Australia needed to look beyond wind and solar for the energy sources of the future, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in Wollongong on Thursday.
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The Prime Minister and Energy and Emissions Reductions Minister Angus Taylor visited the Port Kembla steelworks to announce a $1.9 billion investment in technologies of the future that can lead to falls in emissions.
That includes an extra $1.62 billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to direct towards developing technologies.
Mr Morrison said those emerging technologies "will not only assist us to meet and beat our 2030 emissions reduction targets, it will assist the process of setting up the technologies that we will rely on for the next 20 or 30 years beyond 2030".
The $1.9 billion in funds would be a "co-investment" with businesses like BlueScope to develop new technologies that would be "the game changers" for their industries.
Solar and wind power were unlikely to be a focus of this future investment.
"Solar panels and wind farms are now clearly commercially viable and have graduated from the need for government subsidies and the market has stepped up to invest," Mr Morrison said.
"The government will now focus its efforts on the next challenge: unlocking new technologies across the economy to help drive down costs, create jobs, improve reliability and reduce emissions."
Mr Morrison said the government would consider solar and wind investment "if they are new advanced technologies".
"We're not going to throw money at things that have already been established," he said. "If they're new technologies then we're interested."
Mr Taylor said wind and solar no longer needed development funding.
"The challenge for wind and solar now isn't subsidies, it's integration," Mr Taylor said.
"It's how we integrate wind and solar into our transmission network and how we make sure the back-up and storage is there, so when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, the energy is there."
CSIRO Chief Scientist Cathy Foley was also present at the BlueScope steelworks and said the future energy solution would not be found from a single source.
"The thing that's really important today is the realisation there's not one silver bullet, not one science experiment, not one technology that's going to make a difference and allow us to have the emissions that we need in order to have the world we want in the future," Dr Foley said.
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