Monday 17/3/2008 Page: 6
THE State Government wants to power the Gold Coast desalination plant with green energy, but consumers will be slugged twice the price of traditional electricity. The $1.2 billion Tugun plant will be one of Queensland's most energy hungry pieces of infrastructure when it comes on line in November, using 200,000 megawatts of power a year and emitting as much carbon as a city the size of Mount Isa.Premier Anna Bligh yesterday announced plans to make the facility carbon-neutral. She said it would cost between $18 million and $19 million a year to power the plant using renewable energy, compared with up to $10 million for coal-fired electricity.
But Ms Bligh said the extra cost of using green power would add only $1 to $2 a year to every householders' water bill and believed it would be supported by southeast Queenslanders to help reduce climate change. "Green energy is close to double the cost of brown energy. But spread that across all water users and it becomes a very affordable, very realistic investment in the environment." she said.
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