WA must act on solar: Mid West Energy

WA renewable energy development company Mid West Energy is urging the state government to act quickly following a decision by the Victorian government to support solar power projects.

The Brumby government announced plans to have 5 per cent of Victoria's energy supplied from large scale solar projects by 2020.

The projects will be supported by a feed-in tariff.

"There is absolutely no reason why Western Australia, with the best solar radiation of all States couldn't generate 5 per cent of its energy from the sun by 2020," said Mid West Energy managing director Richard Harris.

Mr Harris said he was worried that if the policy remained confined to Victoria, WA would miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in clean energy.

"This is exactly the kind of policy we have been advocating in both Western Australia and nationally and Premier Brumby is to be congratulated for his foresight in seeing the long term benefits of solar power to provide clean, renewable energy to power homes and industry," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Harris said that he hoped the company's 200MW solar power project near Perenjori in the Mid West region will be delivering clean, zero emission electricity to the grid by late 2013.