that depending how data centres are built, they can either use a lot of energy or less energy. They can use a lot of water or less water.

And what we've done as a Government, led by Tim Ayres and Andrew Charlton, is put in place expectations of data centre developers about what we expect of them when it comes to energy use and water use. My colleague Chris Bowen as the Energy Minister has been leading the work with state and territory energy ministers to make clear to data centre developers that if they want to develop a data centre they need to contribute to the overall supply of power renewably, rather than just drain the system of resources that are already there.

So, we'll be expecting data centre developers to make a contribution to increase the amount of energy that's available to all Australians, not reduce it. Similarly when it comes to water, I've got active discussions underway with the state and territory water ministers about what sort of rules and guidelines we need to put in place around data centre developers to make sure that those data centres don't drain the water that all of us need to use and that they actually contribute to that system as well.

Now, we’re working through what that might look like but it could involve things like requirements around using recycled water or it could involve requirements around using the types of technology to power a data centre that rely on less water. So those active discussions are underway at the moment and when we see state and territory ministers meet with federal ministers again over the next couple of months, we'll have a bit more to say about that.

JOURNALIST: Understand it's a work in progress, I totally understand that. The community up in Upper Hunter has been suffering from drought and a lot of the farms there are really under strain and are concerned. Are part of your discussions making sure that the locals in these areas where this investment is going to be get priority access to water in times of drought?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, well as I say, the rules and guidelines that we will be applying to data centres are currently under development, so where we're at is at a sort of a principle stage and the principle that we've got is to make sure that other users of water, whether they be farmers, households, businesses, councils, continue to have access to the water that they need rather than all going towards data centre developers.

As I say, we welcome that investment. We want to see those data centres built around the country. We want the jobs invested to come with them, but we don't want to see that done at the expense of farmers, households, councils, businesses as well, and we think we can do that.

JOURNALIST: Back on the batteries, I was just wondering what is it that makes this form of energy more reliable for people in Newcastle? MURRAY WATT : Why don't I kick off, but Sharon and Gavin may like to add to this as well. The point about a battery is that it's a little bit like a dam when it comes to water.

You know, when we have rainfall and it goes into our river systems, we don't use all of that water at the time. But some of that water is stored in dams so that it can be used at times when we have less rainfall. Similarly, when it comes to a battery, this opens up the opportunity to store excess solar power that is generated through the day but isn't actually being used.

It can be stored and then used at a time when we see higher demand for power. And that's one of the reasons why it also helps to even out the prices of electricity as well. What we tend to see with the electricity market is that at particular points of the day, usually early in the day when everyone's getting ready for work or at night time when they've got their machines and their dishwashers going as well there's a lot of demand for power in the system and what that tends to mean is that the price of electricity becomes higher.

If we can be supplying this stored power from batteries into the market at those times of peak demand it can help keep those prices down as well as of course producing that power in a much cleaner fashion as well. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.