As we enter the second month of the year, pressure for planning and direction over the next 11 months is intensifying. What are the biggest pain points that need urgent solutions? How will these deal with the turbulence on the global and national stage?
Tosh Szatow of Race for 2030 reckons it’s with a perfunctory nod and back to work.
Those who’ve experience the lost decade in Australia (under Tony Abbott) and other ructions are now well inured to the changing drumbeat. On Thursday he told us, “they simply “shut out that kind of noise and get on with projects that can move the needle a bit.”
Some of the work under way promises transformative wins. Electric trucks and swappable batteries that can be charged slowly over five or eight hours, for instance. (Keep an eye on Janus Electric for more on that topic.)
With buildings and big industrial players, the potential is even more exciting. But mainly because there’s so much energy to save, and progress so slow!
It’s like an untapped goldmine up there.
Szatow noted the many innovations that could make big differences. The emerging movement for time of use planning for electricity consumption in buildings.
So operating most of your energy guzzling equipment when the energy is abundant, cheap and clean. Check out the ebook for our “Buildings as Batteries” masterclass in 2024, (free for members).
Time of use sounds goo; it makes sense, but still the take up of such opportunities is badly lagging.
Szatow said one reason is that the people who broker energy contracts tend to offer clients the cheapest available prices for fixed periods, of three years or so.
That’s the case for about 80 per cent of brokers. Only “a very small fraction – 10-15 per cent engage with recommendations for PPA” or even flexible pricing models.
When a great deal to slash energy and emissions come along, it’s too late.
Too late, they said – we’re fixed
“Time and again people who spend time working on projects and energy procurement find clients say, ‘sorry we’ve just signed up to fixed prices’.”
Another major problem is that some companies are claiming net zero by buying credits at the end of the year, without accounting for time of use which under the current scenario might include a truckload of dirty brown electricity.
New hope
Szatow and Race for 2030 are now working with the Business Renewables Centre Australia and its program director Jackie McKeon on how to kick start the next tranche of big energy savings and pick up some of the opportunities.
Szatow said the BRCA, which has been going for eight years, is “pretty niche” in its focus but it’s a “major player” in that space,.
“They’ve built great capability for training and education of corporations to get them into PPA buying groups. They’re a major influencer in that eco system.”
The GHG protocol may change
McKeon said that a big fillip to change is that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is being revised to potentially require 24/7 matching, or “true zero”, which would avoid the greenwash risk of buying credits without accounting for time of use of energy (it may well be at night when the power is fossil fuel).
Google and Amazon have true zero, said McKeon but not many others.
Yet.
But change is naturally going to be tough to engineer.
Pushback
McKeon said there’s already “quite a bit of pushback” for the revision of the protocol, deferring to other experts for the market implications. The work with “Race” is to focus on this.
“If it does come in it would have a huge impact on auditing and data collection. And whole range of other issues.”
“It’s certainly got its pros and cons.”
McKeon told us she’s hopeful.
“What’s really important is that to get renewable energy contracts executed by business. So that businesses can invest in the renewable sector and support it to grow.”
Businesses want to, and they are doing so voluntarily, she said.
And while there will be challenges around tighter controls, it will be worth it.
We’re on a big deadline
We need to get to 82 per cent renewables by 2030, she pointed out but a recent audit revealed just a quarter of the top 400 energy users in Australia have gone renewable.
These businesses are mostly the big household names in food retailing, beverages, fibre and logistics.
Coles and Woolies, by the way, have their own PPAs “they’ve done wonderful things”, she said.
The opportunities
PPAs are challenging, McKeon said when we called her, but there’s a whole range of innovation on the way – in energy management, time matching, time of use and demand flexibility.
If you can get a great PPA price, “you just might be able to tip the balance in favour of an electrification project‘s viability,” she said.
Thermal storage is another opportunity.
“There’s all sorts of firming, so you’ve got batteries, you’ve got behind the meter, renewables and storage. And so it’s really about helping big business to look at their long term energy anagement and decarbonisation planning.”
The other big sectors that need to be tackled are the building and construction behemoths, along with healthcare and water utilities.
“The property sector is fantastic because it’s always been, from a sustainability perspective, quite a competitive space.”
Next step is working on gathering a group of key industry players from leading sectors to pool their resources and commitments to get the next phase of the evolution under way.
And that’s a path that was first tread by the property sector.
Not easily. Of course. But it got there. At the top end anyway.
If you want to know how tough it is to get industry momentum of the scale needed to shift the dial check out our Green Building Origin Stories on the front page.
And contribute your own!