Can Australia be a Sustainability Superpower?

This week we aired the final episode in our Spring Series, presented in partnership with WWF-Australia, on sustainability. We end the series the same week that #COP26 will begin in Glasgow on Sunday, 31 October.

Throughout the series, we’ve sought to answer the question – “Can Australia be a Sustainability Superpower?” It’s fitting that our last guests were the Hon. Dan van Holst Pellekaan, South Australian Minister for Energy and Mining, and journalist Marian Wilkinson. The South Australian Government has demonstrated how Australia could be a sustainability superpower, and Wilkinson has explained to us in her recent book The Carbon Club, why we are not.

Minister van Holst Pellekaan was the first to admit that South Australia began investing heavily in renewable energy through necessity. The grid was unreliable, and the cost of electricity was escalating. The previous government developed policies and partnerships with industry to invest in renewable energy and the current government maintained this trajectory.

South Australia has made remarkable progress in a relatively short period of time. This year, South Australia is at 60% renewable energy generation. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) predicts South Australia will be at least 78% renewable energy by 2025. At the same time, there has been a $303 per year reduction in the average annual cost for household electricity bills.

We can take two key lessons from South Australia’s success. The first is the importance of putting the consumer front and centre. As the Minister says, you need to be able to show the consumer that the investment will have returns for them.

The second is the necessity of bipartisanship. All of our guests agreed that climate change is not a political issue – it’s a humanitarian issue. Without action at every level of our society, our planet, and by extension our population, is doomed. And they all agreed that Australia has an important role to play in combatting climate change globally.

At this stage, Australia is not taking up that role. Even after the Prime Minister’s latest announcement that he will attend COP26 and set a Net Zero target by 2050, our interim targets are considerably behind other nations. Australia’s 2030 targets of 26 to 28% are behind the U.S., which is aiming for a 50% reduction, UK at 68% and EU at 55%.

Our leaders often rely on the fact that Australia is a comparatively small global carbon emitter. But as WWF-Australia CEO and podcast Co-Host Dermot O’Gorman notes in this episode, if you look at the carbon that comes from what we export, the only two countries that ship more carbon-heavy energy around the world are Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Wilkinson argues that Australia’s stagnation comes from deeply entrenched vested interests in the current system, not just from the waning coal industry but from the gas industry as well. She notes that the gas companies are trying to make as much money as they can, for as long as they can, during this transition period, which is why the government is investing in technologies like carbon capture storage that still allow the fossil fuel industry to profit.

One way to overcome this is for Australia to build a stronger renewable energy industry. Almost all our guests agreed that there was potential to do this. Dr Andrew Forrest talked about the enormous potential of renewable hydrogen and, ultimately, green iron ore. As Wilkinson says in her interview, Australia has an immense comparative advantage in renewable energy, and stands to make a profit through proper investment. We have sun, large tracts of empty space, the ability to raise capital and very smart people.

All we need now is the political will.

As Damien Cave said in the New York Times, "At a time when coal is being treated more like tobacco, as a danger wherever it’s burned, Australia increasingly looks like the guy at the end of the bar selling cheap cigarettes and promising to bring more tomorrow."

As you follow the discussions at COP26, we hope you’ll listen to some of our incredible guests this season, including Prof. Lesley Hughes, Victor Steffensen, Joost Bakker, Bruce Pascoe, Lucy Turnbull, Richard Moore, James Thornton, Alice Ruhweza, Cissy Gore-Birch, Sheridan Waitai and Sangeeta Mangubhai, and join the conversation online @GoodWillPod and @WWF_Australia and #RegenerateAustralia.

Nothing less than the future of our planet is at stake. This is one of our most important conversations yet.