Even after decades encouraging the growth of renewables, we’re still too reliant on coal and gas power stations.
The problem isn’t in our ability to generate clean power. It’s what happens after that. Major roadblocks include the need for 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines to connect rural renewable farms with city consumers. Another oft-cited reason is the need to store power from renewables so it can be drawn on as needed. This is why the Australian Energy Market Operator sees such a big role for large-scale storage coupled with some flexible gas as a backup.
Last year, renewable investment actually shrank in Australia. Reasons for the slowdown are wide-ranging. Some are local, such as rural communities lobbying against new transmission lines, the need for planning and environmental approvals and the slow pace of creating new regulations. Others are global, such as increased competition for engineers and electricians, clean tech and raw materials.
As climate change worsens, frustration about the slow pace of change will intensify. But when we look around the world, we see similar challenges cropping up in many countries.
What’s in it for locals? Securing a social license for transmission lines is shaping up as a major source of delay in Australia’s energy transition.David L Young/Shutterstock
European Union
Transmission line hold-ups are by no means a delay unique to Australia. Data from the International Energy Agency shows building new electricity grid assets takes ten years on average in both Europe and the United States.
In 2022, the European Union introduced laws expressly aimed at speeding up the clean energy transition by fast-tracking permits for renewables, grid investment and storage assets. These investments, the laws state, are:
presumed as being in the overriding public interest […] when balancing legal interests in the individual case.
That is, when the interests of other stakeholders – including local communities and the environment – clash with clean energy plans, clean energy has priority.
Germany has gone further still with domestic laws designed to further streamline planning and approvals and favour energy transition projects over competing interests. These changes were sweetened with financial incentives for communities participating in clean energy projects.
This is a risky path. European leaders have chosen to go faster in weaning off fossil fuels at the risk of inflaming local communities. The size of the backlash became clear in the EU’s elections in June, where populists gained seats and environmental parties lost.
United States
In 2022, the US government passed a huge piece of green legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act. Rather than introducing further regulations, the US has gone for a green stimulus, offering A$600 billion in grants and tax credits for companies investing in green manufacturing, electric vehicles, storage and so on. To date, this approach has been very effective. But money isn’t everything – new transmission lines will be essential, which means approvals, planning, securing the land corridor and so on.
This year, the US Energy Department released new rules bundling all federal approvals into one program in a bid to accelerate the building of transmission lines across state borders.
Australia could borrow from this. The government’s Future Made in Australia policy package takes its cues from US green stimulus, but at smaller scale. What America’s example shows us is these incentives work – especially when big.
US-style streamlining and bundling of approvals could address delays from overlapping state and federal approvals. Supporting local green manufacturing can create jobs, which in turn encourages community buy-in.
China
Even as Australia’s clean energy push hit the doldrums and emission levels stagnated, China’s staggering clean energy push began bearing fruit. Emissions in the world’s largest emitter began to fall, five years ahead of the government’s own target.
They did this by covering deserts with solar panels, building enormous offshore wind farms, rolling out fast rail, building hydroelectricity, and taking up electric vehicles very rapidly. In 2012, China had 3.4 gigawatts of solar and 61 GW of wind capacity. In 2023, it had 610 GW of solar and 441 GW of wind. It’s also cornered the market in renewable technologies and moving strongly into electric vehicles.
Of course, China’s government has far fewer checks and balances and exerts tight control over communities and media. We don’t often see what costs are paid by communities.
China has also used industrial policy cleverly, with government and industries acting in partnership. In fact, the green push in the US, EU, Australia and other Western jurisdictions takes cues from China’s approach.
There’s still a long road ahead for China. But given its reliance on energy-intensive manufacturing, it’s remarkable China’s leaders have managed to halt the constant increase in emissions.
China has rolled out renewables at a staggering rate – enough to stop emissions increasing.Jenson/Shutterstock
Acceleration has a cost
These examples show how it is possible to accelerate the energy transition. But often, it comes at a cost.
Costs can be monetary, such as when governments direct funding to green stimulus over other areas. But it can also be social, if the transition comes at the cost of community support or the health of the local environment.
This comes with the territory. Big infrastructure projects benefit many but disadvantage some.
While Australian governments could place climate action above all else as the EU is doing, they would risk community and political blowback. Long-term progress means doing the work to secure local support.
For instance, Victoria’s new Transmission Investment Framework brings communities to the fore, focusing on their role and what they will stand to gain early on.
Yes, this approach may slow the rate at which wind turbines go up and solar is laid down. But it may ensure public support over the long term.
No one said the shift to green energy would be easy. Only that it is necessary, worthwhile – and possible.
Anne Kallies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Exclusive: Cut would mean at least 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland, according to RSPB
The government is to slash the nature-friendly farming budget in England by £100m in order to help fill what ministers say is a £22bn Treasury shortfall, the Guardian can reveal.
Nature groups and farmers have called this a “big mistake”, saying it jeopardised the government’s legally binding targets to improve nature.
The UK’s worst methane hotspots include the last coalmine, livestock farm clusters, landfills, power plants and North Sea oil and gas wells, according to an analysis.
The process has also thrown up serious doubts over the UK’s ability to calculate its methane emissions.
What made you decide to go solar? Was it a sober assessment of the return on investment? Did you want to cut your power bills? Did you want to do your bit on climate change?
While these reasons are common, another factor might be in play: your neighbours. The more solar panels you see around your neighbourhood, the more likely you are to have them installed yourself. It’s a form of social license – seeing solar near you legitimises the idea. As more people in the same area install solar, it creates a ripple effect.
There is ample research showing humans are social animals and do care about what their peers are doing. In our new research, we explored this neighbourhood effect in the context of solar panel installations – and found we can quantify it. The effect leads to an extra 15-20 solar installations per postcode per year, on average. Scaled up, that means about 18% of new solar installs come from the neighbourhood effect.
Now that we know this, authorities can use this technique to accelerate Australia’s world-leading uptake of rooftop solar even further.
How do my neighbours affect what I do?
Two decades ago, solar panels were a rare sight on Australian rooftops. Now, around a third of all households have them. Solar now has 36.5 gigawatts of capacity across Australia. Residential solar contributes substantially to this. More than half of our solar output is residential (52%), followed by 35% from solar farms and 12% from commercial buildings, according to data from the Australian PV Institute.
Australia’s solar journey began in the early 2000s, when government subsidies and rebates were first offered. This made solar panels more appealing to homeowners. Over time, solar prices dropped rapidly, encouraging more households to take it up.
That’s the big picture. But at a local scale, how did this happen?
We might like to think we make decisions logically and in isolation. But we are more affected by other factors than we might think.
In our research, we set out to find what factors nudged people to take up solar over time. We took an enormous data set – rooftop solar installations between 2001 and 2022 across Australia’s 2,641 postal areas (the geographic area roughly corresponding to postcodes) and looked for trends within and across postal areas.
Was it wealth – did high income households and suburbs put solar on faster? What about education levels or home ownership versus renters?
We found income and education mattered. But it mattered less than we had expected. Gender and land size played no significant role. Older households and married households were more likely to install solar. And we found areas with higher unemployment actually installed solar faster, perhaps as a way to reduce energy bills. Factors such as these influenced about 80% of individual decisions to go solar, we found.
What about the remaining 20%? Here, what mattered was the presence of other solar panels. That is, once a few houses in a neighbourhood had solar, solar got installed faster – translating on average to 15-20 extra solar installations per postal area per year.
That’s substantial. In 2018, for example, we estimate the neighbourhood effect contributed an estimated 18% of that year’s total number of installations (224,850 installations). Each postal area added an average of 85 new solar installations in 2018.
Why would this be? Let’s say an early adopter decided to go solar back when the technology was substantially more expensive. Once they had solar installed, people in their neighbourhood passing by could see the array on their roof. Solar became tangible and visible.
Over time, the simple presence of solar nudged a few neighbours to consider whether solar would stack up for them. Some chose to go solar too, and the effect continues.
Neighbourhood effects are not new. But they’re of increasing interest as Australia works towards net zero. Neighbourhood effects are being seen in the uptake of electric vehicles – if you see them round your neighbourhood, you’re more likely to buy one.
Neighbourhood effects are also at work in the uptake of electric vehicles. The more you see them round your neighbourhood, the more likely you are to consider it.mastersky/Shutterstock
What should we take from this?
The neighbourhood effect is real, and quite influential. For policymakers and industry stakeholders, the question will be how to use it. Our public tool lets policymakers and residents look at how specific areas have taken up solar and at what rate.
In Tasmania’s cooler climate, for example, solar uptake is much lower than elsewhere. To encourage more rooftop solar, authorities could support early adopters to share their experiences. Targeted campaigns in specific suburbs could help accelerate the renewable transition.
While we normally think of Australia’s embrace of solar as an economic choice, it’s more than that – it’s also about the choices of our neighbours and being able to see the technology with our own eyes.
We do care what our peers are doing. This is nothing to be ashamed of. As we work to secure a liveable climate, the neighbourhood effect can play an important role.
Marty Fuentes was the lead author of the research. He now works for Transport for NSW and contributed to this article
Alexey Voinov received funding in 2012 from the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission.
Kaveh Khalilpour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the hottest year ever
Japan has recorded its hottest summer on record after a sweltering three months marked by thousands of instances of “extreme heat”, with meteorologists warning that unseasonably high temperatures will continue through the autumn.
The average temperature in June, July and August was 1.76C higher than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, the Japan meteorological agency said, according to Kyodo news agency.
