The race to decarbonise

Bob Carr: Well ladies and gentlemen I'm Bob Carr from the University of Technology Sydney from the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Professor of Business and Climate. In this dash to Glasgow COP26 let's talk about where we stand in the race to decarbonise. Today the Prime Minister made a statement confirming Net Zero emissions by 2050 is the government's goal and we might begin by talking about that. I'm delighted to welcome Davina Rooney who's the Chief Executive Officer of the Green Building Council of Australia, Johanna Bowyer the lead research analyst for the remarkable Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) where she specialises in Australian electricity, and Dr Gabrielle Kuiper who's also with IEEFA as a guest contributor.

Well to the panel, the Prime Minister made his statement today. I wonder very quickly beginning with you Johanna, I could get quick impressions, what do you make of the Prime Minister's statement?

Johanna Bowyer: Quick impressions, it's fantastic that we've got support for a Net Zero target but we would like to see definitely faster reductions in emissions especially to 2030. The UN has said we need more like 45 per cent and the Climate Council has said we need 75 per cent emissions reduction for 2030, whereas the Australian commitment from the announcement today is 30 to 35 per cent. That is one area of potential improvement and also to see some of these targets in legislation rather than just in plan.

Bob Carr: Davina what are your thoughts on the Prime Minister’s statement getting us there after what seems to be a decade and a half of debate to that Net Zero emissions by 2050.

Davina Rooney: Look it's wonderful to have a consensus in this space but I think to Johanna's point we've really got to be focused on action now. Net Zero for the whole economy by 2050 means Net Zero 2030 in operation for buildings and we really need to be focused on driving those short-term actions. If you look at the IPCC report the International Energy Agency report, they tell us we're going into the decade of action so that there's actually time to get down to Net Zero by 2050. We welcome this as a first step and we look forward to partnering on the next steps, which are critical to happen very quickly.

Bob Carr: And Gabrielle your views.

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: I'm going to be a little bit more controversial because I first heard about what was then called the enhanced greenhouse effect in 1992, so I think after 30 years I'm not sure what's disturbing the speed at which the climate is changing or the denial and the delay and the lack of serious attention to this vital issue by the Commonwealth Government.  

 I think that as Australians we need to call the bullshit where we see it and to have a plan that doesn't have any substance, doesn't take us anywhere, but what is incredibly fortunate is that we can have great hope because we've got a whole series of state and territory governments around the country that are taking genuine action and we've also got a lot of corporate players who are moving far ahead of government and are putting money into rapid decarbonisation. 

So, we're seeing state governments and corporates moving far ahead of the Federal Government and that will help Australia make the transition, despite the Federal Government.

Bob Carr: Well, Gabrielle here's the big surprise of the evening, I've got you coming in before Prime Minister Morrison and you've got an opportunity to answer his big question of you as an expert in this field. If you if you could nominate three things you would want him to do to get us to 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, you're up there with the EU and the US and the UK’s goals, what would those three things be? You've got precious a precious few minutes with the Prime Minister of Australia, what would you tell him to do to give Australia a more ambitious, an internationally respectable and ambitious target of 50 per cent reductions by 2030, what would you have to do?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Number one, electric vehicles or as they're sometimes known batteries on wheels. If you were to rapidly convert the entire Australian fleet to electric you would create the capacity to have almost 100 gigawatts of flexible storage, that is batteries that can soak up abundant sunshine during the day and release that in the evening when it's needed. 

So, that's the first thing and there's no reason that can't be done very quickly, we've seen you know dozens of announcements by car makers and countries over the last year looking at speeding up the conversion to electric vehicles and to phasing out fossil vehicles.

Second, Australia's homes have sometimes been called the equivalent of tents, we've got very inefficient housing. That's not good for people's health let alone the climate. So, rapid upgrades to the existing housing stock and making sure that new homes are built to really highly efficient standards. Then the third thing, which has been somewhat controversial but the Victorian Government is taking great steps towards tackling this and that's getting off gas. So, we need to get our homes and our businesses off the gas grid. There will be some places where industry can use hydrogen for hard to abate sectors, but really taking all of those homes that rely on gas for heating or for hot water and putting in induction cook stoves and air conditioning units that can do the heating in winter, that will improve people's lives create, tens of thousands of jobs and substantially contribute to reducing emissions.

Bob Carr: Okay EV’s, more efficient homes and getting electricity instead of gas into those homes, three big things the Prime Minister could take on board. Johanna, you've done a lot of work in the big slabs of energy. Let me ask you whether you would be telling the Prime Minister to somehow bring forward the closure of coal-fired power plants slated to close anyway in the decades ahead, is it possible to bring them forward to this decade or early in the 2030s?

Johanna Bowyer: Yes, it's definitely possible and that's what I would be taking to the Prime Minister. So, we have a current plan of the schedules of coal closures based on the announcement of the coal generators to the market and AEMO keeps track of that, the market operator and at the moment it says some coal generators are going to close in 2023, three in the 28 to 29 period, quite a few in the 2030s, 2040s and even one in 2051.

That is so far away, so what we need to be doing is to start closing those a lot earlier. We know that coal accounts for about a third of Australia's emissions and we also know that we have the technology to replace the coal generators. We have renewable energy technology, we have battery energy storage so it is possible to shut them down and replace them with new emissions sources of power and we even heard from Dr Kerry Schott the head of the Energy Security Board, that it seems likely that coal generators could close by 2035 given the current economic factors that you know, lots of low-cost renewables are coming online and competing with coal and gas. So, 2035 to have all the coal generators closed could be definitely possible and we would be looking at bringing forward those closures and making a set schedule for when you could close those coal generators.

Bob Carr: So, you'd be reminding the Prime Minister that Kerry Schott, the respective advisor to state and federal governments on these matters, has said it's possible to get all coal out of the grid by 2035, which is incidentally one of Joe Biden's core promises. I thought at the time he made it very ambitious, but you're saying that's feasible even in Australia.

Johanna Bowyer: So, we do know that we have the technology to replace coal. We've seen that South Australia got all of its coal out of the grid and it runs on 60 per cent renewable and remainders gas and batteries and imports from Victoria. So, we do know it's possible to go to higher and higher penetrations of renewables and it would be about doing that in an ordered way. Whether it's exactly 2035 or sometime near that, it depends on exactly how things play out and how quickly we can put in the new replacement capacity so that we don't have any reliability shortfalls when we do have these coal generators exiting. But it is key to have a plan because we don't want unexpected coal generators exiting where they become unprofitable or they have unexpected failures, so we need to start planning ahead for the exit of coal. 

Bob Carr: Davina with your knowledge of the building sector, what would you use your five minutes with the Prime Minister to get him thinking about with a view to a more ambitious Australian contribution to 2030?

Davina Rooney: Well, first of all I'd remind him of the pathway to Net Zero that we launched with Minister Taylor and the government two years ago, which is really focused on a Net Zero carbon ready building code. Exactly as it was mentioned by Gabrielle, we've got a residential consultation right now, we need to be getting these codes set up to improve now and go down to zero. It's a health impact, you know more Australians die of mild cold than in Sweden and also, we know from the Climate Council's latest report that when we have gas in these dwellings it's as bad for children's health as passive smoking for an asthmatic child.

So, Net Zero ready building code absolutely focusing on giving households energy performance certificates. I can find out the energy rating of my fridge in a star rating but the biggest asset of my life, your home, that information is currently unavailable.

Then the third item is one thing that the Biden administration's done very well is leading with government procurement. So, we need to see government buildings that occupy 30 percent of the office market across federal and state and local. We need to see them lifting for the highest environmental standards to bring Net Zero forward. The real focus for us would be really getting those Net Zero building codes set up now and for into the future and then having display options of those with leading procurement.

Bob Carr: Gabrielle, the Prime Minister and his ministers sometimes say we've had the biggest take-up of rooftop solar in the world and it sort of gives the impression that we've done well, we can rest at this point. What is the potential for further growth of the solar contribution? We're taking coal-fired power out, where's the opportunity to expand the contribution from solar?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Well, you're absolutely right Australia has more solar watts per person than anywhere else in the world and of course we've got an absolutely amazing solar resource so the least sunny place in Australia on the Northwest Coast of Tasmania has more sunshine than the sunniest parts of Germany for example. While we've seen about three million households put solar panels on the roof, this is really only the beginning. In the last two or three years we've seen a whole lot of commercial and industrial facilities, whether it's Ikea or your local Woolworths, they are starting to put solar panels on their commercial and industrial properties and that is just taking off. 

 So, if you can imagine that the end state will be that say two-thirds of all home's, ones that aren't apartment buildings, although apartment buildings also can have building integrated voltaic and say on the façade, we'll have say two-thirds of homes and we'll have a huge amount of commercial and industrial facilities with solar. So, what's fantastic also for anyone who doesn't know is that Australia is actually the one of the homes of solar panel technology so the University of of New South Wales is responsible for most of the world records in solar cell technology. So, there's an example of Australian innovation that's now been spread worldwide and of course once you partner solar with batteries, whether it's static batteries or mobile batteries or electric vehicles, then you've got a really robust combination that can provide reliable and secure supply 24 hours a day.

Bob Carr: How far has it gone with putting batteries on the roofs of commercial and industrial premises? I heard that one business plan out there is to go after the rooftops of the warehouses and all of a sudden, the economics, the business plan of owning warehouses is transformed by the fact that they turn into miniature power stations. What potential is there in this? Does anyone know, it must be vast?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: It is vast. I mean you just have to fly over Western Sydney and you can see the big warehouses there and the potential for rooftops. Already in South Australia you've got 40 per cent of homes that have got solar on the roofs without counting commercial and industrial. 

So, expert views vary on this but my personal take on it is that we could get a very high level of self-sufficiency within Australian towns and cities with solar plus battery storage alone. That leads to a big debate about to what extent do we need large-scale solar and wind farms and the expensive transmission to get them, but of course we will need some of that and also there's the potential that people like tui forest have been talking about of using large-scale renewables to produce green steel, green ammonia and a whole lot of low carbon exports that the world is going to be crying out for.

Bob Carr: Let's talk about the challenge of the transition. Johanna, you've addressed this, I quote an intriguing title one of the books you co-authored, “There's a better way to manage cold closures than paying to delay them.” In the retreat from some National Party ministers over the last week, I got the impression that they think the government must pay the coal sector to delay a transition that I would say everyone in the coal sector, everyone on the board of coal companies, has known for decades is headed their way. What is a better way of assisting the transition of the coal sector, thermal coal than in your words paying to the delay them.

Johanna Bowyer: Yeah, so better ways to make a clear enforceable schedule on coal closures that make it really evident to everybody exactly when coal is going to close and the exit dates can be um decided through a range of different ways like which coal generators are most emissions-intensive. Or it could be an auction process, where plants chip in to say how much they would need to be paid to close… but once again that's the pain to delay them thing… but it's an idea that has been floated. And then there's other ideas like voluntary closure. If certain coal generators are actually becoming unprofitable, then they could volunteer themselves to close.

Essentially, we need a strong enforceable schedule. At the moment we have a three-year notice – three-and-a-half-year notice – of closure requirement, where the coal generators have to say that they're going to close in three and a half years, provide notice to the market, but that itself doesn't have teeth because the financial penalty for failing to comply actually comes after you've breached the contract, breached that obligation, so we also say that you could have an upfront bond, that's you know each call generator is required to put up to say ‘okay you know I'm going to stay open for next three years’ or something like this but more of an obligation beforehand rather than afterwards. 

We also think that, exactly what you highlighted Mr Carr, that we don't want to pay to delay the coal generator exits and one of the proposals put forward by the Energy Security Board is to develop a capacity market, which would provide an additional source of revenue to coal gas generators and also potentially other generators and that is likely to just provide extra revenue and delay the coal closures... and then we've also got state governments having conversations about making contracts with generators where they pay the generators to stay open until such a point in time when they're okay for it to close and one example of that was the Yalon Government Contract. So, we need to be careful of these going forward because they could provide a lot of additional costs to the transition which are ultimately borne by consumers.

Bob Carr: Davina just talk about how we measure the carbon footprint of the built sector, the built environment. Is there a way of measuring the total contribution in emissions that a building or a group of buildings represents and how do you bolt onto that? What business plan is there to bolt onto that, a transformation, an updating, so that you render them carbon neutral?

Davina Rooney: Absolutely. So, I think we'll talk about how we classify buildings at a macro scale and then talk about how we transition portfolios and indeed individual buildings. So, when we look at the built environment, globally buildings use up to 40 percent of the global carbon emissions. When you combine the energy they use and the materials to make them. So, translating that to Australia, buildings use over 50 percent of the energy in the grid.  

So, if you're talking about transitions and how we actually make the grid stabilise, one part is the energy load side that Johanna's been talking about. The other is the demand side where we make them use less and actually match what these renewables are doing and so for a building what does it mean to be Net Zero? It means you're a highly efficient building powered by renewables and what gives me a lot of hope is we're seeing large portfolios at scale adopting these principles so we run a Net Zero building leaders program and we've got over two and a half thousand buildings within that portfolio committing to Net Zero by 2030. 

The groups are growing exponentially, we've already had GPT have their whole portfolio certified Net Zero under the Climate Active Standard last year and what's exciting about this. it was about 45 percent, renewables 45 percent energy efficiency and then the last 10 percent were nature-based offsets, but what's exciting is that they're saving over 10 million dollars a year in their wholesale office fund by doing this. So, the economics are on the right side, the reference to the lowering price of renewables means that there's a change in the market where it's good business to go Net Zero and that's where we've hit this moment in history where there's absolute consensus. We need to do this environmentally, the technologies that we need are there in almost all sectors, there's the hard to abate sectors you know the green steel sectors, which we're playing with right now. 

But, there's a huge consensus in this movement and now is the right time. You know as Gabrielle said, when was the right time to fight climate change, 30 years ago. When's the next best time, absolutely right now and at this stage we've got the consensus of buildings, opportunities, anyone can do this with their buildings right now and we run a free program for those partners so we'd love to speak with people about how to get more portfolios committed to Net Zero right now. 

Bob Carr: Well, if the owner of a building or a group of buildings that went up in the 1970s came in to see you, what would be the most likely first few things you would have on your checklist to put to them?  

Davina Rooney: So, what's really exciting with the GPT group is their buildings range from everything. From 1970s to last year, so it really is that range of buildings that you're talking about. So, the first thing you do is work on everything on the efficiency side, the most efficient led lights, the best air conditioning, tuning doing walks to see are lights on when nobody's home. So, a simple package of efficiency measures.

Then on the other side you'd immediately be looking at your energy contracting to see what long-term renewables contracts you can do and then making long term, exactly like we'd advise for the government, working with your governance structures making long-term plans for the future, because these things work when you go a step at a time, step at a time, step at a time. You were talking about solar before in different building types and the thing that's so exciting about retail, office buildings, industrial, is they use most of their power when the sun is shining. So, the reason why they're the perfect mix for putting a large amount of solar is their peak load when they use the most energy is right when the sun is shining and often, they have beautiful roofs so if you can match those two elements you can take that whole pressure off the grid whilst absolutely walking more lightly on the environmental side.

Bob Carr: Would a typical city office building, perhaps an old one from the 1950s, just about setting up to be demolished, have enough roof space to provide through solar all the daytime power it needs?

Davina Rooney: No. So, what they'd be doing because they've got tiny little roof spaces and a plant room on there and you know a sign and a few things like that, is they normally put enough solar on top to power the sign or something like that. They have a bad habit of overshadowing each other and so they're really leaning into a solar plant that's further away in a similar arrangement to coal generation. However, what we're seeing in shopping centres, in industrial buildings, they often have a beautiful big roof that isn't overshadowed, they usually aren't in the centre of the CBD so it's a real ‘horses for courses’ kind of examples in this space.  

There's some that are hyper local, where solar on the roof makes most sense. There's some that are distributed where it's the solar farms with some of these battery solutions but I think the thing that's most exciting is a huge amount of the technology exists, the engineering exists, the financials are stacking in the right direction. We've now got to take this announcement from the government today and line up all the different policy elements so that we can drive to hit that and then bring that forward.

Bob Carr: Nature-based offsets. Give me some examples.

Davina Rooney: A tree. You know so when we talk about the lungs of the Earth, we look at what's been happening in the amazon rainforest. When we look at the rate of carbon going into the atmosphere, as well as doing all these important reduction activities, we are going to need some ways to restore nature, focus on biophilia, there's also a biodiversity crisis but we're absolutely going to need some of those nature-based offsets or trees and in this country reforesting critical areas with local species, there's some great programs happening but we're going to need a lot more of that. It isn't just about not clearing trees on farm, there's a whole other world outside of that.

Bob Carr: Planting gardens on the roofs of buildings and around buildings, how serious a contribution does that make or is it as I suspect just cosmetic.

Davina Rooney: Well, there's a number of contributions from urban greening. The first is the urban heat island effect, so it's getting hotter with climate change but it can feel at least 10 degrees hotter, there was a study done by the University of Western Sydney looking at two different streets in the same suburb with different tree coverage and there was up to 10 degrees difference. So, the city of Melbourne is putting a program in to roll out 3000 additional trees to drop the temperatures by four degrees. 

So, if we're going to make these places liveable in the future there's yes, a piece about nature-based offsets but we're absolutely going to need a whole heap of urban greening to keep the temperatures down, which then mean you don't have to condition them as heavily, which means you're also not contributing to climate change and it also means that you can walk in the streets between them. So, often these things done right turn into a virtuous circle and if they're done in isolation or in the fragmented way they've been done in the past, unfortunately they can be that downward spiral the other way.

Bob Carr: The cities of Australia have become noticeably greener. There are whole suburbs that are now luxuriant and it probably goes beyond regional vegetation. I imagine this is already having a useful effect. There are streets not far from here that are full of trees and it must have a cooling effect already. 

 Davina Rooney: Absolutely we're seeing that and fascinatingly we have walkability indexes, people walk more in locations where there's these beautiful trees, people live longer in Sydney right now and in Australia we can do life expectancy via postcode if you live in a gorgeous area where you want to walk more you are going to live a longer and better life so there's numerous reasons to do these things.

Bob Carr: Yeah, in baking hot summers your natural limbs is head for the side of the street that's got shade or a walk in a street that's got plenty of tree coverage. Gabrielle, can you tell us about what is a striking American example OHM Connect, all based on the most cutting-edge demand response, peak demand management, I think that offers great hope of what we can do if we get it right in this country?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Yes, this sort of follows what Davina was saying in terms of there are things that can have multiple benefits at once and there also, like trees are not high technology and demand response is not necessarily super sophisticated technology. So, the idea with this company called OHM Connect is that they will pay households to reduce their energy use. Say you've got an air conditioner that can be controlled or they will give you a smart thermostat, they will look at your pool pump, all of these appliances are getting smarter but even with older cruder appliances, they will send you a signal asked saying ‘tomorrow, it's going to be a really hot day, what can you do against your normal electricity use, within obviously your need for comfort and the comfort of your family, how can you reduce your energy use?’ And California has a very sophisticated demand response market so the statistics for August last year, people might remember there was terrible heat waves in California and there was the risk of rolling blackouts. 

So, 17th and 18th of august last year, rolling blackouts were avoided and the OHM Connect customers collectively saved enough energy to power 625,000 homes and those households that participated were paid more than 1.3 million dollars US. They didn't say in the statistics how much the company made, but through participating in that demand response market and I was on a webinar in the US with the CEO of the company and he was asked ‘what's the biggest problem that you have as a CEO with this technology and with your business model?’, and he said, well everyone that we approach with the opportunity to save money on their electricity bill thinks we're a scam. 

Now the really good news in Australia is that beginning of this month in October after decades of how shall we say, delay, we finally had the demand response mechanism commence in the Australian electricity market. Now at this stage it is only for commercial and industrial sort of large-scale participants, but hopefully in future it will also be open to aggregated residential response like OHM Connect can do in California.

Bob Carr: Here's a dumb question if I interrupt you, it seems to me a good decade ago that I was having conversations about smart metering in Australia and I don't I recall all the details but something clearly has gone wrong that hasn't happened at the pace that was being assumed 10 or 12 or 15 years ago. Why is it proved so difficult?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Oh, that's an excellent question. There's I guess one of the things that colours the whole, not only the electricity sector in Australia but also obviously our climate change response, is the money and the politics and there have been a lot of analyses for many years about the revolving door between the fossil fuel industry and Australian political officers. Particularly with our Commonwealth energy ministers who've often either come from the fossil fuel industry or when they've left the position of being energy minister have gone to work particularly for the gas but also for the coal industry. 

I think it's uncomfortable to talk about those kinds of arrangements, but the issue of governance and of the nature of our democracy does determine how we're approaching emissions reduction as a nation. So, I think that really goes to also the way that the federal elections have swung over the last few years and one thing that's given me personally a lot of hope over the last few months is to see the emergence of the climate 200, so the opportunity for people to support independent candidates that are putting climate change front and centre in their policy positions standing for the next federal election.

Bob Carr: What you're saying is we could have had smart metering a long time ago had it not been blocked by lobbying from the traditional power sector.

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: I think that's probably a too direct link for smart metering, but I'm talking about in terms of a lot of things obviously have been slowed down or changed as a result of the influence of fossil fuel industry on how our federal government in particular operates.

Bob Carr: How close can we get to that example of demand response peak demand smart metering that you just described in the United States the OHM Connect?

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: So, we can do that very quickly and easily. The big change that we would need to see is there's a thing called the GEMS Act, The Greenhouse and Energy Minimum Standards Commonwealth Act. Davina talked about your star rating on the fridge that was brought about through the GEMS Act. What we could do to the commonwealth GEMS Act is put a requirement that all the major appliances sold in Australia, so your air conditioner, your hot water system, your pool pump and the like.  

If we put a requirement that they all have demand response capability, so when you purchase them, they would have to have this ability to have two-way communications, obviously the potential for consumers to override it if their home was getting too hot safe as an air conditioner, then we would quickly get a whole lot of appliances out into the Australian market that could support the OHM Connect kind of model. We do have some appliances, there's a great use of air conditioning for demand response by Energy Queensland in a very specific example, but we really need that Commonwealth Act changed because we don't have a requirement for demand response capability across those major appliances at the moment.

Bob Carr: Davina with your knowledge of this sector, Chief Detective Officer of the Green Building Council, what would you add to that?

Davina Rooney: The thing that I'd add is for your 1970s building, the first thing that anyone does who wants to drive change is they put in an energy meter. That's the first thing they do, so the change that you're talking about we haven't seen happen at the leading end to the market, so the Green Building Councils over 550 members across the large major property groups, everyone who's committing to Net Zero, the first thing they do is put in a meter because you can't manage what you can't measure. 

So, I think we're seeing what Gabrielle is describing is a really two-speed race at the moment where you know the high-end commercials who have lots of targets in this space and that is fantastic...and we're seeing them take a lead and we're seeing them put in demand response, we're seeing them put in energy metering, we're seeing all of these huge opportunities. But what happened to Australian households who are 57 percent of the emissions within the built environment? And I think the thing we need to do most at a policy level is to level those playing fields and the residential markets too fragmented, regulation is the language that speaks and gets it across all of Australia.

Bob Carr: Joanna you've co-authored with Gabrielle as it happens, a study called a grid dominated by wind and solar is possible. South Australia a window into the future. Just touch again on South Australia as a model here, but answer this question. How robust is it? Because I encountered today someone who was a critic of battery technology and he left me with the impression that batteries could go badly wrong. Are the Australian model renewables supported by batteries, one that gives you and others as far as you know, total confidence?

Johanna Bowyer: You're right. Yeah so, the South Australian years except for one 2008, 2009 when there was a heat wave in both Victoria and South Australia didn't meet their reliability targets. So, it is for meeting reliability targets so that shows that you know the renewables and storage and gas combination that it currently has is sufficient and so in 2020 South Australia had 60 percent of its energy coming from wind and solar and around 40 percent from gas and then some extras from imports exports and batteries...and it's been an example for but the rest of Australia for battery storage innovation in terms of finding different ways to incorporate the batteries into the grid and use them most effectively and now they have four utility scale batteries and South Australia has also had lots of instances now where, it's at in certain time periods, it's been running on 100 percent solar. 

So, it's showing that you know these previous milestones that people thought were potentially impossible are completely possible and it is also able to balance its energy with Victoria but it's also going to build another transmission line to New South Wales, which will enable it to export its extra renewable energy to both Victoria and New South Wales and that would help with its energy balancing as well so it can keep pushing to even higher proportions of renewables. And maybe Gabrielle wants to add something there because she was also working on this study. 

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Just to counter Bob, whoever you spoke with in terms of the criticism of batteries, I'll give you an example of Western Australia. So, Western Power is really at the forefront of thinking about how the grid will evolve. I would say they're the most forward-thinking network company in the world. They looked at all of their power lines and obviously there's very dispersed population in South West Western Australia, and they realised that something like 60 percent of their power grid was servicing maybe 5 or 10 percent of their customer base and they realised that wasn't economic. 

So, they are now putting either standalone power systems, which is shorthand for a solar plus a battery or microgrids, solar plus large-scale batteries and occasionally diesel generators as the sort of secondary backup, and they're installing those as we speak in communities in remote Western Australia and they are taking down the power lines to those communities. So, they now have sufficient confidence in the technology to say we don't need the power lines anymore in a lot of places, not so much in the Western Australian desert, but in a lot of places power lines obviously create a substantial bush fire risk. So, even in on the east coast in New South Wales essential energy, which covers most of regional New South Wales, they're looking at putting standalone power systems and micro grids in areas where they're building back after the bush fires.

So, batteries are proven at the small scale and at the large scale and what's fantastic is that the costs are still falling and the costs are falling faster for batteries than they did for solar. So, we saw basically solar go in 10 years to 10 percent of what it cost and battery costs are falling faster and that's partly because we've got China, South Korea and Taiwan all competing on the global stage for batteries and that's obviously batteries for electric vehicles as well as batteries for the grid. So, we're not going to just use batteries there will be some pumped hydro and there'll be other kinds of storage in the mix, but batteries certainly are growing and have got more potential I think than anyone thought they did even five or ten years ago.

Bob Carr: Let's take a bit of a global perspective. What do you think might come out of India? I know AEFA has studied India and there are contradictory messages but certainly from time-to-time strong hints that the Modi government sees energy independence as all about the growth of a renewables India.

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Absolutely, you've totally nailed the key issue there is that obviously India is highly reliant particularly on imported fuels for vehicles at the moment and Modi recognises that that is both a commercial and a security risk. So far, he's committed 3.5 billion dollars US to look at enhancing EVE manufacturing in India. Most of the electric vehicles being sold in India, obviously very different to Tesla's, most of them are two and three wheelers and I think you know we need to remember that electric vehicles come in lots of different shapes and forms. The Modi government has also announced plans for what it would call a trial or initial rollout of electric vehicle charging stations in India that scale is 69,000 petrol pump locations where there will be electric vehicle charging stations...and Tata Motors itself has committed about 2 billion to investment and electric vehicles again in US dollars. So, I think India's really exciting in terms of its commitment and the way it's seeing renewables plus storage not only for energy independence but for economic growth and also for employment. India obviously needs to create jobs for about 20 million people every year and so they are seeing all of these clean and green manufacturing as an opportunity to do that.

Bob Carr: The other panellists, Davina, Johanna. What stands out internationally? Has there been anything you've picked up recently that makes you think the world can get there, looking down to Australia's borders? 

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: I think the speed of change of international commitments that we're seeing. I think we've seen a huge focus towards COP26, the lead-in to Glasgow, the amount of commitments we're seeing. It was only in April this year that Biden called his climate summit to get focus on this area. But the thing that gives me heart is the movement of global manufacturing and materials which we haven't talked about very much. About two years ago with the World Green Building Council we launched an embodied carbon report talking about the need for materials to get to 40 percent reduction by 2030, Net Zero by 2050.

Within six weeks of a clear global call being made that was very prominent in the sector, we had Infra Build who used to be One Steel, one of Australia's largest steel manufacturers, commit to Net Zero 2030 and that's absolutely a game changer moment. We had Wholesome launch Net Zero concrete range and mixes early the next year. So, if there's a sector that's giving me hope, it's seeing the hard to abate sectors, the ones we talk about ‘materials’, they're starting to move at the scale that we saw with solar in the early you know 2010 and around that time. The focus and drive on green steel, responsible steel, and the willingness for that market to move, that market has done so much R&D and has been waiting for this moment for industry to tip and the business case to change. So, there's so much movement in that sector that there's going to be huge opportunities for reduction of the carbon in material. So, in in the built environment we use up to 50 percent of the materials globally go into construction and buildings.  

 So, we're a large part of the problem but we have the potential to be a large part of the solution and what's really exciting is when Atlassian has a new building with really high embodied carbon targets, that drives change through the supply chain. So, when I was speaking to the CEO of Boral, because of their corporate customers they've been driving in low carbon ranges but then they've been receiving phone calls from customers at Bunnings because they don't change one cement mix, usually they change things within their range. So, everyone benefits from the large infrastructure projects to mum and dads at home you know pouring their garden path. So, that's one of the things that really gives me hope at the moment. The whole cement industry coming out and saying they'll hit Net Zero by 2050 and then beat it, that's something that we didn't expect to see being announced in this time horizon. 

Bob Carr: Johanna on the international stage, what gives you most hope?

Johanna Bowyer: So, where the finance is moving is changing. So, we know that China declared that it would no longer finance coal overseas and we've seen a lot of money flowing into clean energy investments rather than fossil fuels. We heard from the IEA in their latest world energy outlook 2021 that oil and gas investments are in line with our 1.5 degrees pathway to keep us in line with the Paris Agreement, but the thing that's really needed to step up is that even though we have a lot of investment coming into the clean energy sector, we do still need more. Globally the IEA said we need triple the investment in into the clean energy sector in the coming years. So, while there's a lot of hope and we can see that things are changing there is still a lot of action that needs to be taken and I think Glasgow, it's proving to be a real turning point, which is exciting.

Bob Carr: Well, Johanna Bowyer, Davina Rooney, Gabrielle Cooper, thank you very much for your contribution tonight. There couldn't be a more dramatic moment to be addressing these issues and I'm sure that our listeners have got as much as I have out of this, the clarity we brought to bear on this, the range of challenges. But there's no doubt that if it were Prime Minister Scott Morrison sitting here, he would have been persuaded that with a bit of leadership we could have a focus on measures that would work in leading Australia, I think to go beyond a 50 percent reduction by 2030, to go beyond that as some of our international partners are daring to aim. 

Thank you very much, let's work closely together on this great goal of seeing that we can live in a decarbonised world where warming does not proceed beyond 1.5 degrees, that's our hope. Thank you very much and thank you everyone for joining us.

Dr Gabrielle Kuiper: Thank you.

Johanna Bowyer: Thank you. 

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