VALUES TO VALUE: There’s a huge shift of power and influence to renewable energy but Amory Lovins told Murray Hogarth during his recent Australian trip that 24 US states have legislated against renewable energy and Audrey Zibelman warned about a possible return of Trump in the US.
Reflecting on four solid days of energy and climate events that I attended in Sydney last week, I realised that somewhere in the past year or so there’s been a powershift. We’ve passed a tipping point for energy influence.
The old energy establishment, long dominated in Australia by coal and gas, is visibly phasing out now, like the old coal-fired power stations the fossil fuel true believers still champion. Not gone completely, but no longer calling all the main shots. Pushed increasingly into ultra-conservative dark places.
More importantly, a new energy fraternity is decisively on the rise – progressive, ever more interwoven with federal and state government bureaucracies, and their policy making and programs, and also with mainstream business and wider civil society too.
The noisy activists, meanwhile, yelling to be heard from out of left field, are from the nuclear power lobby (one of the events I went to last week was a pro-nuke propaganda workshop called Navigating Nuclear). They are now occupying the visible, but relatively powerless space that used to be reserved for environmentalists, and assorted advocates for renewable wind and solar, and energy efficiency.
Today’s intellectual “big dogs” – in terms of energy industry lobbies – are increasingly organisations like the Energy Efficiency Council (EEC), the Smart Energy Council (SEC) and the Clean Energy Council (CEC). They are smart, connected, and growing rapidly in terms of resources, reach and influence.
The big action areas are their territory now.
Australia as an energy superpower. Electrification. Green hydrogen. Green steel. Big batteries. Pumped hydro. Solar Sunshot. Offshore wind. Critical minerals. Consumer-owned energy resources, including Australia’s remarkable rooftop solar story (the whole of America, with 350 million people, is nearing 5 million solar installations, while Australia with just 25 million people is near 4 million).
The baton change reflects another major reality shift. A renewables-led, technology-enabled, consumer-empowering energy transition is no longer a matter of debate. It’s a happening thing.
Perhaps the only people who haven’t clued in to the powershift are in the mainstream media.
NSW Labor government Minister for Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Heritage, Penny Sharpe, called this out at the EEC’s 2024 National Conference last Wednesday, which I covered for The Fifth Estate, saying:
If you read the paper every day, which I do, and if you listen to a lot of the commentary, which I do, it’s focused on how this is not going to work, that we shouldn’t be doing it, and we should be turning back the dial. It’s too late for that. The transition is happening…
The notion of a gas-fired recovery is mainly a fading bad dream, gone with the Morrison Coalition government (2018-2022) that embraced that slogan for everything from our energy future to post-Covid bounceback.
That said, the gas industry did get a brief reprise earlier this month when the Albanese government released its Future Gas Strategy, prolonging the use of gas energy into the middle of this century. That outraged environmentalists and new energy advocates, but then things moved on quickly enough.
The Labor government promptly sacrificed some gas industry benefits to steamroll its long awaited fuel efficiency standards through the federal parliament last week, with the support of the Australian Greens, forestalling any further Coalition efforts to mess with the EV-enabling legislation.
Labor’s third federal budget, delivered a week ago, has thrown tens of billions of dollars into its Future Made in Australia strategy, with a heavy emphasis on the technologies and critical minerals required for clean energy.
On the consumer front, electrification is the main game for energy now, other than high prices driving cost-of-living anger among voters.
Electric vehicles and their charging infrastructure are surging. Degasification of homes and businesses is shifting on to official government agendas, starting in Victoria, as well as being the core focus of environmental campaigns like Rewiring Australia, and new businesses like Goodbye Gas.
Don’t pop the champagne yet
We shouldn’t, however, get too cocky about this changing of the guard in the energy influence stakes.
While the tide of history for energy has turned, towards a clean energy future and away from fossil fuels, we can’t take any of this for granted. The energy transition is happening, but it’s still a fragile thing, vulnerable to political pushback and sabotage by fossil fuel industry vested interests, and nuclear wannabes.
With US Presidential elections in November this year, “Drill Baby Drill” Donald Trump could be back in the White House by January 2025, with global implications for clean energy and climate action.
With cost of living pressures bearing down on Australian families, the Albanese government is far from guaranteed a win at the next Australian national elections, due by May 2025, and the Dutton opposition is vowing to switch Australia on to a nuclear power path if it wins.
Misinformation and disinformation are rife, and several speakers at the EEC’s National Conference last week highlighted these as being the biggest threats to staying the course with the energy transition.
I asked two of the EEC’s keynote international guests Amory Lovins and Audrey Zibelman, both Americans, if they see coordinated disinformation campaigns against the energy transition, in both the US and Australia? And if the two were linked?
Lovins responded immediately: “Yes and yes.” He’s worth listening to. Lovins is the co-founder and Emeritus Professor of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and is like the Albert Einstein of energy and industrial efficiency. He told me later that 24 US states have legislated against renewable energy.
Zibelman, a former chief executive officer of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), who propelled its shift on to a strong energy transition focus several years ago, responded that she was more concerned about a lack of information.
She also expressed concern about the prospect of a “change in the US Administration”, a restrained reference to a potential Trump revival.
Also at the EEC conference, Andrew Richards, the articulate CEO of the Energy Users Association of Australia, representing mainly larger business and industrial energy customers, argued that we still need a clear narrative for the energy transition.
He said that if you want people to make the journey, you have to show them where they are going, and what it will be like when they arrive.
For the new ”big dogs” in the energy space, their status change brings new pressures and responsibilities, including providing that narrative. There’s a lot more scrutiny on them now.
They are key stewards of the energy transition, and its continuation and ultimate success are still far from guaranteed. So they need to recognise they’ve finally arrived, reflect briefly on their achievements thus far, and then double down on getting a still mammoth job done!
Murray Hogarth is a regular columnist and correspondent for The Fifth Estate.
