Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has moved to assuage concerns that Australians could lose jobs under her government’s ambitious clean energy plan.
The Labor government’s A$62 billion (US$39.59 billion) plan includes a promise to create 100,000 new jobs by 2040.
“Every worker who’s currently working at a coal-fired power station will absolutely be guaranteed a job as we move into this clean, green industrial revolution,” she told reporters on Sept. 29.
“We’re building two new hydro dams, a huge transmission grid that goes up and down the east coast of our state, and there will be billions of dollars of investment in wind farms, solar farms, in hydrogen, and in batteries,” she said.
Concerns have been raised in the past over what kind of jobs are created in the green energy industry.
Cian Hussey, adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, warned jobs in the field were not necessarily as higher paying compared to manufacturing and mining occupations.
“The Accenture report [on clean energy jobs] gives away the ruse when it says that “clean exports include industries that employ more people per dollar of revenue than the current fossil fuel industry”—the translation for laypersons: clean export industries create less value than the fossil fuel industry per worker, and as such are likely to pay lower wages to their workers.”
On Sept. 28, Palaszczuk revealed the bold plan for the state’s energy future which includes overhauling the grid so that 70 percent of the state’s power needs are supplied by renewables by 2032 and 80 percent by 2035. Currently, around 75 percent of the state’s power comes from coal-fired generation.
The decision to invest heavily in renewable generators comes amid ongoing price hikes to the power bills of Queenslanders.
