Tech billionaire and clean energy advocate Mike Cannon-Brookes says Australia must seize the opportunity to become a renewable energy superpower, and a key to that will be what happens in the home – with rooftop solar, electric vehicles and full electrification.
Cannon-Brookes, best known for his backing of what could be the world’s biggest solar and battery project, and for taking on the former Coalition government with words, and the country’s biggest polluter AGL with both money and words, is now focusing on accelerating the EV transition and full electrification.
Speaking at the EV Summit in Canberra backed by his new Boundless Earth venture, Cannon-Brookes says the choices made by households, particularly in the way they power their homes and their vehicles, is a key element of the renewables transition.
“We have a huge ability to generate our own electricity as a country, both nationally in terms of industrial scale grid scale, but also individually,” Cannon-Brookes said.
“We have the highest amount of household solar production. One of the things you see with electric vehicles is the propensity to install solar panels, it increases three or four-fold with an electric vehicle.
“And you suddenly realise that … wait, I can make my own petrol and it’s very cheap to get it off my roof and stick it straight into my car.
“The economics of your panels get much cheaper as does the economics of the electric vehicle. So we are actually well poised to do that from a household economics point of view. And that’s really the point.”
The implications of a switch to EVs, of course, is that Australia will become less dependent on the fossil fuels that  it must import to power its 20-million strong car fleet, one of the dirtiest and the most inefficient in the world because of the country’s lack of fuel efficiency standards.
That problem, of Australia becoming a dumping ground for dirty cars that manufacturers cannot sell elsewhere, is about to be addressed after climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen said he is in favour of imposing “tight” emissions standards to help Australia catch up to the rest of the world on electric vehicles.
Australia is suffering a chronic supply shortfall in EVs, both in terms of numbers and choice. Its sales in 2022 were just two per cent of new car sales, well below the 13 per cent global average.
Still, Bowen pointed to the experience of Sweden, which leaped from 18 per cent to 60 per cent in just two years with the right policy setting. He says a share of 5 per cent will deliver “critical mass” from where EV penetration can increase rapidly.
The switch to EVs, and electrification, also sets up the opportunity for Australia to become a major supplier and even manufacturer of battery storage – both for vehicles and the grid – and to become a renewable energy superpower, exporting its cheap renewables as electrons, molecules, or as manufactured goods.
“People assume that is all about putting up solar panels,” said Cannon-Brookes, whose Sun Cable venture is thinking of doing exactly that, building a 20GW solar facility and up to 42GWh of battery storage, and a 4,200kms link to Singapore.
“It’s a piece of the puzzle. Turning Australia into renewable energy superpower, which is the largest economic opportunity we’ve ever faced as a country, is about exporting our cheap energy.
“We should have the cheapest energy in the world and we’re going to export it.
“Now we can talk about how we’re going to do that by a wire and talk about how we’re going to do that as hydrogen or some sort of material, but the category we leave out the most is by basically higher valued exported goods that come from a very cheap cost of materials that come from a cheap cost of energy.
“We have a huge amount of financial resources in Australia we have a huge amount of talent. We should think about exporting our boundless resources of those renewable energy assets that we have as high value manufactured goods.
“Batteries is one huge example of where we can do that.”
Cannon-Brookes was sharing the stage with Tesla chair Robyn Denholm who said Australia also has great potential to become a supplier and manufacturer of batteries, given its resources, its manufacturing, its access to cheap renewables, and its know-how.
“We’ve got the talent. There is no reason we can’t manufacture batteries in Australia. To me it’s just the will and the tenacity to get it done.”
Denholm, however, gave no indication on whether Tesla was considering creating a giga-factory in Australia. It already has several in the US, one in China, one in Europe and has just flagged a new giga-factory in Canada.
Bowen also flagged the manufacturing and other opportunities in the EV supply chain.
“Right now, we dig up all the minerals needed to make batteries – but we send most of it offshore for the work to be done elsewhere,” he told the summit.
“It’s a lost opportunity for jobs and investment when there are an estimated 35,000 jobs and $7 billion in value to be made in Australia from battery technology and industries across all sectors.”
He says up to $3 billion of the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund will be put towards activities including clean energy component manufacturing, and he and industry minister Ed Husic expect the EV industry to be seeking co-investment from that fund.
