Transcription of Managing Director and CEO of AGL Energy Limited (ASX:AGL) Andy Vesey’s discussion on the opportunities for AGL and the energy sector, following COP21 in December 2015
 
 
Coming out of Paris we see a lot of opportunities, but they were opportunities we saw before going to Paris. We’ve been a big supporter of the Commonwealth Government’s two-degree goal, when it comes to climate. And we have done a number of things, including actually coming out with our Greenhouse Gas Policy, which has put end dates on all our conventional coal plants, with the first closing in 2022 and the last in 2048.
 
So in that, there are opportunities because what we need to see is the exit of the older, dirtier coal plants. Why, because we need to see investment in new technology. Coming out of Paris, our commitments on CO2 before Australia, it’s not only about reducing CO2, it’s about modernisation of its infrastructure. 75 per cent of coal generation in the national energy market is beyond its original design life. So this is a real issue.
 
So the opportunities we see are in conventional investments at the grid level, to compliment what we foresee as thousands of megawatts of new renewables that need to come online. These types of investments are high-speed gas turbines; advanced batteries at the grid levels that will allow these intermittent sources to operate and deliver the reliability, and security that Australians are used to.
 
We see the investments in traditional renewables, large-scale renewables and as I said, what’s important here is that we make room for these. We’re about 7,000 megawatts oversupplied. So we have to make room for these new cleaner investments, not only to reduce the CO2 impact, but again to modernise. And to do this we need innovative investment options, so that we can match investors with the type of risk they want to see. But the most important part is to get that supply and demand balance into place. And we think there’re a number of policy mechanisms to do that.
 
Lastly, one that’s really exciting for us is actually getting the consumers to exercise their choice and options and services to participate in the energy markets. Here we’re talking about distributed energy resources, small-scale batteries, rooftop solars, controls that will allow them to participate, not only in their own consumption, but production and use of electricity.
 
So we say as we move forward into this very exciting future in this carbon constrained future, is not only the modernisation of the system, but really bringing real customer choice in energy consumption. And good decisions where consumers can not only get a better value, but can be participants in their own energy future.
 
 
Ends