Renewable energy to deliver jobs boom

Australia's leading renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro, says that thousands of new jobs will be created once the Federal Government's 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target is in place. Pacific Hydro calls on the Federal Parliament to pass this important legislation as soon as possible to ensure industry can begin investing and creating jobs in the industries of the future.

"While much has been made of the potential job losses due to action on climate change, what must be recognised is the tens of thousands of new jobs that will be created in building Australia's clean energy future", said Pacific Hydro CEO Rob Grant.

"A 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target will require investment of around $25 billion to build a scheme twice the size of the Snowy Mountains in half the time."

"This is nation building legislation", added Mr Grant. "The 20 per cent RET will significantly stimulate the economy and create tens of thousands of new jobs over the next decade."

"The experience from around the world where these sorts of targets are in place is that capacity can be mobilised quickly."

"At the moment we're waiting on the Government to get the legislation into Parliament, get the support of the Opposition and the Greens and get it through quickly", explained Mr Grant.

Pacific Hydro has 600MW of projects which will create $2 billion of investment into new clean energy infrastructure in Australia.

"Pacific Hydro's investment alone will create thousands of jobs mainly in regional areas in areas such as road building, concreting, steel fixing and steel fabrication", added Mr Grant.

"The jobs created in building renewable energy projects are all those sorts of jobs that might be under pressure at the moment because of the global financial crisis and are easily transferable from sectors like mining."

"There is no better time to focus on renewable energy infrastructure than now, we must legislate the RET as quickly as possible to create new jobs and limit the impact of the global economic crisis."

In the absence of targets in Australia, Pacific Hydro has invested $1 billion into clean energy infrastructure in Chile and Brazil, creating thousands of jobs overseas.

"As an Australian Company owned by around 4 million superannuates we would prefer to be investing and creating jobs in Australia", said Mr Grant.