The fastest energy shift in Australia’s history is underway. And the agencies that should be informing decisions about how we plan grids, precincts, charging networks and public investment are operating on data systems that were designed for a different era — and then deliberately run down.
Australia’s EV numbers are just the most vivid current example of a much larger and more troubling problem: Australia has been accumulating a data deficit, cutting the science and statistics infrastructure that underpins evidence-based planning.
New technologies as part of the net zero transition are rapidly being adopted but the data to understand how they work, help manage and recycle them is not easily available.
How we got here
The Abbott government’s 2014 budget inflicted deep cuts across Australia’s federal science and research agencies — CSIRO, the Australian Research Council, the Bureau of Meteorology and others — on the premise that government-funded science could be replaced by commercial partnerships. That premise was wrong, and it has set off a decade of structural decline that no subsequent government has reversed.
CSIRO’s funding as a share of GDP has fallen by more than four-fifths since 1978-79 — and the agency will proceed with up to 350 job cuts even after the Albanese government injected $387.4 million in the 2026 Budget. This is cutting the research programs that translate science and innovations into Australian investment and economic benefit.
The Bureau of Meteorology is running on ageing infrastructure while the US funding cuts on data that flow through global atmospheric modelling create new upstream risk for Australian weather and climate forecasting. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has seen its Motor Vehicle Census discontinued after 2021, the question about number of motor vehicles removed from the 2021 Census, and is only now piloting whether NEVDIS data can return to the 2026 Census process.
The data on new net zero technologies has slipped between the cracks created by these cuts in public data requirements and management.
Australia’s total R&D investment that includes these data collection systems – now 1.66% of GDP against an OECD average of 2.73%, and falling in real terms – is on track to make Australia one of the lowest-investing OECD economies within five years.
This is not just a budget line. It is a deliberate and sustained withdrawal from the evidence base that makes good government possible, especially in how we make the most out of the Net Zero transition.
The EV data gap shows what’s at stake
The vehicle statistics problem illustrates why this matters in practice. As electrified vehicles head towards half of new car sales, the national data source remains VFACTS industry sales reports published by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, designed to track which member won the showroom race, not to inform grid planning, precinct design, or public good.
AEMO’s own 2026 Integrated System Plan now formally treats EVs as a core component of Australia’s energy system, forecasting that around 80% of vehicles on Australian roads will be electric by 2050. AEMO needs to know where battery loads including EV charging are concentrating, when they arrive, and how vehicle-to-grid capacity can be deployed as a system balancing resource. None of that is answerable from VFACTS.
EVs, properly planned for, can charge when renewables are abundant and export back to the grid when supply is tight. But you cannot plan for that without knowing the fleet — its geography, its intersection with rooftop solar, its concentration in regional communities versus inner suburbs, its ownership by income quintile and its technological systems that enable V2G/V2H. Removing the Motor Vehicle Census deleted the tool that could have answered a lot of those questions. The new technology data is not collected by anyone, so it’s not easy for business and utilities to find and to turn into investments.
The consequences are tangible. Delayed or misdirected clean energy infrastructure is expensive. Stalling the rollout of EVs reduced our readiness for the current oil crisis. Delays on renewables could push household electricity bills 30% higher by 2030, adding roughly $449 a year per household. Delays in transmission and storage build-out adds to electricity system costs. The lost new industries in repairs and recycling prevent the best flow-on opportunities in our economy.
What needs to happen
The fix is not complicated. The building blocks exist. NEVDIS holds a national register of every registered vehicle. BITRE has the transport expertise. ABS has the Census machinery and the constitutional mandate. Smart houses with solar and batteries, and smart cars too, are bringing a lot of data. Missing is the political focus and the modest additional resourcing to connect them to the source data. Australia’s data is a crucial part of the next phase in the Energy Transition.
Three immediate steps:
- Restore the Motor Vehicle Census as a joint ABS–BITRE effort, explicitly designed for the electrification era: vehicle characteristics, fuel type, age, owner location, charging infrastructure access — published regularly and in open, publicly accessible form, and accessing data from smart vehicles.
Embed energy and vehicle data in the 2026 Census and subsequent surveys, so planners can see solar and EV and battery ownership, and use maps against income, housing, rooftop solar uptake and regional disadvantage. Require manufacturers and importers to supply technical performance data for all green technology – vehicles, batteries, solar – and centralise it through a public register, covering current products and the next generation of freight, agricultural and mining machinery.
Reverse the decade-long decline in funding for CSIRO, BOM and ABS, treating them not as cost centres but as the sovereign data and research infrastructure that the Australian Constitution envisages and that a modern economy demands.
Choosing not to invest in evidence infrastructure is not a saving — it results in a dumb economy.
Ray Wills is Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia and Managing Director of Future Smart Strategies.
Peter Newman AO is Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
