Special Update August 31 - It's not over for retail electricity!

NOTE - An emergency meeting of PeoplePower Blue Mountains is scheduled for Tuesday night, from 7.30pm, upstairs at Blackburn's Family Hotel, 15 Parke Street Katoomba. IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT PLEASE READ THE INFO BELOW ON HOW YOU CAN STILL HAVE IMPORTANT INPUT

For a brief few hours last Thursday it looked like we had won, and in any event we have had a partial victory.

While the generators have been kept in public hands the all important retailers - the people who send us our bills - are being targeted for a sell off despite the government's own hand-picked advisors recommending against this.

In February this year the Iemma government promised that privatisation would go to a vote. They have reneged on that commitment by pressing ahead with a proposal that will be a disaster for NSW consumers, jobs and the environment.

This issue, however, is far from over.

PeoplePower Blue Mountains has come up with a strategy that we believe can influence the decision to sell of electricity retailers.

We are starting a campaign where candidates across councils commit to establishing not-for-profit electricity retailers as a function of local government.

It works like this: two or more councils that share a region - think the Hunter, the Central West or Western Sydney - band together to purchase wholesale electricity that they then on-sell to ratepayers and residents on a not-for-profit basis.

The strengths are that it keeps electricity retail in publicly owned hands, protects consumers and creates job opportunities in electricity retail. There is also the opportunity for this model to develop the sort of bulk market for renewables that would make those forms of generation more viable. In short it has the capacity to make electricity affordable, reliable and sustainable.

With local government elections two weeks away we will need to work quickly to make this an issue in the upcoming council election campaign.

We already have a range of candidates across parties committed to implementing this program in Blue Mountains, Penrith and Blacktown local government areas. We are looking to expand the commitment to Lithgow, Bathurst, Newcastle , Maitland, Cessnock and Mudgee in coming days.

This would obviously influence the viability of selling off electricity retail (who would buy Integral Energy if it was going to have to compete with a not-for-profit retailer?). It would also blind-side the Government and make the forthcoming council elections a de-facto referendum on privatising retail electricity.

We need YOU to assist us in publicising and effecting this strategy across as many councils as possible.

We are very keen to see this idea get maximum exposure and ask for your assistance in this.

Things you can do include:

- Forwarding this update to as many of your friends as possible across NSW.
- Contacting council candidates and asking them to support establishing regional not-for-profit electricity retailers through councils working together. A list of council candidates for every council is available from http://election.nsw.gov.au/ElectionWebService/indexPage.html
- Come to the PeoplePower emergency meeting on Tuesday night (details at the top of this email)

If JackGreen can do it, so can local government.

Blue Mountains Electricity Charter

The second part of our strategy is getting our local, state and federal politicians to endorse our Blue Mountains Electricity Charter.

Because of the urgency of this issue we will be moving to adopt a charter on Tuesday night. A draft of the charter is below - if you have any additions, or amendments you would like to suggest but cannot attend the meeting please forward these through to peoplepowerbm@gmail.com as soon as possible so they can be included in the meeting. Otherwise you can discuss them at the meeting.

Draft

Community Charter For The Future Of Electricity In The Blue Mountains

The Ten Point Plan

The people of the Blue Mountains want reliable, sustainable and affordable electricity. We recognise that the current use of coal fired base load power stations is unsustainable, increasingly unreliable and ultimately unaffordable. We are committed to addressing the impact of climate change on future generations by reducing the use of carbon based electricity generation. To achieve this all levels of government must work within the following policy objectives.

1. The future of electricity needs to address the issue of climate change by moving to renewable energy supplies.

2. Managing the change from carbon-based electricity to renewable electricity requires electricity generation and distribution to remain in public hands.

3. The cost of this change must not be imposed on low-income earners.

4. The cost of this change should be supported by the issuing of high yield ‘Energy Bonds’.

5. Electricity efficiency must be increased in all households and businesses to decrease demand for electricity. Changes to household and business infrastructure to increase the efficiency of electricity usage will be subsidised by electricity generators.

6. To achieve objective 5 an education campaign amongst households and businesses will be implemented. This information for households and businesses will not only cover information on how to reduce electricity demand, but also on monitoring their demand through information on how to read your electricity meter.

7. The Blue Mountains must move to renewable electricity supplies as a matter of urgency through the creation of community owned and based generators powered by wind and solar.

8. As an interim measure the Blue Mountains may use gas powered “peaking plants” during the transition process.

9. The Blue Mountains recognises that there is no need for a new base load generator if objectives 2, 5, 7, and 8 are achieved.

10. All levels of government need to increase investment in renewable energy research, development and infrastructure rollout as a policy priority.