“Shell companies for rent seekers:” Coalition attacks solar innovators, including Turnbull-backed SunDrive

Liberal National Party senator Ross Cadell has described federal Labor’s Solar Sunshot program as “taxpayer dollars going to shell companies for rent seekers,” in comments that also took a swipe at prominent Australian solar innovator SunDrive.

In a fiery exchange in Monday’s Senate Estimates hearing, representatives from the two major parties sparred over what constitutes “Made in Australia,” after Cadell asked Arena chief Darren Miller if any foreign companies or foreign-linked companies had applied for a share of the $550 million on offer through the first round of Solar Sunshot.

Cadell’s comments also took a swipe at one of the Australian companies that has almost certainly applied for Arena funding to support commercialisation of its own, UNSW-derived solar technology, SunDrive.

SunDrive – whose copper-based solar technology aims to further cut the cost of solar energy generation – in March, signed a memorandum of understanding with Australia’s biggest coal generator AGL Energy to develop a manufacturing facility at the site of AGL’s former coal power precinct in the New South Wales Hunter Region.

The MoU was announced alongside the unveiling of the Albanese government’s Solar Sunshot program, which pledges $1 billion in funding to support the establishment of a solar supply chain in Australia, including through production subsidies and grants.

“My concern is this that you sent Minister Bowen and you sent Prime Minister Albanese up to the Hunter Valley. You stood in front of the Liddell power station. You [launched] this program and said, ‘What a great thing!’,” Cadell told the Senate Committee on Monday.

“The company has since laid off approximately half of its staff, they have gone cap-in-hand to AGL seeking money to build [a] shed. They are talking about now assembling solar panels in Australia rather than manufacturing them. They’re talking about buying the components …overseas.

“When there’s taxpayers’ dollars going to shell companies for rent seekers …who can’t even afford to build the shed that you say will be world’s best practice… this comes to the incompetence of execution of this government,” he said.

SunDrive, which is backed by high profile investors including Mike Cannon-Brookes and former Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, has indeed recently cut some staff, while also shifting co-founder and CEO Vince Allen to the role of chief technology officer and appointing Natalie Malligan as new CEO.

But the company has also denied speculation that it has abandoned plans to build a factory – or “shed,” as Cadell describes it – at the shuttered Liddell coal plant and said a restructuring was necessary to support its long-term plans to deliver world-leading solar technology breakthroughs.

“We are committed to focusing on our core strengths of improving solar technology while continuing to pursue commercial partnerships to bring these technologies to market and accelerate the path to domestic manufacturing,” it said in a statement to Renew Economy in August.

SunDrive’s work has been highlighted by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) as one of the great hopes for the goal of “ultra low cost solar” – defined by Arena as a 30-30-30 vision representing 30 per cent solar module efficiency and an installed cost of 30 cents per watt by 2030.

And, more recently, SunDrive has signed an MoU with China PV giant Trina Solar to pair the latter’s heft in the global market – including its considerable experience in manufacturing – with SunDrive’s potentially game-changing technology. The two companies have agreed to submit a joint application for funding through SunShot.

As Trina explained to Renew Economy at the All Energy Australia conference last month, the MoU with SunDrive would result in a joint venture that will be majority Australian owned, and would seek to build a facility with two lines of production, with annual capacity of 1.2 gigawatts of production and with around 300 employees.

Two sites are being considered, most likely in NSW.

But Cadell is not convinced. “When I see taxpayers dollars going to promote overseas business, I am going to ask questions,” he told the committee.

“It is not about a fear of overseas businesses. It is about promoting overseas businesses, and your government using taxpayer dollars to fund overseas businesses,” Cadell said.

“I will ask how … many overseas companies are buying products from overseas to build in Australia, so you can say proudly manufactured in Australia when it is not the case,” he added.

In response, Labor Senator Tim Ayers, who is assistant minister for the Future Made in Australia policy, said his Nationals counterpart was “willfully misunderstanding and being dishonest” about the policy.

“The policy here, what it does is deliver a effective subsidy when manufacturing occurs in Australia. That’s what is going on here. There is no risk. There is only benefit,” Ayers said.

“They will only get a benefit from this government… when they manufacture here. That is the point willfully misunderstood by you and your colleagues.”

Miller, too, was at pains to explain – yet again – how the SunShot scheme will work, and why making absolutely everything in Australia is not necessarily the program’s ultimate goal.

“I think you misunderstand the sort of definition, if you like, of manufacturing,” he explained to Cadell. “I mean assembly of components, wherever they come from, is part of the manufacturing process.

“I think the reality is that, if we understand, as we do, that solar technology will underpin the energy transition and Australia’s superpower ambitions, and if we understand the supply chain concentration risk that exists in the market today, which we do, and if you have the ambition to sort of push forward in that transition, we must be concerned about what our capabilities are to deliver on that right up and down the supply chain,” Miller said.

“To date, we’ve had significant input in Australia, in the R&D, in the cell design technology, through UNSW and ANU and the like, and we’re a world leader in deployment of solar panels.

“And so what we’re looking to do here is fill in some of the gaps, to understand the supply chain risks that do exist, and to take that first step, if you like, into the manufacturing of solar PV technology.

“And if that first step happens to be the assembly of modules, because it’s the easiest, cheapest and most competitive thing we could do. Well, that may be something that is worthwhile doing, but we’re open minded as to what we see come forward in this program.”