Imagine if there were ready-to-deploy solutions to an urgent global problem that included the significant side perks of slashed fossil fuel use, lower electricity bills, bolstered energy security, cleaner airways, reduced illness and disease, and a better standard of living for all.
Now imagine that the biggest threat to deploying these solutions were bendy, spineless political parties more committed to scrounging around for an alternate voter base than backing policies that even they must recognise as the right path forward.
After last week’s energy and climate policy dump by the federal Liberal Party, the only clear take-away is the Coalition’s intention to dismantle any and all policy progress Australia has made on climate and renewables – starting with its commitment to net zero.
And even for a nation that might, by now, be somewhat numb to the seemingly endless political “climate wars,” it was shocking.
Peak bodies from all segments of the economy have issued calls for long-term political stability and warnings that political grandstanding risks undermining the investor confidence needed to build the cheap, clean and reliable power necessary to power Australia and fight global warming.
“Australians are consistently voting for climate action to protect our environment, and this can only be achieved through universal support for net zero,” said Clean Energy Council chief Jackie Trad on Wednesday.
“Without a net zero target we risk further delaying the delivery of new, clean electricity generation capacity that can reduce irreversible impacts on nature and bring down power prices faster than any alternative.”
“If we want domestic and international investment …to continue and the jobs, benefits, procurement and rates that follow it to continue, then we cannot afford to even contemplate a return to the stop-start approach that has frustrated the majority of Australians backing this transition, for far too long,” said Richie Merzian, CEO of the Clean Energy Investor Group.
“Investors are ready to deliver the renewable energy projects Australia needs. What we need now is bipartisan commitment to net-zero and a stable investment environment,” Merzian said.
For the average bewidlered voter, it would be fair to wonder: can it even be done? Is it too much to expect all of Australia’s major political parties – state and federal – to once and for all commit to net zero and the energy transition required to meet that science-backed target?
If you take the European example, then the answer to that question is absolutely not.
“How it looks in Europe is that there is a binding climate law on all the member states. So that sets the very high level ambition of reaching a net-zero emission economy by 2050 and then below that big, overarching target, we have policies and directives on the sectors.”
This is Adrian Joyce, secretary general of EuroACE – Energy Efficient Buildings, who spoke to Renew Economy this week ahead of his appearance at the Energy Efficiency Council’s inaugural Efficient, Electric Homes: Market Acceleration Summit, in Sydney next week.
As his title suggests, Joyce – an Irish national who is based in Brussels – is a leader and expert policy on energy efficiency, one of the biggest and most undervalued pillars of the global climate and energy transition.
In Europe, however, there is major progress being made on creating the right regulatory environment to deliver net zero buildings in line with the global 2050 target.
And in Europe, Joyce notes, they’re managing to do this across 27 members states and in 23 different languages.
“In Europe, we have … several EU level directives, which are then transposed into national laws. And those directives were all recently updated during what’s called the Green Deal.
“We now have a very coherent and ambitious set of documents that really work there to create the right regulatory environment within which the market can really move to deliver zero emission buildings.
“Coherence and policy ambition are the two things that we ask for,” Joyce tells Renew Economy.
“My association is an industry association with some of the largest global companies in this space and what they have constantly and consistently asked for is stable, predictable policy landscape.
“They’re putting in very, very large investments into new production capacity, into product development, innovation, and without certainty that there’s a market for it these investments just don’t happen.
“So that, I think, is something that maybe can be said out loud here in Australia – that industry likes to have a predictable and stable policy landscape against which they can then invest millions …in some cases billions of dollars. So it’s super important.”
Joyce stresses that he is no expert on Australian policy and is not about to sound off on what our political leaders are doing right and wrong, but he can speak on what is helping to sharpen policy focus in the EU.
Joyce says that the core message on energy efficiency in Europe is that when you have a more energy efficient home or building, then you’re using overall less energy.
And in Europe, the importance of using less energy has been driven home by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
“The lower your demand, the more resilient you are to future [energy] shocks, and that’s something that really plays well in Europe at the moment … because energy security, even the weaponisation of energy by Russia, is a very big topic,” Joyce says.
“In the EU we have war on our doorstep and a very aggressive neighbour, so energy efficiency measures – which bring down the overall demand – are understood [as being] good …not just for me, but actually for the whole society, because it brings more energy security,” Joyce says.
“[If] your energy demand is very low, you’re really buffered from those. …[energy] shocks because you’re using so little that … even if it goes up 50%, it’s a small amount that’s going up 50%, not a large amount.”
Another big motivator to boost the energy performance of buildings in Europe, Joyce says, has been the associated health benefits, which were demonstrated in a recent study conducted in Ireland.
“They actually had 900 families who allowed them to monitor the health of those families over a year, they counted all the doctor visits, all the hospital visits, all the hospital stays.
“Then they renovated all the buildings [to make them more energy efficient] and then … another year after the renovation …compared the health outcomes.
“And they are significant, if not huge, in bringing down the health care costs. So if a government thinks across the different silos, so the health ministry and the energy ministry, then the health bill goes down, so more money could go from health ministry to renovating in the energy ministry, and then everyone wins.”
Joyce says in Europe there has also been a lot of attention paid to the different “trigger points” for different countries, that can help gain local political traction on climate action and build support behind overarching policies.
“In Poland it was clean air because they were using so many coal burning stoves, the air quality was absolutely rock bottom. And so raising awareness about what you can do to have clean heat has transformed whole regions of Poland into clean air zones in the country,” he says.
“And I’m sure it’s the same [in Australia] between the states and territories, there’ll be an issue for that state or that territory that has more traction, let’s say, than in other parts of the country. And so understanding what those trigger points are is also important for implementers like us.”
