WA Clean Energy Summit - Opening remarks by Jackie Trad, Clean Energy Council CEO

It’s great to see such an influential cross section of industry, government, investors, researchers and community leaders. The conversations we have together genuinely shape the national agenda.

Western Australia is no longer a peripheral player in Australia’s energy transition. It is at the centre. The Cook Government is delivering the settings that are positing WA as central and critical to our national energy transition and decarbonisation ambitions.

Just yesterday, we saw the announcement that the Cook Government is committing to buying the electricity from planned regional wind farms, providing the certainty needed to unlock more than 1 gigawatt of new generation.

Congratulations to the Minister and the government with this announcement – it’s showing that WA is leading the way.

That certainty is what gets projects built.

Long-term Power Purchase Agreements mean investors can commit capital, construction can begin, industry can plan with confidence and regional WA continues to create real jobs and essential infrastructure all while replacing coal with reliable, affordable power. 

WA has unique features and has been strategic and thoughtful about its plans based on these features. Leveraging state owned assets, the Cook Government has been able to secure alignment of its policy ambitions and policy outcomes.

This is unlike the east coast and the NEM where it is a lot more fragmented and complicated but interdependent.

The Cook Government is backing renewable energy because it is working - and working at scale.

Over the past year on multiple occasions, renewables have supplied more than 90% of demand in the South West Interconnected System.

90% of electricity demand was supplied by renewable energy.

I thought the naysayers told us – and are still telling us - it wouldn’t be possible? That clean energy was an ideological frolic and not a serious technology that could meet the needs of Australian families and businesses.

We all knew they were wrong, because our best scientists and engineers had done the work…. and doomsday politics can’t override physics.

The good news is the collective hard work of everyone in this room is paying off and success is being demonstrated in real time. And what has really changed the game is storage.

Big batteries are now outcompeting gas in critical moments in the grid. They are stepping in during evening peaks, during system stress events, and when thermal units falter. They respond in milliseconds. They stabilise frequency. They suppress price spikes.

For a state long defined by its gas resources, that is a profound shift. The pipeline of large-scale batteries in Western Australia is transforming how the system operates. This is no longer about whether storage works. It is about how quickly we scale it. 

Australia is now one of the largest battery markets in the world. Utility scale battery output surged last year, while gas generation declined.

Thanks to both the Albanese Government’s Cheaper Home Battery scheme, and the Cook Government’s Residential Battery Scheme, rooftop solar capacity continues to grow, and households are increasingly pairing panels with home batteries.

This isn’t a gradual transition. It is a structural shift in how energy is produced, moved and used.

And Western Australia is seizing the opportunity to lead it. Few places combine the scale of renewable resources, engineering capability, and critical minerals backed by a Government prepared to act.

The state’s Clean Energy Future Fund makes that clear. This is not just climate policy, it’s economic strategy.

The latest WA Budget reinforced that direction, investing in the renewables infrastructure and clean energy that will power traditional and new industries to create jobs and grow regional communities, while also delivering long-term competitiveness.

At the Clean Energy Council, our role is to work alongside governments and industry to ensure this transition is orderly, affordable and durable. Orderly means we maintain reliability as coal necessarily retires.

Affordable means we continue to drive down costs for households and businesses. Durable means delivering shared benefits for regional communities, Traditional Owners, farmers, local governments and all West Australians.

Western Australia has the opportunity to be a clean energy powerhouse in a decarbonising global economy. This is the next resources boom – and no state does that better than WA.

Not sure I’m allowed to say that as a Queenslander, but I’ll say it anyway.

We know that industry is saying 'we need order', consensus and getting everyone on the same page. WA is delivering that stability while the east coast is still trying to secure that.

The Clean Energy Council stands ready to partner with our members, with the Western Australian Government, and with everyone in this room to build on the success.

It is now my great pleasure to introduce the person leading Western Australia’s decarbonisation ambition and action.

I was literally single digit days into this role when I received my first message from a Federal Minister who asked if I’d met WA’s Energy Minister and if I hadn’t, I should probably make it a priority.

That wasn’t just a nod to the calibre and capability of the Minister but, a strategic understanding that in a contested and complicated reform journey, like the energy transition, sector leaders – many of whom are in this room - who are prepared to act collaboratively, be courageous and think inventively are and will continue to be the corner stones of the success of this multigenerational energy and economic transformation of our country and the Global economy.

And this is fundamentally what WACES is all about.

As Minister for Energy and Decarbonisation, the Honourable Amber-Jade Sanderson has and will continue to oversee a period of profound transformation in this state’s energy policy and investment landscape.

A transformation that will pay enormous dividends in the future for not only WA’s economic prosperity but, also our Nation’s economic prosperity.

Please join me in welcoming the Honourable Amber-Jade Sanderson MLA, to deliver the keynote address.