Ty Christopher, Director of the Energy Futures Network at the University of Wollongong, discusses ways to combat energy poverty and boost the economy, all while reducing the world’s carbon footprint. 

Electrifying everything – at the moment, it feels like the privilege of wealthy …

Unfortunately, yes. 

What’s the solution? 

Community batteries.

The secret is to get large-scale storage and coordinated storage happening grid side of the meter. I'm not anti home batteries, but in general, home batteries continue to lock away this clean energy on the ‘have’ side of the meter and continue to lock out the have-nots who are connected to the grid. 

So one of the keys to democratising access to clean, locally generated energy are shared energy storage options. And the other key, dare I say, is moving away from the large multi-billion dollar profit gentailer models to sell energy, and go into community cooperatives to purchase local solar and recirculate that local solar amongst communities with a not-for-profit mindset. 

That's the key to breaking the have and have-not clean energy dynamic. That is one of the unfortunate downsides of Australia's wonderful journey into solar and decarbonising our homes. It does stand the chance to leave behind those people who are least able to afford clean energy. 

So, short answer, community batteries and community cooperatives in place of home batteries and large multi-billion dollar gentailers. 

Is there any new solar technology coming in that might shake things up? 

Well, we're always looking for new technology. Shameless plug for UOW: we've done a lot of research on graphene based technology here – thin film solar panels. 

There's very early, laboratory-level prototypes of solar panels that actually have graphene-based storage on the back of them. So it's a solar panel and a battery all in one. That's the sort of technology that is emerging. We're always pushing the boundaries. 

I mean, one of the great stories and, in an economic sense, negatives about solar for Australia is, we invented the technology. The technology that is currently at the core of pretty much all the solar panels that we have across here was invented at the University of New South Wales by visionary scientists around 20 years ago. And it's been commercialised ever since. 

It's absolutely fantastic that we invented this technology. It's equally fantastic that we've been globally the biggest, best adopters of this technology. 

It's tragic that the manufacture of these solar panels, that are derived from raw materials that we have in abundance here in Australia, such as silica, aluminium, cobalt, et cetera, is all done overseas.

So we invented the technology and are the biggest users of the technology. We've got all the raw materials here in Australia, and yet the vast majority of solar panels that are out there now and are continuing to be installed are all made in China or South Korea 

From a GDP and net economic perspective, I think there's a salient lesson for Australia to learn there in terms of innovative technology and keeping sovereign capability and ownership of it. 

So, could we have a future of solar panels made in Australia? 

The government thinks so… I think when you have a look at Australian labour costs, that looks to me to be very difficult. 

If it was me – and Rewiring Australia and Saul Griffith promote this as well – I would be pivoting more towards just using our abundant natural resources, solar and wind to value-add. And rather than exporting ore, which is what we do now, 90% of the iron ore we dig up goes out as ore, and 90% of the bauxite (the aluminium ore) that we dig up, goes out as ore and only around 10% is made into aluminium or iron here in Australia.

I think the far better play for us is to continue to go with great enthusiasm at decarbonising our electricity grid and then to use that abundant clean electricity to refine the iron ore and the bauxite into iron and into aluminium using the abundant renewable electricity that we've got here in Australia and then export it as green aluminium and as green steel.

And if we were to switch that balance from the 10:90 to the 90:10 – basically the `other way around – the rough numbers that I've seen is that we could lift our GDP by $900 billion per year every year forever. 

That's the sort of initiative that would turn Australia into Wakanda in terms of a paradise. 

So, my answer is I think using our abundant energy to convert our ore export into metals export would be the best play for our nation. It's harder to do than just exporting ore, but a far better play, economically. 

And good for the world. It's not exporting carbon because we would use clean energy to make iron here. And so the global carbon footprint will come down massively as a result of that.

Ty Christopher, Endeavour Energy’s former ‘chief engineer’, is an electrical engineer who brings 37 years of hands-on experience in the power supply industry to his current role as Director of the Energy Futures Network at the University of Wollongong.

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• Why restructuring the market may save you money
• Why should we 'Electrify Everything' – and why can't Wollongong run on sun?
• How much power can solar actually deliver?