Western Australian Labor has unveiled plans to slash the cost of home battery storage, with state government rebates of up to $5,000 per household, or $7,500 for households on the regional Horizon Power grid…
Eligible households would have up to 10 years to repay the no-interest loans of $10,000 or less…
Cook has also promised to invest $50 million of public money to a Battery Manufacturing Program of direct grants and low-interest loans to support the development of a home battery supply chain in the state.
What a policy winner!
I love the Manufacturing program part especially. I think it could be a great sustainable manufacturing industry for the Bunbury area.
A full production line from raw lithium, to ready to install batteries sent out of Bunbury port could be such a value add industry for the Southwest.
Issue being that lithium is underneath the state forrest and jarrah trees need it to grow. I’d rather trees. Not saying we don’t need lithium just be smart where we get it from.
Whilst trace lithium is important for many biological functions, it seems unlikely to me that a particular tree would require significant quantities of lithium to thrive.
Having a quick google it seems the issue is a particular forest that exists in a place that companies wished to prospect for lithium. I couldn’t find any evidence of a high lithium dependence for Jarrah trees.
I would be very surprised if it’s not possible for us to mine lithium deposits and also have healthy forests. Though typically companies just care less about flattening acers to get to the money making rocks.
Interesting. It seems to be scrubbed. They seem to be more worried about water supplies as a reason. But the reason that rehabilitation isn’t possible is that the two things these forrests need are bauxite and lithium.
Yeah, i was definitely skipping over that part about the forrests. Hadn’t clocked the need for Lithium for a trees’ nutrients.