Welcome
John Grimes, Chief Executive Smart Energy Council
Renewables will slash economy wide emissions UNTIL NOW, the question has been “how quickly and to what extent will renewables replace fossil fuels in the electricity sector?” Cost has been the key driver, and will be in the future. But it turns out that was just the start. Today we see a virtuous spiral emerging, where zero carbon energy is being pushed to such low costs that the whole economy is about to be reshaped.
Project developers are finding that renewables aren’t just cheaper than fossil fuels, but also that investing 20 per cent more in a project build delivers dividends, yielding 50 per cent more energy. Building renewables at scale just gets cheaper and cheaper. And the marginal cost of building more renewables is falling quickly. Therefore the extra energy is free or almost free on a marginal basis. From here on in we have an increasingly delicious problem to solve. What to do with all the extra low-cost carbon free energy? And it turns out the answer to that question will seriously change the world. At our recent COP26 webinar, Vincent Dwyer from Energy Estate showed how zero carbon hydrogen will become the feedstock decarbonising the explosives, fertiliser, plastics and other industries. Indeed, the waste products in these processes are massively valuable in their own right. Many industries are going to have emissions pulled out of them, all linked back to the striking success of the renewables industry. Cheap renewable energy, directly or indirectly, will also pull emissions from steel, aluminium and zinc production, and displace non energy methane gas and oil. On stationary energy the low carbon future is now locked in. On the emissions from chemicals, plastics, food production, metal processing, cement, transport and much, much more – tick, job started.
TITANIUM PARTNERS
In my view AS WE TACKLE THE ONGOING PANDEMIC, we must not neglect our most severe intergenerational challenge: climate change. As President of the UN’s next global climate conference COP26, the UK is committed to urgently scaling up action to respond to the threat climate change poses on so many fronts – the impact on our biodiversity, on people and livelihoods, on health and our economies, the risk it engenders to peace and stability. We have no choice but to deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement. To meet these goals, we need to Vicki Treadell dramatically increase the speed – by four is High to six times – of our global transition to Commissioner of the UK to clean power. Clean, resilient and smart Australia energy underpins our decarbonisation journey so we need to seize the opportunity offered by the rapidly falling cost of renewables and energy storage. This will unlock decarbonisation of transport systems and industrial processes, while boosting energy affordability, job creation and growth. The economic prize is clear. Over US$11 trillion is expected
2 AUTUMN 2021
to flow into zero-emissions power generation by 2050. This is why clean energy is at the heart of the UK’s pandemic recovery plan as we seek to build back better and stronger. UK Prime Minister Johnson’s Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution has ambitious clean energy objectives, including installing 40GW of offshore wind and developing 5GW capacity for low carbon hydrogen production by 2030. The Ten Point Plan will leverage £12 billion ($22 billion) in government investment to create up to 250,000 green collar jobs and mobilise £36 billion ($65 billion) in private investment by 2030. Australia has a unique opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower. It has world leading renewable resources, deep technical expertise, strong trade ties, and a zest for technological innovation. Australia is fertile ground for the development, production and trade of the clean energy resources needed to tackle climate change and grow our global economy. As the UK continues its global climate leadership in the run up to COP26 we look forward to continuing to work with Australia to drive forward these important changes including the delivery of Australia’s Technology Roadmap.
