Cleantech Futures Series: Electrification and Opportunities for Community and Business
Amid a storm of misinformation around renewable energy, a UNE SRI forum laid out the facts.
Electrifying our homes and cars with renewable energy keeps householder money in the region, a leading energy technology researcher told a forum in Armidale yesterday.
On average, Professor Renate Egan observed, Australian car owners put about $2000 worth of fuel into their vehicles each year. If all fossil fuel-powered cars in New England were replaced by electric vehicles (EVs), then a considerable pool of money not spent on fuel could be diverted from multinational oil companies into regional businesses.
Prof. Egan’s observation was part of a larger discussion about the opportunities made possible by the ongoing renewable energy transition, reflecting the theme of the forum: Electrification and Opportunities for Community and Business. The forum was part of the UNE SMART Region Incubator’s (UNE SRI) Cleantech Futures Series series.
The forum laid out a clear message: moving away from energy derived from fossil fuels into renewable sources is inevitable. The transition won’t be without pain, but the end result will be a far more efficient, robust energy system.
Change brings opportunity, SRI Director Dr Lou Conway said after the event, and the clean energy transition is already drawing new cleantech startups to the region. Designation of the New England Renewable Energy Zone has also been of interest to established businesses aiming to accelerate their energy transition.
“Renewables are increasingly making good business sense, but we need better energy literacy to help businesses and communities undertand how they can capitalise on the transition,” Dr Conway said. Monday’s forum was part of the SRI’s project to improve energy literacy.
In her keynote talk, Prof. Renate Egan, Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, noted that the cost of solar infrastructure has plummetted, while the cost of conventional energy is rising inexorably.
When Prof. Egan started working with renewables in 1995, a solar rooftop installation cost $20/watt. It now costs 20 cents/watt – a potent factor in pushing Australia into becoming a world leader in rooftop solar. About 30% of Australian homes now draw energy from their own solar panels.
Over the 20-year life span of a rooftop solar installation, electricity costs the householder about three cents per watt. Paying for the same amount of energy from conventional sources would cost 28-30 cents per watt.
Much of the difference stems from transmission and regulatory costs imposed on conventional energy drawn from the grid, Prof. Egan said. “So if you can, it makes a whole lot of sense to put solar on your roof.
On average, Australian households now spend nearly $6000 a year in energy costs. Fully electrifying a home – solar panels feeding heat pumps, hot water and perhaps an electric vehicle – can bring this down by at least $2000.
As with driving a car powered by the sun rather than oil, that saved money that can be spent locally, Prof. Egan pointed out, rather than sent out of the region.
After her talk, Prof. Egan joined a panel discussion with Essential Energy CEO, John Cleland; Energy Corporation of NSW CEO, James Hay; Armidale Regional Council Mayor, Sam Coupland; and the moderator, UNE’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Research, Professor Chris Armstrong.
The discussion moved around the inevitability of the national shift to renewables, mirroring a global shift in the same direction.
James Hay observed that old coal plants are rapidly heading for obsolescence, and no affordable modern nuclear plants had yet left the drawing board. Australia needs to make choices about its future energy system within the next decade, he said, and the figures point to renewables as being the logical choice for next-generation power.
John Cleland agreed, but warned that clean power would not translate to cheaper power in the short term. The transition would need to be paid for. But once in place, Mr Cleland said, a clean energy system will be much more efficient than the current system, and not subject to the inexorable cost increases associated with coal.
Although renewables projects are facing increasing headwinds, it seems likely that the renewables infrastructure appearing around the New England is just the vanguard of bigger things to come.
Prof. Egan cited the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, who said a global clean energy transition was not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ – “and the sooner the better for all of us”.
The IEA has been notoriously conservative in its estimates of how influential renewable energy will be, Prof. Egan said. Not any more.
This story was written by Matthew Cawood and originally published on the UNE’s Connect News site.
