'Green with Envy?' Has Australia hit the 'sweet-spot' for EV, solar & battery?

29:07So it gets to a point where we're not exporting coal and gas and we are exporting these, you know, mineral processed products, things like green iron, where we've embodied renewable energy into that product. And therefore we're kind of, you know, just if Australia takes a significant portion of the world's iron and processes in Australia, that could decarbonize eight to 10 % of the world's emissions, you know, because iron is like one of the, you know, bigger sources of emissions um in the world and so it basically needs a huge amount of heat to process it and heat is kind of the most although it's sort of the end point of a lot of energy it's the most energy intensively huge amounts of energy to heat things up so just you know to provide the process that you use at the moment so when you have not to get way too geeky but you know iron ore so you're trying to get the you're trying to make pure iron so you're trying to get the oxygen out of the ore and so you mix that you know you basically heat that with metallurgical coal and that becomes the C in the coal and the O2 in the ore becomes CO2.

30:08And so that's where you get this huge amount of CO2 emissions that come out of the traditional iron making process. And so, yeah, so for boundless, anything we can do like to, for Australia, it's not reasonable to tell a country, just stop your top two exports that provide, you know, so much economic benefit to the country just stop doing that because it's bad um and you know put your economy into a tail spin like you know there's no government in the world that would um you know has the has the you know would just do that and so what you need to do instead our thesis at least is that you have to have the alternative thing coming into view becoming real and so australia the vision for australia is to move from coal and gas to all these new forms of green uh exports but we have to start making them real now and getting that process moving because these are the kinds of things that take many billions of dollars of investments.

31:08Supply chains need to be built. You need to get down the green premium, all that sort of stuff. So we need to get moving on that so that in the next 5, 10, 15 years, they're a big enough chunk of our export economy that we can move away from coal and gas. It's really important. I often think one of the problems is that we don't talk enough. I mean, on the Everything Electric show we do, and I'm sure you do too, but we don't talk about what we're going towards. We talk about what we're going away from, but we don't talk about what we're going towards. And it's one of my, like I have very mixed feelings about AI generated graphics, but one of the things I do think the world could use is pictures of what the world would look like if it had, I don't know, more wind turbines or cleaner streets or, you know, smaller cars, any of these things that, you know, logically people say that, but it always sounds as though you're taking something away.

31:58And I think we need to work a lot harder on showing this is what it looks like if we had it instead. So on the minerals, it strikes me that this is where the coal mining might actually be an advantage. Because if you're – I mean, maybe this is simplistic, but if you're quite good at digging things out of the ground, presumably that makes it a bit easier to dig other things out of the ground. Is it that simple? Are the companies that would mine the critical minerals, are they the same ones that are mining the coal? I mean, basically, are the big incumbents moving sideways or are lots of little companies appearing to, you know, starting from scratch?

32:33Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that Australia is one of the best countries in the world at digging stuff out of the ground. And that's not meant as a slight, like, you know, that's actually like the scale of mining in Australia and the efficiency and the costs that we can do for a world leading. and it's why a country like Australia that's pretty wealthy and people get paid well can still produce things like iron ore at a cost competitive price. So we are doing that. There's a huge percentage of the world's lithium comes out of Australia, so we do that. The issue is that we're good at digging up these minerals and exporting them in their raw state, which still makes you money, but what we're not great at or what we haven't been great at is going the next step of digging it up processing it and then exporting the processed material because that's you know these things are often in very remote places that's where a lot of the labor cost and that sort of thing starts coming into it and also just there's a lot of money it takes a lot of money to build one of these plants and if it's going to end up producing a processed mineral that's a bit more expensive than the one that China has because they've been doing it for a long time and they're at scale, then are you actually going to get any demand for it?

33:53You're going to be able to sell it. And so it's a bit of a wicked supply and demand problem, which means that, you know, to go back to your geopolitical question, you know, Australia really needs to work with our allies in the regions, so the Japans and the South Koreans, if they don't want to be so dependent on China, and they need to kind of work with Australia to invest in Australia being the place where the energy intensive stuff happens because Japan and South Korea, for example, don't have a great renewable resource. They're small, dense countries and they're not going to be able to, they're struggling just to power themselves with renewables versus doubling, tripling the power supply needed to do this sort of thing.

34:32So, you know, shifting around where some of these activities happen towards the places closer to where the renewables are is going to be the big thing that happens over the next 10 years. And that's a lot of kind of where Boundless spends its time thinking about trying to organize. So we do a lot of trade work, a lot of incentive work, a lot of thinking about how we aggregate demand. So we've done a lot of work in the region to try to aggregate green iron demand to create a big enough chunk of demand at a price where an Australian plant could be set up. And so, you know, that's the kind of tricky stuff that you need to do to kind of get a new industry off the ground.

35:10I can see it. I mean, it's never going to go away as an advantage of being not China. There's lots of other advantages you've got, but it's definitely not China. I've been reading a lot, quite a lot recently about, you know, where minerals come from. And there is this big worry that there needs to be an alternative, at least just for the balance, you know, just for balance, just for the world being not completely dominated by any one thing, which always seems to be a bad thing. And so, yeah, Australia has a huge advantage there. So let's come to the Australian public. You mentioned before that, you know, the attitude to EVs is changing.

35:42So just tell us where are EVs in Australia overall at the moment? Like how was the progress? To answer that a bit more widely, like as Boundless, you know, does our work on helping Australia become a renewable energy superpower, we kind of had this question in general. Like where are, how do we know whether what we're doing is actually people changing, are people kind of getting more receptive to this stuff, less receptive? How do we know? You know, generally in polling, people get asked, you know, do you think we should be doing more about climate change? And, you know, just generally very generic questions.

36:17And so we couldn't, we didn't have the data. So we created, we worked with a really excellent group called 83 Degrees East here in Australia. And we created what we call the Clean Energy Solutions Index. And what it does actually breaks down what are all the individual clean energy solutions. So there's rooftop solar, batteries, EVs, but then getting into electrifying factories, electrifying your home, gas replacement, transmission lines. And so there's like 32 different, you know, technologies, things we need to do basically. And we poll, you know, every six months, over 3 ,000 people all around Australia on their attitudes towards those things.

37:00And not just, you know, what do they think about themselves, but what do they think are these things good for the country, good for their community? What do their friends think about it kind of thing? And so, you know, and that all boils down into a number. and we say that you know 70 or 70 out of 100 that's kind of where you get like runaway supermajority support for something and it becomes basically impossible for a politician or a country to resist doing that and so you know for example um the highest scoring thing at the moment in australia is installing solar panels at home not surprisingly and that's at 82 and so there is no percent of the public approve of or think it's a good score of 82 out of 100 which is kind of like a combination of a few different things.

37:45But basically there's no way that any politician in Australia could say, I'm going to roll back. I'm going to make it harder for you to install solar panels at home. We don't like, you know, there would just be a massive kind of riot kind of thing because just everyone across the political spectrum, you know, thinks that that's a good thing. And so when we did this poll six months ago, we were surprised that actually out of everything, the lowest score was evs it was at 42 out of 100 and you know you dig into the data to find why that is and all the reasons that people were negative on evs were pretty much um you know misinformation that had really filtered through so you know they only last five years you know the the range is only like 100 kilometers like it was all just stuff that was outdated or not true that was still in there.

38:36And so interesting to think about why that is. But most recently, the recent poll that we just put out three weeks ago, and you can look at these numbers on the Clean Energy Solutions Index website, it was the biggest jump in the positive direction out of anything was on EVs. And so they jumped up to above 50, which was a plus six point jump, which in terms of the amount of time between polling in six months, That's a huge difference. And it was really interesting. The reasons that people were talking about EVs started to change. It's like, oh, well, they give me energy independence. I'm not going to be worrying about the cost of fuel anymore.

39:19And so you can see it's started. And that's reflected now in the sales numbers of EVs that have just hit 30 % of plug-in cars last month. and so you know we're really starting to see a flip I guess in public opinion around EVs and that EVs work and that we see people around us driving EVs and they're cheaper to run and all those messages are staying to to come in so I wouldn't be surprised to see the EV number really kind of head up towards the 80s over the next year or two and I just think it's you know Australia's gone from less than 10 % in January to 30 % now in August. So, you know, in five months.

40:04So, you know, we could be up at 40, 50 % maybe by the end of the year, if that trend, um, continues. And, you know, so this might be one of the fastest transitions, um, anywhere in the world, you know, that, that ultimately in Australia. So it's very interesting. I think it's, I think there's a really interesting thing when it comes to incentives so basically everything's incentives or obstacles in my general worldview but when the the incentives when it stops being about it's good for somebody else and it starts being about it's good for me and the more of those incentives stack up you know i'm starting to see discussions and i have you know had them on various forums where you're talking about uh the future of uh electrification and all of these things and you know nobody mentions the climate and it's not that it's not important it's just that's not where the incentives are anymore the incentives are entirely in terms of these things you're talking about energy independence and cost and um a better technology quite often you know it's just better well that was the i mean the biggest the most interesting thing that came throughout this study like you know this because we also just asked the generic what do you think about climate you know are we doing enough are we acting enough and actually support for doing more or what we're doing on climate dropped in the study but the the score for all of the individual solutions increased and the reasons were all of those sorts of things energy independence energy security Australia you know having its own kind of things things being cheaper so the message that that is cutting through to people like you say is much more what are my incentives why is this good for me then i'm doing you know all the people that bought an electric car because it's good for the planet have bought their electric car already they were the 10 that were the early adopters and now it's kind of the time for everyone else to come through and they but they need a different reason and um you know for you know i don't want to say luckily but you know like the war in iran and things like that have really done done more to accelerate progress at least on the consumer side than any kind of incentive, you know, any policy.

42:11It wasn't what anybody planned, was it? Not that there was necessarily a lot of conventional planning, but it's woken the world. I feel it's also one of those things where you have the shock of Russia and Ukraine and that's a blip and it makes people think, but when the second one comes along and then the third one comes along and then all of these, I mean, they are horrible events, but they really highlight the fact that stuff comes from somewhere. And we've just assumed that. It just means that you start thinking like it's just so, it is weird the way that we've constructed our economies in some ways around the centrality of fossil fuels.

42:47So like, you know, the cost of fuel goes up, then that drives the inflation number up. The government says we want to deal with inflation. So we're going to raise interest rates and make people's mortgages more expensive. then people have to pay more um for their mortgage so they're not feeling you know they're not feeling as wealthy and that they stop spending on other stuff it's just so weird that the a blockage in you know fuel flow in the middle east means that you have to pay more for your mortgage like you know like that's a it's such a strange connection but now people are starting to make it you're like oh well if we you know the solar panels that i have on my roof that almost every house in australia has, I can plug my car in here, power it myself.

43:33You know, there's never going to be any conflict in the world that interrupts the solar panels on my roof or the battery in my garage now. And I'll charge my car pretty much for free. One of the amazing things that's happened in Australia that just started actually is the government passed legislation that electricity, there's so much solar now in the middle of the day in Australia that prices often go negative. And so So we actually need to create more demand in the middle of the day. And so we've legislated that every electricity retailer have to offer consumers a plan where their electricity is free between 11 a.m.

44:09and 2 p.m. every day. That's national legislation. Yes, for states that are locked in. So most states now have that. There's a couple of smaller exceptions. But, yeah, so I have free electricity here between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. So if you have a battery, you can just charge. So basically, everybody just charges up their battery because everyone's going to get battery in that situation. So that's that combined with the battery incentives. So that's what's really put a rocket under battery cells. And yeah, if you've got a battery, you set it to charge between 11 and 2. And if your battery is big enough, which most of them are, or your house is efficient enough, then you pretty much have free electricity all the time.

44:48And none of this stuff in terms of your home electricity costs, you're not affected by what's happening in Iran. And why should you be? You live in Australia. Well, I think we're doing an episode soon about Amber Energy because they're the ones that are running as a trading system, I think, where you can actually trade electricity depending on the spot price, which changes every five minutes in Australia. Yes, yes. You're actually taking very direct advantage. Yes, they are coming to the UK. We have another episode on what they're doing in the UK coming out in the next week, I think. But it feels as though, I mean, I think a lot of that.

45:24It's taken to another level because you can have your battery charging, you know, when the prices are negative on AMBA because you get the wholesale prices. So you can be paid to charge your battery. And then there's some price spike in the afternoon, say in summer, if it's a heat wave, and you could make$300 in the afternoon from your battery discharging when prices are super high. So your bill is actually a payslip because you get money for helping the grid. um i think it's going to be you know in all of that kind of stuff i i am very sure that in 10 years time we're going to have to explain to young children that we didn't used to do it like that you know it's going to seem so obvious they're going to what do you mean you all just took energy and didn't there was no you know you didn't sensibly store it what do you mean you didn't do that i think all of that to drive your car you had to move a flammable liquid thousands and thousands of kilometers by boat and then blow it up and then blow it up for a long time really efficiently blow it up in the engine bay and it made a lot of noise and heat uh yes i'm it will be like children you know children cleaning chimneys in victorian britain or something people will think it was immoral and horrifying and how did humanity ever let itself do that um so i'm interested in what you have learned about making change happen like because australia Yeah, I mean, Australia is for many reasons in a very unique position, not just because of its history, but as you say, because it does have a lot of potential that's perhaps slightly easier to access than some other countries, not just because you've got lots of sunshine and perhaps relatively low population density.

47:03So I'm interested in what you've learned about making change happen. You've been doing this for several years now, you've gone through several iterations, different topics. What are the things that really shift the dial? what are the lessons for the rest of us, I guess? Yeah. I mean, the biggest one, I think, I think when you get into change-making, and I'm an engineer, you know, so I'm like, let's just, you know, my naive start in space was we'll just like, we'll find the best solution and we'll write it up or we'll prove how, and then we'll just show it to people, show it to a politician. Oh, that is such an engineering approach.

47:35That is like engineers going. And they'll be like, that's incredible. Yes, let's do that. And then we'll just get done. It doesn't happen. Yeah, so I realised pretty quickly. Here someone said recently that an engineer can say what could happen, but they can't say what should happen. And I thought that was a good distinction. An engineer can say, here's what's possible, but then there's all these other reasons. But go on. Okay, so you came into it with your engineering. What were the lessons? Yeah, so that's obviously one approach that doesn't work. And I think a lot of other change makers come into this with this idea that you can control everything, you know, like you have a perfect strategy of how you're going to make some change.

48:13You know, you're going to, you'll create some campaign and everyone will get on board with it kind of thing. And then you'll have this overwhelming public support. And then, you know, the reality is that it's very, people are very busy. It's very hard to get people to notice anything kind of thing. And, you know, we kind of have a bit of an overinflated sense of what we can control and what we can do. And so my biggest learning is, is that it's a big world out there and there's a lot of stuff going on. and the best opportunity to make change is when you um i guess have a little bit of humility and say i'm not the center of the world what i want to want to do isn't at the forefront of what most people want to do what what is it that they want what is happening now what do people care about what are they what is where is the political energy at the moment what's a big problem that the country's trying to solve and then if you can align what you're trying to achieve or a bit of what you're trying to achieve with that.

49:08So, you know, we've talked about electric freight. It's perfect. There's a big, there was a big freak out in Australia that we were going to run out of diesel because we're right at the end of the supply chain. And, you know, we weren't going to be able to have food delivered. So it was like, you know, the government is having these emergency meetings, you know, the prime minister started preparing the public for fuel rationing and stuff like that. And so we did this push on electric freight at that time. You know, one of the things we hosted was this big summit in Canberra. And I mentioned before the B double electric truck parked out front and um that the whole talk is that this is you know this is a solution to australia's um transport fuel insecurity and the and the technology's ready we had all the companies in the field there we had all the charging companies we had everyone everyone that um was in that industry and you know a big chunk of them just got invited up um to the prime minister's office because it's like wow this is the emergency that we're facing at the moment, you guys are offering the solution.

50:04So I think the more you can align your change with what's actually happening in society, that the more of a chance you're going to have to get something through where, you know, if you're talking about something completely irrelevant to most people, just because that's what you want right now, then, you know, that's when you really struggle to get anywhere. Yeah, no, I think that's, it's a great approach. And it's more, What I like is that there's a lot of listening in that. And I think that's one thing that the world often struggles with is listening. So, yeah. And then, you know, are there any exciting, we're coming towards the end of the allotted time here, but are there any exciting things coming up in the future?

50:46Like, do you know what your next topic is going to be? Are there any sort of legal changes you're excited about or technology changes that you're excited about? What's coming down the line for you? um well what we're working on now actually is the um is the electricity grid it's not super exciting but actually one thing that is exciting when you think about the electricity grid in australia is you know and there's a there is a lot of contention about data centers and ai and all that sort of stuff but you know i'm very excited about ai the the potential for ai to help move forward not just my field but the whole climate solutions field um in general and i've seen some really exciting, amazing stuff that's happening.

51:25So give us an example, because I think that AI is a really weird word that just gets battered around and it means 37 ,000 different technologies. But could you give us an example? I mean, the super pragmatic thing we're thinking about at the moment is so, you know, Australia's got this huge pipeline of data centre proposals to be built out in Australia. And, you know, we could fret about that and say, oh, they're going to suck up all of the energy and, you know, raise the cost of electricity for everyone else. Or we could say, you know, like I said, we don't control everything. Those data centers, a big chunk of them are probably going to be built because there's the government wants them to be built and that, you know, that's good for our economy and it helps us diversify our economy.

52:05So how do we align with that? You know, so we're, we're, we're supporting, um, you know, advocacy around, um, new legislation, legislation that's going to be passed through in Australia, hopefully by the end of this year that will say, if you're going to build a data center, you have to procure more than enough renewable energy that that data center is going to require and also support upgrading the grid around that data center. And, you know, data centers don't need public subsidies. You know, the companies building them have lots and lots of money. And so, you know, we can have our data centers and actually use them as an opportunity to build out our renewable energy infrastructure.

52:45And back to your very first question, create that demand to build extra renewables that will finally knock the last remaining coal out of the grid in Australia. So, you know, I think that's a pragmatic approach. You know, it doesn't get into the actual usage of AI, but these data centres are, you know, are needed. And I think, you know, for Australia, linking it all back to the super, the renewable energy superpower thesis, Data centres, particularly if they're used for training in Australia, powered by renewables, you're then potentially displacing those data centres being built in other places where they'd be powered by coal or gas or something like that.

53:22So you're actually, in aggregate, decarbonising the world of AI because you're putting these training data centres in a place where they could be powered by renewables. And I guess with data centres especially, I mean, data, huge volumes of it is a bit different, but we are speaking, you are on one side of the planet right now and I am on the opposite side of the planet and we are having a conversation as though the planet wasn't there basically which is still terror I remember years ago in Australia when I don't know I must have been uh 19 or something phoning my nana from Australia and it being the most unbelievably magical thing that I could pick up a phone in Australia and actually talk to someone in the UK and there was a gap and there were crackles and now it's now it is just I mean we could be in the next room and we actually wouldn't be able to tell the difference so i guess with data centers you know with a lot of things you know the minerals you're talking about you still have to ship them physically but with data yes that's right it's exactly so a green iron plant use renewable energy you put in iron ore and hydrogen all that stuff and you get iron out the other side you've got to put that iron on a boat and you send that iron to another country i mean that's fantastic but a data center is not that different really you've got you know a factory you're putting renewable energy into it and you know tokens are coming out AI tokens are coming out the other end and going out of fiber optic cable and then heading across to Singapore or America or wherever they're going.

54:43So it's just another export industry, really. And it's one, unlike a lot of these big infrastructure players, it doesn't need a lot of public funding and public support. and really starts to get us on that track of, oh, we are now exporting things that aren't coal and gas, that aren't polluting, that are at the cutting edge of what the world needs. And, you know, I think that puts you in a much better mindset for transitioning your economy than just, oh, we've got to not allow any new scary things. And, you know, and yet we're still going to have to shut down the old things like coal and gas without anything to replace them.

55:22Okay, so one final question then. And so we talked about the importance of going towards something. So I would like you to paint me a picture of Australia in 10 years time. Let's say that your campaigning works reasonably well. Things are going in the right direction. We know what the stereotype of Australia was in the past. Coal, you know, surfing, lots of sunshine. Paint me a picture of Australia in 10 years time. What is Australia going towards? Well, we'll still be surfing and we'll still have lots of sunshine. I think the Australian grid will be, you know, this world-leading grid in 10 years' time.

56:00It already is in a lot of ways, as we've discussed. You know, so we've got South Australia, which is pretty regularly, they'll have their whole state just powered by the electricity coming out of the solar on people's houses. And so now we're having to really lead the world on things like grid-forming inverters and things like that to kind of show how do you actually manage 100 % renewable grid. So, you know, in 10 years' time, Australia will be pretty bloody close to having a full 100 % renewable grid and probably be one of the biggest places in the world to have that. And so hopefully we're not just, you know, smug about that, but actually starting to export that expertise and helping other countries in our region, in the world, do something similar.

56:43I'd hope in 10 years that we have some of those green exports scaling up so that we have some green iron plants. You know, we're doing more mineral processing. You know, we're exporting things like green ammonia, which, you know, is then being used to make fertilizer in an emissions-free way. And so we're starting to tally up the amount of carbon emissions that we're reducing in the world rather than just what we're adding to. And we're having a really mature conversation about what's the future for our coal and gas export industries. Hopefully demand is starting to drop for those so that we can make a really clear case that these are legacy industries that are going away anyway.

57:28And so let's do it on our timetable rather than waiting for the rest of the world to decide for us. And then finally, you know, I think like many places in China are today, you know, the cities are going to be quieter. There's going to be much less air pollution, you know, because most of transport will be well on its way to being electrified by then. and, you know, people will just be, you know, things will just work. You know, people will have their solar panels, they'll have their batteries, their houses. There'll be houses we're buying and selling electricity like, you know, many of the early adopters are today and this stuff will just be normal.

58:03And, you know, my biggest wish is that all the culture wars and the politicisation around this stuff has dropped away because it's just, you know, so clear that this is the direction that made sense for Australia. Brilliant. Okay, that is a great place to finish on. So with that dose of optimism, thank you very much. That dopamine in. Thanks for having me.

58:30So that was the podcast. And I love the way that A-Ton talks. And it makes you feel as though these pieces do just make sense, which of course they do. It makes it sound possible to bring all this together. and Australia is clearly really well positioned to lead on this and there's lessons coming out that the rest of the world can share so it's a big country and if they can shift from being a coal-based economy and an exporter of emissions to being clean energy so instead they're exporting clean energy clean materials and expertise it's really going to shift the dial globally so that's all really exciting.

59:11So I hope that leaves you with some optimism and some enthusiasm to take forward to the rest of your day. And if you have been, thank you for listening.

59:39and choosing the final output. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. My name is Tuba Nguyen, and enrolling at Rasmussen University was essentially a handshake to a lifeline, a career, stability, and a future for myself. I found it important to be able to speak with instructors and staff outside of office hours, and to have that support system was essential because they believed in me. Rasmussen University. Are you ready to rewrite your story online and on campus? Learn more at rasmussen.edu.

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