Saving a World-Heritage icon is not “Political Bastardry”
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dr Hugh Spencer, of the Australian Tropical Research Foundation, Cape Tribulation, has penned a letter in the wake of the decision to stop Despite the Member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch’s description of the Federal Government’s decision to cease the highly controversial Renewable Energy micro grid supply for the Daintree Coast.
Despite the Member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch’s description of the Federal Government’s decision not to further fund the Daintree 240-volt reticulated microgrid decision as an “an act of political bastardry,” the conservation lobby and many locals laud the decision.
The Daintree Coast is a global World Heritage treasure and tourism icon and is one place where government investment should prioritise conservation, not development, for both environmental and economic reasons – visitors come expecting a pristine Wet Tropics environment, not suburbia.
The Government’s decision follows, Volt Advisory Group, the contractor, failing to meet its contractual commitments. Volt had also provided no guide as to how the extra $60 million required to complete the project was to be funded.
From the outset, the Daintree microgrid was poorly planned; the sensible and cost-effective solution was to have upgraded the many existing stand-alone solar systems:
- There was little community feedback sought or information given,
- The plan did not take account of the fact that most Daintree Coast households already have individual stand-alone solar power systems, and that these households were unlikely to pay the considerable cost of connection to the microgrid, fund the significant upgrades required to their domestic electrical systems to make them legally grid compliant, or start paying regular electricity bills.
- The main proponents of the microgrid were a number of commercial properties that had, at that time, not gone solar.
However, Cyclone Jasper Disaster Recovery grants, totalling $2.388 million, have changed the Coast’s electrical landscape. Many commercial properties, who were originally to be significant clients of the microgrid, have used these funds to install large solar power systems and no longer need a reticulated supply.
Conservationists argue that 240-volt micro grid would have driven new commercial and residential development in the area. Its downfall should be celebrated.
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