SMART ENERGY CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2021
PLOTTING THE PATH TO A JUST TRANSITION This year’s Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition highlighted the rapid rate of renewables entering the energy mix – a pace few could have predicted. But Australia is yet to realise its potential and must respond to the shifting goalposts to avoid missing its greatest ever opportunity. A robust roadmap, tangible targets and portfolio of plans must be developed.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE an upbeat assessment of the renewables industry to buoy the spirits and during the Smart Energy Conference & Exhibition a bright and positive scenario – albeit with some qualifiers – was presented by Kobad Bhavnagri.
well up on the 34 per cent at the
The highly respected BloombergNEF analyst shared what he described as a good news story that highlighted swathes of progress and forward momentum despite the ravages of the COVID pandemic which presented the most difficult of economic circumstances during 2020.
transition passed half a trillion
This year actually marked a point where the energy transition really gathered pace, he said, spurred along by more than half of global greenhouse gas emitters declaring some form of net zero target,
will also become even cheaper
Australia’s major buyers of coal and
than operating an existing fully
gas exports: Japan, South Korea and
depreciated coal or gas plant, with a
China.
tipping point just three or four short
Kobad reeled off a series of encouraging numbers. “During 2020, investment in the energy dollars per annum which was quite a milestone… investment in renewable energy had flatlined since 2015 but because of the continual decline in the cost of wind and solar, although investment has stayed flat, the amount of capacity that gets installed for each dollar has continued to grow,” he explained. Investment in electric vehicles and also in heat electrification, a pathway to decarbonisation, have continued to expand the market passing the $500 billion mark for the first time. “It’s very much a good news story
“Global emissions from energy have likely already peaked” KOBAD BHAVNAGRI
From hereon new wind and solar
beginning of 2020. The list includes
years away in many major markets like China, like the United States.
The economics of renewables “Australia’s probably already across that point so the economics of renewables of course continued to get better and better, more and more compelling and really irrefutable.” “Battery storage economics too of course continue to improve thanks to the decline in capital costs of lithium ion battery packs. These days four hours of battery storage is the cheapest form of dispatchable power generation capacity in many major markets
and companies and corporations
around the world, outcompeting
around the world are also making
open cycle gas turbines or peaker
very credible and science-based
gas in the very cheapest of
commitments to limiting emissions,”
markets… the economics of both
he said.
batteries and renewables mean that
“The economics of renewables
we are heading towards a global
are now such that two-thirds of the
power system which is of course
global population lives in a country
dominated by renewables.”
where wind or solar is the cheapest
BloombergNEF data indicates
form of new electricity supply, and
without any further policy about
that covers about 70 per cent of
69 per cent of total electricity
global GDP.”
generating capacity by the year
