23 September 2025, 10:27 PM
There were two key elements outlined by the Federal Government's new climate change target released last week: electric cars and renewable energy.Without these two key components, there is no chance of the government achieving its 62% to 70% reduction in emissions by 2035..On Sunday, the Lismore App explored the electric car component 50% new car sales electric by 2035: is it possible?.Today, we look at whether Australia can generate 90% clean energy through renewables, which is the number stated by the Climate Change Authority for the government to hit its emissions reduction target.Mike Haydon, owner of local energy company Off The Grid, has over a decade of experience within the renewable energy industry.When simply asked if 90% of Australia can be powered by renewable energy by 2035, Mike's simple answer is no."The more solar and batteries people have in their homes, the more energy people tend to use. I think if our energy usage stayed the same, we could. But if everything is going to go towards electrification for cars, we would use a whole heap more energy. So I don't think it's possible."To reach the climate change targets, Climate Change Australia says we need to quadruple our wind power and double rooftop solar. That means industry needs to create the products and put the infrastructure in place to service Australia's 27 million people. Mike is concerned about the days when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing."Yep, that's one of the biggest problems, and I'll give you an example. The Cape Byron Energy Company can power half of New South Wales from the Northern Rivers, but they can't because they can't get enough biofuels to burn. So, we have the generation but there's not enough materials for them. Take timber as an example, they're trying to get some wood chips put on the renewable list so they could burn more than timber. They can actually produce more energy, they just can't get the fuel stock, but they have a generator that could power half of New South Wales if they get the fuel stock."Finding a fuel source that generates electricity with zero or very low emissions will be a problem. This is where synthetic diesel and hydrogen technology may play a part in the future.The real problem for the future is not so much regional and rural Australia, but the cities. Around 18 million people live in our eight capital cities, and they need power. More and more medium and high-density apartment blocks are being constructed to house an ever-increasing population."There are more installs in cities than anywhere rurally. I think city numbers are skewed because of the units. If someone did the math on just purely standalone buildings in Sydney, if you go to the outskirts, like Western Sydney, Penrith, and Glenmore Park, all those new estates every house has solar on it, and every house is getting batteries."Apartment buildings are actually really energy efficient. That's the amazing thing about apartments. They don't really need heating or cooling, which is probably our biggest expense. It's pretty much cooking, fridges, lights, the basic stuff."The biggest problem is where do we keep the energy close enough to power those buildings? But I think in the city, the best solution would be for all the houses around the units or close to all have solar and the apartment buildings to have big batteries to store that excess energy."It is the same problem; there's all this abundant power in the middle of the day, but everyone's at work, so there's no one to use it. So we'd have big batteries in the apartment buildings to soak up that extra solar and then distribute that back to the tenants of a night time. We would change a lot of things."To make this happen, the Federal Government would have to offer building owners a large enough incentive to purchase batteries large enough to run 20, 30 or 40 apartments each night."Well, it all comes down to their investment, and that's the problem. Builders don't invest in that sort of stuff. It's whoever is incentivised. If you look at the baseball fields on Keen Street, there's a house that annoys me so much. You look up from the baseball fields to this big house on the hill, a massive house, like a big McMansion, and it's got six solar panels on it, because the builder had to tick a box. That's the same with these apartment buildings."There's a lot of technology now where we can put the infrastructure behind the meter, and the investors can make a lot more money from doing that. It's just whether the investors want to take that risk and do that. Most of them just want to build the cheapest building, get it up and get out of there.""It's hard working with investors because they're trying to maximise their profit. They're already getting screwed as it is, and to get them to put better quality products in is a challenge.Another concern across the next decade as more incentives to install solar panels and batteries ramp up, is the quality of the products that some installers sell. Of course, that is driven by the consumer wanting to pay as little as possible to achieve the best result."Everyone is there trying to sell 20-kilowatt-hour systems for $3,000 or $5,000 installed. It's been in the industry for years, because all the systems and products are designed to compete against the price of energy on the grid. To put batteries in, as an example, it's been hard to make the numbers work commercially for solar, or even at home. If you use solar during the day, it's been a no-brainer financially for a long time. But for batteries, it is more challenging even now, with the $17,000 incentive in there. It's still a bit of a challenge to use a quality product to make the numbers work financially. People are going to go for the cheapest option."My opinion is that when people are sold solar batteries, they're passing the problem of building the new infrastructure to the end user. Once people have solar batteries, they don't go back. So, these people who have spent $5,000 or $6,000 on a system, when it dies in four or five years and the company's not around, they're going to go and spend the money on a quality system this time, and it's going to cost them more in the long run.One of Mike Haydon's dislikes is that the energy sector is run by the big end of town, your AGL's and Origin's. "Basically, for a lot of the cheaper products, you have to give control to Origin, AGL, or any of the big guys to be able to control your battery. And the minute you do that, the warranty is void or reduced on your battery because it is a VPP, a virtual power plant. "I got a quote from a guy this week, saying I really want to buy from you, but can you compete with this. I said mate it's a 5-year warranty and ours is 10, so no, it's not like-for-like. Then he said no, no, the guy told me it's 10 years, and I said Look at the data sheet, it says 5 years in writing. It's not covered under VPP." Despite the failures of the current system, Mike is confident that residential homes will be the engine towards achieving the climate change target. Covering the load of Industry is going to be the biggest challenge."One of the biggest challenges with industry right now is the fact that most business owners rent their buildings. The landlords won't put the solar batteries up, so they have no choice. They're going to buy from the market."If the landlords can understand that if they put solar panels and batteries in they can knock off 30% of their tenants' electricity bill. They will make their money back within two years on that system. They're saving the tenant money, increasing their rent technically because the landlord will get more money, and you're stealing from the big energy companies. It's simple, but it's education."Landlords don't want another thing to deal with. Most of them are struggling to cover the cost of their mortgage anyway, and if something goes wrong, who deals with it?"While it appears as if the climate change target is a stretch goal, renewable energy will have a significant impact on the way we consume electricity over the next ten years. Of course, a lot could also go wrong. The best laid plans of mice and men.
