said earlier<\/a> that Australia had taken 10 years to put in the first six gigawatt-hours of household storage, and eight months to put in the second six gigawatt-hours of household storage.<\/p>\nHochschild cited similar accelerations in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2004 it took a year to build a gigawatt of solar. In 2010 it took a month globally to build a gigawatt of solar. In 2016 it took a week, in 2023 it took a day and in 2024 it took half a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now solar is the single biggest investment on the global electric grid annually. It\u2019s in excess of half a trillion dollars, and we\u2019re just getting started.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no precedent in history, in the entire energy industry, for what\u2019s happening now, which is the rate of growth for solutions is so fast, and so it actually is possible to make a transition quickly and affordably.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I would highlight what\u2019s going on right now is that fossil fuel prices across the world are spiking because it\u2019s war. So we can do a lot to advance climate solutions and to insulate consumers from high prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that the message that this is good for the planet and it\u2019s good for the pocketbook, we have to get that out far and wide, and you have a great story to tell, because this transition that\u2019s happening now is so fast and so successful, I think it\u2019s actually the perfect place.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Hochschild said the US clean energy and climate sector had taken a hit under the Trump administration, but had not stalled, and he compared it to a \u201cpolitical COVID-19\u201d pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has hit us all really hard,\u201d he said. \u201cBut also we are going to make it through this, as we made it through COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said reality was also catching up with the administration as it grappled with the massive energy needs of a fast-growing data centre sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cSolar and batteries were much faster to build than fossil-fuel plants,\u201d David Hochschild said. \u201cYou want to build a new natural gas power plant United States? That\u2019s seven years.”<\/p>\n
Hochschild is also spruiking AusTestBed, the Australian pilot of a Californian scheme credited with attracting nearly $500 million in investment into the US state.<\/p>\n
The trial, which would ideally attract federal support to expand, would remove the cost of testing promising technology in laboratory equipment, providing startups with hard data to take to investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might have an entrepreneur with a great idea, but they don\u2019t have the resources,”\u00a0Hochschild told AAP.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou end up leaving a lot of good ideas on the sideline.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
AAP also contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Republished from <\/p>\n
Renew Economy<\/a>, 11 March 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clean energy investment is accelerating rapidly worldwide, but the fossil fuel industry is spending billions each year shaping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-470827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}