BY LUCAS BAIRD
City of Sydney councillors have questioned plans to install renewable energy trigenerators on the roof of Town Hall House.
Sydney Liberal Councillor Christine Forster has indicated that the price of the trigeneration technology far outweighs the benefits.
“It is overly expensive, it is beyond our core business; councils got out of power generation in NSW for a good reason,” Clr Forster said.
“It is a poor use of an extensive amount of ratepayers money to make a very minimal difference to our carbon emissions. I have opposed it from the very start,” she said.
Council have estimated that the entire project will cost upwards of $5 million.
Labor Councillor Linda Scott said this cost was additional to the waste spent on other trigen projects elsewhere.
“I am a supporter of the concept of trigeneration. My concern, however, is that the council has spent $6.4 million on trigeneration but not a watt of energy has been produced.”
“The Lord Mayor’s two previous trigen projects at Prince Alfred Park and at Green Square have now been cancelled,” she said.
When asked about the cancellation of these projects, a spokesperson for the council told City Hub that the city “investigated a fuel cell option for Prince Alfred Park pool two
years ago. At the time it was not economically viable but the City will revisit this option in the future.”
“Years after the City started investigating precinct trigen for Green Square, the commercial case for it was undermined by changes to the regulatory environment and the
Federal Government decision to scrap the future carbon price,” the spokesperson said.
However, the council still maintains that these plans are economically viable.
“The City of Sydney’s trigeneration projects are environmentally and economically sustainable,” the spokesperson said.
City of Sydney informed City Hub that the current project will be subsidised by the Federal Government, who will contribute $3.05 million to the project.
Clr Scott said that this isn’t enough, however, as she wants the council to adopt solar technology.
“I have repeatedly called on the council to move to renewable energy, specifically to look out how to better encourage the use of solar panels and solar technology in the city,” she said.
“The Lord Mayor recently defeated my motion to install solar panels on Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre and has consistently voted against my proposals to change our planning controls that block people from putting solar panels on their houses in heritage conservation areas.,” she said.
A council spokesperson said that this issue was currently under review.
The spokesperson also noted that the City of Sydney has installed 2,500 solar panels across 22 other sites, including the Redfern Oval Grandstand and Sydney Park Pavilion.
“The City is currently reviewing the Heritage Development Control Plan to look at ways to increase flexibility, including the issues of size, visual and structural impact and installation,” the spokesperson said.
University of Technology Sydney Professor Jiangou Zhu said that trigeneration must be used in conjunction with other renewable sources.
He said that without help from wind and solar power, the amount of energy created would be negligible and would not effectively help fight carbon emissions.
