Australia's Renewable Revolution & the EV Boom — with Giles Parkinson

28:57So, you know, we've kind of got to 10 % and we got slightly over it and we've fallen back behind and there's lots of different reasons for that which we could possibly go into. But the big part of the new car market in Australia is everyone seems to want to drive a ute. I don't quite understand why, but everyone says they do. Or people like to go camping too. You can pretend they're your trade vehicles so you can get a tax deduction of them, you know, a lease and stuff like that. And people just seem to like them. But there's not much out there in full electric utes. There's a couple of Chinese models.

29:30There's a new one coming in called the Masso, which is done by, I think, GAC. There's been another one which didn't go down well because it just wasn't strong enough for – Right. And the Shark is a plug-in hybrid. Yeah, but it's got a fairly decent battery and sort of not embarrassing electric range. Yeah, look, it does 100 kilometres, I think, you know, fully electric or maybe a bit less if it's loaded up. But that's still – that's not a lot better. I mean, that's most people's daily travels. So that's good. And look, and it's proved really popular. I know someone who's just recently driven one around Australia as much as he could fully electric.

30:06um so um so they're going down look and australians look they have been unfortunately because of the media here they have been taught to like hybrids and to fear battery electrics because you know range anxiety which is more like charger anxiety will you know will i get to this next town and will the will the will the charger work when i get there yeah yeah so yeah that's kind of what that's what's in the head at the moment is i must have a hybrid because i'll run out of power and i'll be isolated in the middle of nowhere and that's no good i mean the good topic I wanted to bring up there was the I mean I just can't quite believe they'll do it but the Toyota are talking about introducing a fully electric Hilux because that's you know that was certainly one of the things I noticed particularly in Queensland I mean the you know Utes are popular but the most popular seems to be the Hilux that's the most common one you see you know around the streets or out in the bush or whatever well thank goodness for that because I mean Toyota have been a destructive or resistance force around the world and in Australia.

31:06They've pushed this hydrogen stuff for a long time. I think they're finally admitting now that that's actually not going to be a thing. So let's finally get out the battery electrics and, you know, they're going to – and we've had one full electric vehicle from Toyota, the BX4X or whatever it's called, which is, you know, hasn't been a star but has got a few sales. I think the next one's coming in two years' time. Right. Oh, they're rushing them out. They're rushing them out. But look, it's good that they're actually talking about the Hilux going electric. Yes, that would be good. Yeah. But actually, I did a quick check just before we started talking about public charging, because I've used chargers here.

31:42I've driven up and down the kind of eastern coastal strip a few times now. I mean, I've charged. I've never not been able to charge. And I mean, my frustration has been having a British phone with apps that don't work on it. You know, there's been some grit in the gears. There's no question. And when you have to rely on an app. But the ones that I have been able to access have always worked and they've always been fine. So it's not that, but there is a bit of a stark difference. So the UK has 86 ,798 public charge points. These are all rapid charges at 44 ,142 locations. That is, I didn't know that.

32:18That sounds like, well, it sort of sounds like quite a lot. I mean, there are a lot of them around. Australia has 4 ,000 public charge points across 1 ,200 locations. So that kind of puts it in a bit of a stark contrast that, you know, because it's so much bigger here. But, I mean, you also don't need them as much. I mean, I can't believe that number. This is from ZapMap, who are very reliable, who kind of want the best app to use to find a charger in the UK. I mean, they update all the time. Like every minute they're updating. Well, we just had a story published today. In China, they've got 4 million public charging stations.

32:58Right, yeah. I think 18 million in total, all but i think four million is fast charge dc fast charging or something which is just an extraordinary number but you know they're a big country huge population a heck of a lot of evs i mean you've you've probably been there more recently than i have but yes amazing yeah yes yes well i was last there in 1982 and there weren't many evs then but anyway

33:23but no i've okay so i've just come back from tasmania i just stayed with a mate in tasmania which was lovely uh very beautiful but i just saw the story about the eco ferry and you just go what who what well also because i was in tasmania earlier this year with the giant electric ferry that's been built for for south america which is just like breathtaking pushing the boundaries of technology it does work it's doing sea trials now it goes along it can carry i don't know what it is two and a half thousand passengers, a thousand cars or something, 800 cars. You know, I mean, it's a big, it's not a little practice boat.

34:01It's huge. It's a ship. But what's this bloody ferry where it's using woodchip? I don't even know. I don't even know how to talk about it. I don't even know. Where do you start? I don't know. Where to start? Well, it's Tasmania for a start. So Tasmania is a bit of a sort of left-hand and right-hand thing. They recently, there's a very well-known ferry that goes from Melbourne to Tasmania. I can't remember what it's called now, And they upgraded it and they ordered a much bigger ferry, but someone forgot to increase the size of the dock, so it can't actually go there because it's too big. No, that's what it is.

34:35You're kidding. Yeah, seriously. But they spent that much money making the boat, building the ship, I presume. Yeah, it got built in Scandinavia, and just before it left, they said, where's it going to dock? And going, oh, I hadn't thought about that one. Anyway. So look, as you say, Incat, which is a Tasmanian company, on the Derwent River is making these fantastic electric ferries. They've made a couple. Now they're making the world's biggest. And there's this lovely – we've actually been on this boat to Mariah Island, which is just a few years. So this is the ferry we're talking about. Yeah, absolutely.

35:06A small little ferry, nice little ferry, lovely company. But for some reason they've looked at this and gone, oh, no, electric propulsion doesn't work. We're going to go with replacing our fuel with a methanol fuel. And the problem with this methanol is that it's going to come from a new plant, which is only going to be built in the next couple of years. But this plant, this whole thing about biomass, and I struggle with biomass and stuff like that. Oh, God, it's hard to love. And this one in particular, they're proposing using wood waste, which in Tasmania essentially means wood chips from native forests.

35:43So those huge trees that you saw, biggest in the world of their type, which are being chopped down despite many protests, chopped up for wood chips, and then fed into a stove to power of theory. It was just ridiculous. Oh, God. It's just heartbreaking. I mean, if you chop down a tree and you build a house with it or furniture or something, you've got the vague excuse that it's being used for a long time. But to chip it and burn it, it's just like... I mean, that's what's happening in the UK. It is finally stopping. We've got Drax B, this big power station in north of England, that's gone eco and green by not importing coal from Poland but importing wood chips from Canada, Western Canada.

36:23So the transportation alone is just bonkers. Yeah, fuel miles. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. So the ferry itself will have like a diesel engine. Yeah, we've got one there. We were on it a couple of years ago and it's a beautiful island. Right. And I recommend anyone to go there if they're ever in the Tasmanian area. A tragic story about the first settlers and the Indigenous nations, but it looks totally beautiful landscape-wise. But, yeah, no, they've obviously just decided that the easiest things to do is just put in sort of cleaner fuels, which is kind of what a lot in the shipping industry and the aviation industry are doing.

37:01Let's have renewable or sustainable fuels, which sounds like a really good idea unless you pod down to it and you discover it's wood chips rather than something else. Yeah. You know, so, yeah. Yeah. Here's a good one, because this is a great story. These are all stories from you. So sorry, because you're just, but they're new to us. But 160 ,000 fines have been imposed for people parking combustion cars in EV charging bays. That's actually in the UK. That's actually your territory. Oh, we've done that. You've done that. Yes. Yes, we've fined people. There we go. That shows how well-researched I did that.

37:38That's why I'm not a journalist. No, look, what it doesn't say is that 160 ,000 people have been fined for, I guess you call it icing. We call it icing over here. Yeah, we call it icing. I've been iced with Twitter for a long time. And how many times do you turn up somewhere and there's a great big, in Australia, you usually see a big U or a four-wheel drive somewhere. How many of those fines are being paid? I don't know. Right, right. But they had to do it because it was just getting out of, you know. It did get out of control. And it is something I've noticed a distinct reduction in the amount of times I've stopped at a charger and had to stretch the cable over the bonnet.

38:15It's always a black BMW that was parked at an odd angle. I don't know why. Maybe it's the same one. It just follows me around. But, I mean, I haven't had that experience in a long time. The fines are having an impact. So maybe the fines are having an impact. There we go. There's me with my collection of Australian stories, but this one's about the UK. That's right. We didn't want to tell anyone in the headline, otherwise they might not click on it. Yeah. um that now here's a story that has intrigued me only because i actually interviewed chris bowen at the sydney show earlier this year who was i have to say i was very impressed with him i mean i don't know anything about his broader politics or australian politics is still a bit of a mystery to me but he was he seemed to walk the walk i mean he was you know he drives electric cars he has solar panels he's got batteries you know he does the thing and he definitely knew what he was talking about but there's this so there's some move to bring to bring cop 31 to australia in net so the cop 31 will be next year is has cop just finished or it's just finishing brazil has just about to wrap up i think it's got another two days as we're recording this look breaking news on this robert um australia australia has missed out all right yes it's off to turkey um bowen um has dealt himself into the equation he will be he'll play a key role as sort of this new title called President of Negotiations.

39:36So basically, Turkey will host it. They refused to budge. And Australia just said, well, look, this is getting... The default thing was going to Germany, and the Germans made it very clear they didn't want to host it. So Australia just said, OK, if Turkey really wants it, we'll go there, but we'll cut the deal. So they're going to do a big meeting in the Pacific, which is really important for this region, one that's focused on finance and adaptation, things like that. They're still pushed for some sort of trade fair, which these things are often linked to in Australia. whether that happens or not, I do not know.

40:05But essentially the whole thing will be in Turkey, but Bowen and presumably other Australian diplomats and public servants will be playing a key role in just trying to sort of get together some sort of consensus at the conference. And I'm not really too sure what's going to be on the agenda next year, but it's been that hard just to agree on where it's going to be held. You can imagine what it's like to actually agree on something. I mean, it is, I think it's sort of, yeah, definitely coming. Just simply the fact that every year, the story every year is how many more fossil fuel lobbyists are attending than anyone else.

40:40I mean, it's basically a big fossil fuel conference with some environmentalists that are sitting on the edge. I mean, it's just incredible how blatant that is and how completely it doesn't matter. You know, it's fine. Yeah, of course, there'll be fossil fuel lobbyists. And the problem with that is that, you know, under the UN sort of regime, everything has to be done by consensus. So you get 193 countries agreeing and you get one saying, I don't agree. And, you know, it kind of holds the whole thing to hostage or to ransom, however you want to call it. But, yeah, I went to eight of these things up until Paris and I swore I'd never go to another one.

41:18Wow, my God. I don't know how you did it. I mean, Paris was kind of historic. I mean, it's a good one to end on. Oh, yeah. And they're fantastic. They were sort of vibrant. They were uplifting. they were fascinating at the same time they were exhausting frustrating and and you know once you've been to a couple of them you just go that's it let's just take in more than two weeks out of my life and it's just been you know um but such an important thing um at times really uplifting a fascinating mixture between as you said the fossil fuel lobbyists the governments the people really trying to do something and and and and the public you know the um yeah um they're allowed inside and it's just an extraordinary mixture of, yeah, it's fascinating.

42:02The only one I've ever been to was the Glasgow one a few years ago, which was unbelievable. I was really, you know, I didn't really have any preconceptions, but it was very, very impressive. And I met the most amazing people there from all around the world. I mean, that was very noticeable. You know, we weren't staying in a flash hotel, but a central hotel. And then you go down in the lobby and you go, oh, blimey. I've seen him on a podcast. oh my God, that's her. That's that bloke. And none of them have been on a reality TV show. They've all actually done something quite useful.

42:38Yeah, no, but yeah. Well, that was great. Amazing, because I was going to mention Paris because, you know, I sort of shrugged and given. I remember a lot of people I knew went to Copenhagen, which was meant to be the big thing. And it was an absolute flop. It was an absolute disaster. And everyone came back really depressed and miserable. Yes, I was in Copenhagen. Were you right? Yes, yes. And that was fascinating too. And basically, I mean, it's a fascinating one because they had a conference center which could hold 15 ,000 people, but 25 ,000 people turned up. Wow. So every morning, and it was Copenhagen, and it was late November, and every morning it was freezing.

43:14There was snow and ice on the ground, and there'd be these queues snaking out of the convention center. first thing in the morning as people walked in, and you walked down that queue, and you saw the head of such and such investment bank. You saw the head of some department. You saw the head of this company. You saw all of this. And then there was all these Moonies and other people just trying to sort of hand them out sort of croissants and other. It was fascinating, but just a complete melting point. Yeah, the melting pot. It was, yeah. Wow. Oh. We've got to talk about this fellow from Queensland, because every now and then there was a wonderful politician.

43:55I can't remember his name now. Bjorki Peterson? No, no, because I do know a bit about him. No, this is post Bjorki Peterson, but what it was was someone had said there's gay, you know, of course there's gay people in every profession in Australia, including Australian rules or whatever the footy, Australian footy. And this guy said, if there's a, he, of course, used a slightly different language, if there's a gay player in this football team, I'll walk backwards to Burke. And this was a quote that my mother-in-law had to explain to me where Burke was. It's a long way. It's a long way. The back of Burke, yes.

44:38Back of Burke, yeah. I'll walk backwards to Burke, you know, whatever the hell. And I went, there's Queensland, you know, in a nutshell. but it is, there's lots of amazing, lovely, very progressive people in Queensland, but this guy possibly, can you do, or Jared, what's his name? Jared Blay. Jared Blay. Jared Blay, apparently. Blay, is it Blay? Yes, it's a sort of a Dutch spelling, yes. Right, of course it is, yes. He's the new planning minister. Right. And let me put this in the sort of the politest way I could possibly say it, and the most advised way I can possibly say it, he's an Elvis impersonator.

45:14I was going, we're going to have to bleak this. And if you see a picture of him and you see his little sort of thing at the front. That's why he had all the llama and all the white stuff. He keeps the whatever it's called at the front of his thing. The quiff. The quiff. He really doesn't like wind and solar farms. And he has rejected some monster wind projects, more than one gigawatt, quite big. Ones that had been approved by the previous government. and he's taken such a delight and a pride of, you know, counselling these projects. And basically this is what happens when you get an LNP, well, it's a Conservative government.

45:51The Labour government had been there for six or seven years. Australia was the country's most coal-dependent state. It was slow to pick up. Queensland. Queensland, yeah, sorry. What did I say? Yeah, anyway. So Queensland was, yeah, and it finally got this plan to accelerate and just a whole bunch of projects up there to really sort of, you know, accelerate that transition. It had locked-in targets for renewables 85%, 80 % by 2035. And the LNP, the Conservative government, are coming in and just sort of basically torn everything up. And it's frustrating to see. And this is despite the biggest company in Queensland and the biggest energy user and the biggest employer is Rio Tinto.

46:34It's got these massive aluminium smelters and aluminium refineries in a city called Gladstone, which is kind of like the hub of coal and gas exports. But it's got these aluminium and aluminium export facilities and refineries. It's now powered by one of the biggest coal-fired power station in the state. But it has said these assets have no future if we can't transfer all of this from coal power to renewables by the end of the decade. Wow. So the companies, this is the companies that make this stuff. So this is the biggest company, this is the biggest employer, the biggest energy users in the state.

47:06It uses 10 % of everything, and it's saying we've got to go to renewables, and we've locked in all these contracts with wind farms, solar farms, solar and battery hybrids, and yet you've got this new government saying, no, we can't do that, we must go back to coal. And these companies are saying, are you serious? You can't be. Because, I mean, also I'm assuming that the coal asset, the actual assets, the coal-burning power plants are not new. I mean, they're probably in their latter years now, or are they relatively new? In Queensland, they've got the youngest fleet, so they're 30 years old as opposed to, say, more than 40 years old for the rest of the country.

47:45And the ones in the rest of the country, in Victoria and New South Wales, are really clapped, and in Western Australia. They're clapped out. They've got to be closed in the next five to 10 years. In Queensland, I guess, now we can probably go another 10 or 15 years. Right. But look, you know, I mean, this climate change, this rising emissions, we've actually got to do something about it. Yes. And Rio Tinto has decided that its most economic option, in the same way that Fortescue, Andrew Forrest with Fortescue up in the Pilbara, as we discussed at the start, his most economic option is to go electric, to go renewables.

48:20Right. But so it's just this sort of fascinating clash. But this man, Jared Blay, he, yeah, he's been very, he's been very frustrating just simply because of the absolute sheer pleasure he's taken from cancelling these things. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's also, I mean, what's so tragic about it, it is a kind of, it's a purely political decision as opposed to even a political and economic one. Yeah. You know, you could maybe make an, there might be an economic argument you could try and make, But what is becoming blatantly apparent is that the economics of extracting coal, transporting it, burning it, dealing with coal ash, forget CO2, forget all the other issues.

49:01That's expensive. And then you put in a solar farm and you've got electricity. You know, all the cost is up front. And then you've got electricity. And the cost, you know, if the cost of batteries had gone up in the last 15 years, there's really good economic arguments to keep on digging up coal and burning it. But the cost of batteries has dropped through the floor. I mean, it's just, you know, they've become an economic, they are an economic viable system. To have solar, wind and batteries is now economically viable and increasingly so. So you can stand up and rant all you like about, you know, the beautiful, beautiful clean coal and you can hold it up in Parliament.

49:41As they do. As they do. But, you know, I don't know, there's got to be a sporting energy You're batting at a soggy wicket. That's as good as I can get. That shows you the depth of my sport. I understand your sport. That man's standing on a soggy wicket anyway. Yeah, no, it's very depressing. I mean, it's kind of funny because he's a kind of weird character, but it isn't funny. No, it's not funny. We're talking about billions of dollars of investment that may not happen now, and we're talking about a transition that won't happen, and we're talking about probably higher prices because of it and possibly less reliable supply because one of the, you know, a couple of their generators, I mean, they're supposed to be one of the youngest fleets, but, you know, two of them just exploded literally, you know.

50:26Yeah, they break down. They break down and quite spectacularly. I mean, they just go boom. I mean, they've had problems. They spent hundreds of millions repairing them and then they went boom again. So it's, look, it's nuts and it's just frustrating. Yeah, yeah. Let's just quickly, I mean, we're running out of time, but just quickly about electric vehicle sales. I mean, one thing we could see in our little microcosm of the event in Melbourne was an enormous amount of interest from the general public, particularly on the Sunday. It was a really fascinating change in sort of audience make-up. But, you know, big interest in electric vehicles.

51:03Everyone who came there knew that's what was there. You know, they came along to test drive them, I mean, the Tesla, you know, FSD test drives were extraordinary. And they actually ended up doing more than they expected. And their target was fairly high. But, you know, it was a – but on the whole, though, sales have dropped or have plateaued. They've kind of been going up and down. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is the poor performance of Tesla. So Tesla basically historically was the first one to the market and dominated the market. like it only happened basically in the United States.

51:40So Australia's got no manufacturing industry anymore. So Tesla accounted for about 60 % of sales. Right. Now it's fallen. And Tesla's, look, I suppose at best you could say they've been static. Yeah. They've been falling. One, they haven't really introduced any new models. We don't have the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck here. They've had the refresh of the 3 and the Y, but they haven't grown sales. I think there's been a bit of a pushback to Elon Musk's politicking, as you've seen in the UK and Germany. On the other hand, there's no other market in the world, well, Western market in the world, that has as many offerings from the Chinese manufacturers.

52:26So if you think about Europe and particularly North America, Chinese car makers are blocked by tariffs and things like that, not in Australia. So we're getting an extraordinary number of Chinese brands, some of which you've never heard of, and some of which will sound like they made up their names yesterday over lunch. And they're actually really quite interesting. And look, it's hard for these brands who you've never heard of before to come in and get a stake in the market, but people are warming to them, and that's where the growth in the market is coming. It's coming from these new players.

53:00So it's the BYDs of the world. It's the Geelys. XPeng, all those pounds. Yeah, Zika. They're probably the leading ones. But also you're starting now to see, and because we've got these new vehicle emission standards, you're now starting to see the legacy players like Toyota, but probably more interestingly Nissan and Hyundai and Kia rolling out more electric vehicles. VW is actually starting to do quite well in Australia, was very slow to come here, but is now doing better. So, you know, we've gone from having like about, well, just Teslas and Nissan Leafs to, you know, about 20 vehicles to now well over 100 and probably heading towards 150, just the sheer number of options.

53:44Different models, yeah. And lower price ones too. So, you know, we're now starting to see our first cars down around$25 ,000 or even less. Which is incredible. Yeah, well, that's right. I mean, that was one of the things where Jack and I walked around the show, you know, when it was just, I think it had just opened on the Friday. And it was just filling up. And he had all the prices of the cars on display in Australia. But he also had looked up what, I mean, many of them aren't available in the UK, but all the ones that are, at least$10 ,000 to$15 ,000 more equivalent than they are here. They're much more expensive for the same car.

54:22Right. Right-hand drive. Yes. Just like, why is that one so much cheaper here? So you're definitely blessed in that way that, you know, you've got these incredible vehicles available. I mean, I think that's, I mean, I've said it before many times, but I mean, I think the thing that is now accepted globally, particularly in the automotive industry, is 15, 20 years ago, if you saw a Chinese-built car, it was the same story again and again. It's like 30 years before that when you saw a Korean one or 50 years when you saw a Japanese one, they were a bit, oh, they're rubbish. They're not well made.

55:00Those cars are beautifully made. Now, the Chinese ones, the level of sophistication, the quality of the build, the body work, the ride handling, the chassis, all that stuff is, you know, state of the art, really, isn't it? I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. So, yeah, it's really, I mean, all people have really got to get their mind over is these new brand names that they haven't come across before. So, you know. Yes. And also remembering them, which is the thing where I struggle. Because I've been in a lot of them and I can't remember which one's which.

55:32I think it's not good. I think that's a senior moment there, Robert. Yeah, I think I'm afraid it is. I'm very ashamed. Because I've been in the whatever the one is, it is amazing, in China with Elliot. I wish Elliot was here to tell me what it was. He'd be so ashamed of me. But that was the one where it's a luxury saloon. It's not a kind of, you know, it's a high-end car. But he said, oh, see, there's a pothole up ahead of us. I'm really pleased about this. You watch it. And he drove like absolutely so we went over it. And you heard it just about, but you did not feel it. So the car can see the bloody pothole and it adjusts the suspension.

56:06So as you go over it, the wheel goes down and up and the body stays. So what I heard as we were driving along was, pull, pull. Those are the two wheels going through. just unbelievable i mean really extraordinary so that's chinese technology it's not a depal it's one of those ones that's yeah yeah it's probably made by geely but it's a different brand you know because there's so many sub brands of each big brand which is hard to well that's true yes and it turns out everything's owned by geely so um yeah i don't even see i don't know how to say it no you but you might be right you might be right let's just um let's let's leave that one out there i'm not too sure that's great so just before we finally stop so what is there a thing an event uh a car uh a development a renewable thing that you're kind of intrigued by looking forward to wondering what's going to happen that you know that's that's not happened quite yet yeah look there's probably two things one's vehicle to grid um yes and the arrival of So, you know, there's a few people, we talked about home batteries at the start of this show.

57:14You're starting to see these batteries, sort of, you know, these stackable batteries. People are not putting small batteries into the house. They're putting these really big batteries in the house. And some of them have EV chargers and bi-directional charging and things like that. So, you know, we're starting to see the retailers trying to get their mind around, well, how do we, you know, how do we price this thing? How much do we pay these people for exporting power back to the grid? Some of them are really innovative and, you know, offering a lot of money back. You can get paid to charge in the middle of the day, and you can get paid to put the power back into the grid.

57:46This is from your car. So how that works and how that works out, I mean, it's easy to do that on a pilot basis and try it. How that works out when it's on mass, then that's a different sort of thing. So that's really exciting. Look, for me, I just think what we're starting to see the emergence of these, what's called these solid battery hybrids, because those two technologies, their costs have come down and still coming down. We've got so much sun here. We're starting to see the first of these big batteries, these big solar farms with their own batteries behind the meter. And they're basically not necessarily sort of part of that duck curve in the middle of the day.

58:22They're just putting it in the box and then they're sending it back to the grid in the evening after dinner and sometimes through the night. And this is really interesting for those big companies like Rio Tinto. They might have factories and manufacturing shifts which go from the daytime and then the evening. These things are perfect for that. So I think we're going to see a big shift in that. And we've seen the first of these rolling out in the next year or so, but there's about 20 being built. So that's really interesting. And the other one is we talked about South Australia, 157 % renewables, 100 % net renewables by 2027.

58:57In Western Australia, which is a huge state where the Pilbara is at the top of the state, but it's got this isolated grid. It's not connected to any other grid. It's the biggest isolated grid in the world. Wow. And it's already reaching 89 % renewables at times. Wow, because that's something I don't mention that. Right, that's in... Yeah, well, if you think about, you know, you probably go back 10 years and you'd probably find, you know, you struggle to find many people who say we could support more than 10 % or 20 % penetration of solar. Yeah, oh, God, always. It's always 10 % or 20%. And you can still find that, you know.

59:29Yeah. But this is here. This is the biggest isolated grid in the world, 89 % renewables at times. You know, it's average over the years, just over 40, but it's going to change pretty soon because its last coal-fired power stations are going to retire in the next few years. So it's building these really big batteries. And it's now, you know, a lot of it's been rooftop solar. It's going to roll out much more. It's just fascinating to see what they can do in an isolated grid. We've written stories about these big mines, not the big iron ore mines, like a gold mine, which is not connected to the grid in any way.

1:00:05and they might put in four turbines, about 20 megawatts of solar, and they're running at an average of 90 % renewables. Wow. Off-grid, with a battery, you know, the used diesel is back up, you know, every now and again. They're running four or five days at a time with no fossil fuels. Right. And look, if you can do it with a small grid like that, you can do it with a bigger grid. Yeah. A few more contingencies to manage, of course, but the principle is the same. Yeah. that's a very optimistic positive note to end on yes let's do it let's not end on a really sad no no that's fantastic giles thank you so much it's been as always an absolute pleasure talking to you and it's really and it's been interesting to to learn all the things that are going on here so it's been great i've even learned some things back there going on in the uk well there you go that's right that's right that's where you can We've had a parking spot at the charging station now.

1:01:02Yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Well, I look forward to you driving up the road and popping in for a cup of tea or something. Absolutely. We'll definitely do that. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye.

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