ANGUS TAYLOR: Ministers and state secretaries, I’m pleased to join you today to share Australia’s work on one of the defining challenges of our time: how Australia, and the world, bring down emissions to net zero as soon as possible, while growing our economies and jobs.

Australia is doing this by investing in R&D and supporting deployment of new and emerging energy technologies.

Last year, I launched Australia’s Technology Investment Roadmap.

The Roadmap will guide $18 billion of Australian Government investment in low emissions technologies over the next 10 years.

Our leadership will drive increased private sector financing: we are aiming to leverage at least $50 billion of co-investment in Australia by 2030.

The Roadmap sets economic targets across five priority areas. These are:

• Hydrogen;
• Long duration grid scale storage, to enable the integration of renewables;
• Low carbon steel and aluminium;
• Carbon capture technologies; and
• Soil carbon.

The targets for these technologies are very specific, set at parity with existing alternatives.

Take hydrogen, for example.

Our goal is to produce hydrogen below 2 Australian Dollars per kilogram, the level at which it becomes economically competitive with natural gas.

Our approach builds on our track record of achievement and innovation in climate policy.

These achievements include:

• the world’s most successful green bank – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation;
• one of the world’s largest and most rigorous offset schemes, the Emissions Reduction Fund, which has already delivered more than 80 million tonnes of abatement; and
• the most solar per person of any country in the world, and the most wind and solar per person of any country outside of Europe.

And our approach will enable us to meet and exceed our 2030 commitment under the Paris Agreement.

Australia is a trusted energy supplier to many of the countries in our region.

And if we can realise our hydrogen ambition, we will be well placed to continue supplying our partners with cheap, clean energy; to support clean growth and their efforts to decarbonise.

Getting low emissions technologies to parity means countries won’t have to choose between growth and decarbonisation.

The five technologies prioritised under our Roadmap have the potential to substantially reduce or eliminate emissions from sectors that account for 90% of global emissions – or around 45 billion tonnes annually.

Getting them to parity will make net zero practically achievable – not just for high income countries, but for developing nations, too.

It will enable the industrial scale decarbonisation that is required to for sustainable development and to limit the rise in global temperatures.

But Australia also recognises that we won’t be able to make these technologies globally scalable and commercially viable all on our own.

The race to develop effective vaccines against the coronavirus shows what can be achieved when the world works together towards a common goal.

We need to bring that same laser-like focus and collaborative effort to accelerating the development of practical technology pathways.

Australia is already collaborating with our trading and strategic partners, including Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, the UK and the US.

This year, ahead of COP26, we want to ramp up that collaboration.

We welcome ambition; but practical action and achievement are what actually matter.

Our technology-led plan will see Australia supporting global efforts to reduce emissions as we recover from the global pandemic.

Thank you.