There was no shortage of questions from the audience at our first leaders forum on 4 March with speakers Matt Kean, chair of the Climate Change Authority and Martijn Wilder, founder of Pollination.
They came thick and fast, smoothly managed by the erudite Rachel Alembakis of U Ethical, a former journalist and founder of FS Sustainability.
The built environment and renewable energy
Craig Roussac of Buildings Alive was first off the mark. He wanted to know why buildings did not feature further up the chain of attention with policymakers and others, given they consumed so much energy and generated huge quantities of greenhouse gasses.
Wilder agreed and said the built environment was one of “the lowest hanging fruits” for energy efficiency.
Kean said there were signs of hope. It was “one of the areas of emerging bipartisan consensus in public policy.”
Economics and renewable energy
Tim Sullivan from Urbis challenged the room the “economic growth paradigm”.
He compared the reliance on economic growth to a “plane that has to keep accelerating just to stay in the air.”
Kean said renewable energy was providing Australia with some of the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable energy in the world. There was economic opportunity for Australia within renewable energy, he said.
“We’re not only a sunburnt country, we’re a sun blessed country using that abundance of cheap land that we have. So, it’s not highly populated. A lot of it’s in the desert, and there’s a brilliant resource there being our sun that can lower the cost of energy, that will turbo charge growth, not strain it. And we should be leaning to this. There’s no country on the planet that is better placed to win in the transition to a low carbon economy than Australia.
“This is Australia’s best chance to unlock a new era of economic growth and prosperity that no generation of Australians has ever dreamed it was possible…we should grab that chance with both hands and not miss it. Otherwise, another country will and we’ll be the poorer for it.”
The place for bi-directional EV batteries
Architect Caroline Pidcock wanted to know about where EV batteries could fit within the equation.
Battery prices today would be reduced by about 70 per cent in the next couple of years which could change the economics of renewables dramatically, Kean said.
Wilder said that at the National Reconstruction Fund that he chairs, there were at least nine approaches to manufacture batteries in Australia, “all completely different technologies, so not lithium, other stuff that’s coming out.”
And, if reports were correct, there were 19 new models of Chinese EV players coming into Australia, he added.
If you could buy a $10,000 EV car that gets integrated as a system, it would change the game. Wilder predicted there would be a much bigger uptake in the market dynamic around EVs and significant change will happen.
On changing the public opinion regarding coal and renewable energy
Matthew Trigg from ERM said a lot of public debate regarding renewable energy “works on the assumption that renewables aren’t very good,” despite the fact that 69 per cent of the national electricity market was being powered by renewables at the time of the event.
He questioned how the renewable energy industry would go about changing the conflicting public opinion that Australia was still reliant on coal, even though two-thirds of energy was not coming from coal.
Kean said the solution to navigating public opinion on a transition from coal to renewable energy was to provide people with the facts. In his time as energy minister for New South Wales, the only time NSW was close to losing power was because of coal plant failures and unscheduled outages, not by any failure of renewable energy.
Public opinion
As for who was responsible for changing public opinion, Kean added, “So I think it’s up to people like me with platforms like the ones I have to keep putting the facts on the table, but it’s also up to all of us in this room, entities like The Fifth Estate.”
Kean had also said it was much easier for politicians in earlier days because they had “only two newspapers to talk to and four television stations”. Today’s media was disaggregated and linear.
Sustainability metrics and their future
Andrew Ward from Regen Farmers Mutual wanted to know about expectations around the Australian sustainability reporting standard and the rollout of scope three, as well as other sustainability metrics.
Wilder said: “One of the challenges [is that] there has been a bit of pushback on scope three at the moment.”
Some people want disclosure to go further on issues such as reporting, disclosure, and details of the metrics.
“At a practical level, there’s going to be a little bit more focus on what can practically be achieved and what you can demonstrate.”
The practicality of the metrics has led many companies to walk back from commitments “or reframing them in a more realistic way”.
Kean added that the future of reporting could change along with changes in political atmosphere.
“So for climate investors, for people that care about action or climate change, the energy transition, there are some safeguards built into our system, and this election is going to be critical to determine whether or not they’re going to be remaining.”
Australia’s place in the global sustainability network
Grant McDowell, from Enosi and Spark Club, wanted to know more about Australia’s relationship with China and how it fits into the energy transition.
Wilder said China had “this incredible technology that we need, and it’s a really pivotal point.”
Kean said there were common interests that could benefit both Australia and China despite some conflicts with common values. The relationship will continue in the future without compromising of Australian values, regardless of any authoritarian regimes that interfere.
The two said they believed the relationship between Australia and China relating to renewable energy will continue to grow out of a mutually beneficial relationship.
To close things off Peter Castellas of Climate Zeitgeist and previously the Carbon Market Institute, said he’d just “come from The AFR business summit that morning, and it took until “just before lunchtime” before the word climate actually came up. “It was a little bit disconcerting,” he said.
His takeaway was that “it was like, forget about ESG. Follow the money. There’s an energy transition. There is still digitisation of assets, lots to invest in.”
“I think one of the things that we’ve got here in Australia, is that decoupling of values and value.
“And so …who needs to actually bring that integration back as we head into an election where that polarisation of the community is at risk? What else do we need to do? Who else needs to be engaged to be the spokespeople to ensure that we hold on to the progressive pathway that we’re on?”
Well…that was a big can of worms. And with that Rachel Alembakis declared this a comment and adjourned the session.