It’s a deceptively simple question: what is actually holding the energy transition back?
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We asked this question out of a growing sense, when travelling through Australia’s industrial regions and talking with the people trying to build the transition on the ground, that something was not quite lining up.
Because on paper the ingredients are all there. Renewable technologies are mature. Capital is increasingly available. Governments have set targets. Projects are announced regularly.
And yet, when you look across Australia’s industrial regions, the projects that really matter often stall or move far more slowly than expected. Emissions, in real terms, are not falling like they should.
The problem might not be technology. It might be coordination.
So what is really going on?
The transition is often discussed as if it were a single system – but it isn’t.
Some parts of clean technology deployment are moving quickly. Rooftop solar, home batteries and electric vehicles are spreading rapidly across the country.
But the biggest emissions reductions, and the biggest economic transformation, sit somewhere else entirely. They sit in the coal power stations, export terminals, refineries, smelters and industrial regions that underpin Australia’s economy.
These are Australia’s largest emissions sources. They are also where the biggest economic opportunities of the transition sit. And they are where progress is slowest.
The barrier is definitely not a lack of technical knowledge.
When we look closely, the system already contains an extraordinary amount of expertise.
Transmission planners understand the grid. Industry understands its processes and operational constraints. Communities understand their landscapes and what changes will actually work locally. Investors understand risk and capital flows.
Across any major industrial region there are dozens of moving parts. Transmission infrastructure, renewable energy supply, ports, workforce capability, industrial demand, community acceptance and capital all interact with each other.
Each group understands its own piece of the system extremely well. But very few people can see how all the pieces interact at the same time.
Coming from an architecture background, this starts to feel strangely familiar.
As designers we spend a lot of time thinking about systems. When we cannot solve a problem on one site, we zoom out and look at how that site connects to the things around it. Infrastructure, movement, landscape and energy start to form part of the same picture.
While some national agendas point toward strong end goals: a zero emissions Australia, a Future Made in Australia, becoming a renewable energy export superpower … these ambitions are not yet fully aligned with the infrastructure sequencing required to deliver them.
We try to see the system so we can identify the places where a relatively small intervention might improve conditions across the whole. The energy transition sometimes feels like it is missing the kind of thinking that underpins every major masterplan.
When we develop masterplans, we start with a clear view of the end state. We break that future into packages of work that build on each other. And we identify the critical path of enabling infrastructure that everyone involved understands must come first, because without it nothing else works.
Instead, with the delivery of major projects in our industrial regions, we often see siloed approaches. One set of policies for energy, another for industry, and yet others for environment, social planning and market reform.
While some national agendas point toward strong end goals: a zero emissions Australia, a Future Made in Australia, becoming a renewable energy export superpower … these ambitions are not yet fully aligned with the infrastructure sequencing required to deliver them.
As a result we are sometimes building critical infrastructure, such as transmission lines connecting renewable energy zones to key industrial precincts, too small and too late to secure the green electrons that emerging industries depend on right now to capture global customers.
We’re not looking for the critical path. And we don’t need to have every detail locked away before we move forwards. Australia has a relatively small number of regions with the infrastructure, engineering capability and industrial history needed to support large scale industry. Places like the Hunter, Gladstone, Kwinana and the Pilbara already have ports, workforces and industrial ecosystems that make major projects possible.
If Australia stops making things entirely, we lose the ability to repair, rebuild and recycle the technologies we depend on
So the question may not be whether Australia can build clean industry and the green infrastructure needed to support it. The more interesting question might be whether these regions are actually ready for it. And are we ready to have hard conversations about what matters most?
And if not, what are the consequences?
From this perspective the transition challenge starts to look quite different. Distributed energy can carry much of the transition in our towns and suburbs. But if we want any meaningful Future Made in Australia, we also need large scale generation and the grid upgrades that connect that energy to industry. Without it we risk de-industrialising as we decarbonise.
Rooftop solar and batteries are incredibly important, and Australia has shown the world how quickly those systems can scale.
But if the story stops there, something else begins to break. If Australia stops making things entirely, we lose the ability to repair, rebuild and recycle the technologies we depend on. Solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries will all eventually reach the end of their useful life.
What happens then?
If we import everything and manufacture nothing, we will not have the industrial capacity to reuse materials, rebuild components or remanufacture the next generation of equipment.
The circular economy is not an abstract idea. It literally means making things in Australia. Without some domestic production there is no real market for recycled materials and no system for turning old technologies into new ones. The consequences of de-industrialisation are waste.
All of this has led us to a working hypothesis: the biggest barrier to the transition is that we’re trying to build it without something that looks like a masterplan.
Some infrastructure projects unlock entire industrial ecosystems. Some transmission lines determine whether a region can host new industry. Some infrastructure decisions shape the economic future of whole regions. But right now there is no easy way for regions to see those relationships clearly.
If we were working from the same map, we could start having the harder conversations about trade offs, benefits and what is actually worth doing first.
This is the question we have been exploring through the National Action Plan work at Beyond Zero Emissions. So far we have tested this approach in four of the sixteen industrial regions that will likely shape Australia’s clean industrial future.
Trying to map these systems is complex. It requires engineers, industry leaders, planners, communities, economists and investors all bringing their knowledge together. And by working alongside experts in other fields, and people who are living the industrial energy transition every day, we are also creating better understanding of the major projects that matter most in each place.
If you have read this far, you are probably someone who enjoys wrestling with messy system questions.
If these questions interest you, and you would like to be part of the community of people trying to understand and solve them, you can reach out to us through the Beyond Zero Emissions website.
The approach we’re taking is not perfect. But the transition is moving quickly, and the question of how it actually unfolds across real regions, with real infrastructure and real communities, is still being figured out.
The more clearly we can see the system, the better chance we have of building it well.