Dear clean energy industry, this is your moment.<\/p>\n
Cease your frowning at the roadblocks that have been put in your way.<\/p>\n
Exit your industry conferences at which you tell each other what you already know.<\/p>\n
Break the shackles of renewable energy media, where you are preaching to the converted.<\/p>\n
Stand up. Step out and convince communities, in the mainstream, with an economic argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrill baby drill\u201d is Donald Trump\u2019s mantra, but inadvertently, with his ill-considered Iran war, the US president has fractured decades of concerted lobbying, misinformation and disinformation, underpinned by a fortune in funding, to shore up the fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n
Clean energy, you have an open lane. Take the gap. It\u2019s your Steven Bradbury moment.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n We know that the fossil fuel sector has been astroturfing elections and manipulating information for years, with tactics as wilfully deceptive as those deployed for decades by big tobacco. A recent Senate inquiry has heard detailed evidence<\/a> of distortions to public opinion about renewable energy, amid reams of fake social media accounts and false advertising designed to mislead.<\/p>\n Within it all, Australia\u2019s unique opportunity as a nation with abundant sun and wind has become encumbered by lies and division. Now is the moment to seize the narrative back.<\/p>\n Every renewable energy expert and advocate with a voice \u2013 use it now. Shout from the rooftops, advertise your wares, insert yourselves into the mainstream media, blast digital platforms with marketable facts, engage with community organisations, run community events, employ people within communities to listen and to build support.<\/p>\n For heaven\u2019s sake, seize the billboards at Canberra airport that browbeat every member of parliament with the so-called economic benefits of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Speak collectively, cohesively, cogently and urgently before the window closes. And then, keep saying it.<\/p>\n According to Trump, the war may end \u201cin the next two weeks, maybe three\u201d. And while the Pandora\u2019s box that he\u2019s opened is unlikely to be so easily closed, people do have remarkably short memories. So do governments.<\/p>\n After this, no population, including our own, should be satisfied with an \u201cas you were\u201d position, considering the volatility of the global environment.<\/p>\n Covid and the Ukraine war both clearly illustrated Australia\u2019s economic vulnerability to supply shocks.<\/p>\n Yet there was no sustained policy response. This is the opportunity for the big shift. Because we get so caught up in the now that we forget to plan for the next time.<\/p>\n Improvisation might work once but we have had enough warnings about our energy insecurity and our fragility at the end of the longest international supply lines from the GFC to Covid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n This is an inflection point, and the time is now to accelerate a systematic shift to renewables.<\/p>\n Every additional electric vehicle on the road is litres of petrol saved, every home battery installed means less gas used and a more resilient electricity grid.<\/p>\n And, as the UN secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, points out, clean energy cannot be blockaded or weaponised: \u201cThere are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargos on the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before the war, renewable energy projects were expected to inject<\/a> $68bn into the Australian economy over the next 5 years.<\/p>\n As social researcher Rebecca Huntley has argued<\/a>, pro-climate arguments \u201cframed only around environmental concern often miss the mark, especially under inflationary pressure. When framed in terms of financial benefits and risks, people lean in\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is the shift we are now seeing globally,\u201d she says, not because of morally driven environmental concern, but out of a desire for economic stability.<\/p>\n This is not news to any of us who have watched with increasing frustration as the clean energy sector has allowed itself to be steamrolled by the fossil fuel sector and its apparatchiks for decades.<\/p>\n In Germany, onshore wind is getting a boost because the German government now regards energy policy as \u201csecurity policy\u201d and doesn\u2019t want to be beholden to foreign powers for it.<\/p>\n The UK government has announced that from 2028 all new homes will be required to have rooftop solar and heat pumps and has also foreshadowed plug-in \u201cbalcony solar\u201d for apartments. (Australian cities such as Brisbane and Perth get more than double the amount of sun as London.)<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve written here before<\/a>, Ezra Klein<\/a>, co-author of the viral book Abundance, has previously remarked: \u201cWe should be able to argue that the clean energy future should be fucking awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n True.<\/p>\n We can also now argue that Trump can\u2019t (so easily) stuff it up, unless he finds a way to declare war on the weather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear clean energy industry, this is your moment. 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