Gavin Mooney: 0:00

What has sharpened people's awareness is the Iran war. That has really highlighted that electrification in general is increasingly an energy security strategy and not just a climate solution.

Tom Raftery: 0:24

And that shift from emissions story to resilience strategy changes the conversation completely. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is Climate Confident Stories and Strategies that Cut Emissions episode 283, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. My guest today is Gavin Mooney, an independent energy transition advisor working across utilities, electrification, and energy markets. We look at what Australia is already teaching the rest of the world rooftop solar at mass scale home batteries moving faster than expected virtual power plants running into human psychology, and why diesel dependence is now a strategic risk, not just a climate problem. So I began by asking Gavin what connects his work across utilities, technology, energy markets, and electrification. Gavin, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Gavin Mooney: 1:29

Thanks, Tom. Sure. My name's Gavin Mooney. I live in Australia and I work at the moment as an independent energy transition advisor, particularly around utilities, electrification, and market insight. And prior to that, I spent over 20 years working on billing platforms for utilities such as SAP, PowerCloud, and Kaluza.

Tom Raftery: 1:52

And for people who don't know you, what's the kind of through line in your work across utilities, technology, energy markets, and electrification?

Gavin Mooney: 2:00

Yeah, I think it's really the intersection of energy markets the build out of renewable energy the transition, electrification, and I guess also with digital transformation of energy companies, which are quite a lot of things all coming together.

Tom Raftery: 2:17

Yeah, and it's a weird time. I say it's a weird time in the energy space, but it's always a weird time in the energy space. I gotta think. But even, more so recently. What would you say though people are still misunderstanding about the energy transition in 2026?

Gavin Mooney: 2:37

For me, one of the biggest things is that people fail to understand that it is a transition and that while we're in the transition and not yet at that end state, it might be a little bit bumpy along the way. But, Rome wasn't built in a day. This isn't gonna happen overnight. It's a multi-decade transition. So let's not expect everything to be rosy by 2030 because, it won't be, there's still gonna be plenty of work still to do.

Tom Raftery: 3:03

And is there any kind of old mental model still doing damage?

Gavin Mooney: 3:09

Plenty. I would say something that's topical is that we have just had a wind drought here in Australia. It lasted for a few days. South Australia in particular was very affected. I think they had the worst four day period for wind for a number of years since I think it was 2018 or 2019 and possibly longer. And what happened was, you know that the state, it has no coal, it has no hydro, so it relies mostly on wind and solar and imports from neighbouring Victoria and it's fleet of batteries. So at night there's obviously no solar. And if the wind has dropped off, then it's basically just reliant on, on batteries, on imports, and then gas. And what happened on Sunday night was the batteries did their thing, but they ran out after a few hours. Imports were low because the wind drought was in Victoria as well. And so gas took over, sort of 80 to 90% of demand was being met by gas. And a couple of times we saw the wholesale price shoot up to the market cap, which is $20,000 per megawatt hour, which is a very high number. I mean, my view on this is that this is the market doing its thing. There was a shortage of supply. We had a couple of spikes. The spikes exist because, those gas peakers don't get used that often. So they need to be able to recoup their costs. But, a lot of people are seeing this as failure of renewables. I told you so. How can we ever close down coal and gas stations when this is gonna happen? And of course that isn't what anyone's planning on doing. We're not going to be retiring capacity until we've built the new stuff. Gas plants are probably gonna be around for a long time still to come because, we will need them at times. We don't have an answer for that long duration storage and the real seasonal storage yet. It's a journey. This has happened. The market responded as it should. The system responded. There were no blackouts. There were no threats to life or anything like that. It was not much to see here. But that doesn't stop people still using it as an opportunity to to say, what's going on Australia?

Tom Raftery: 5:21

Sure, Sure. No, no blackouts, but the energy price spiked. That's the, that was the biggest outcome of the wind drought.

Gavin Mooney: 5:29

Exactly. It spiked twice. I think one was Sunday evening, the second time was Monday morning. But of course, that's the wholesale price. And so what consumers pay is a sort of hedge. The contract they have with their retailer will not really be affected by that. So really, the impact on the average consumer was probably imperceptible.

Tom Raftery: 5:50

Okay. And you say we don't have long duration energy storage yet, but I've had long duration energy storage providers on the podcast. The likes of Hydrostor, for example, I dunno if you've come across Hydrostor, they're a Canadian company and they do advanced air compression. And it's compressed air energy storage. They just push air underground and release it again. But they have a way of doing it, which means they don't need fossil fuels as well which a lot of the compressed air energy storage companies do. But that's by the by they do 10 to 12 hours, I think of storage. Now it's very early days for long duration energy storage. And so there's not a lot of long duration energy storage plants rolled out yet. And the wind drought happened not 10, 12 hours, but over several days. So it's, we're getting there, I wanna say, but we haven't got there yet. It's a journey to your point from earlier on.

Gavin Mooney: 6:58

Yeah, I think so Tom, I mean, there are a number of different technologies already emerging in that kind of 8, 10, 12 hour duration. I mean, we are even seeing lithium-ion battery projects here in Australia with 10 to 11 hour durations. And I think it's really interesting when you look at the economics of them, because eight hour batteries, I would say are now fairly commonplace. And if you imagine that they are on a daily cycling routine, they're gonna charge.

Tom Raftery: 7:28

Let me just jump in there, Gavin, because I don't think eight hour batteries are very common. Maybe they are in Australia, but globally I wouldn't say they are.

Gavin Mooney: 7:39

Yes.

Tom Raftery: 7:40

Let's sorry for the interruption, but let's go back to your point because there's a, there's an interesting thing to tease out around lithium ion batteries and storage above four hours in terms of the economics, so

Gavin Mooney: 7:55

Exactly. So I agree with you on both points. I think four hours is by far the most common duration that is deployed, or even being deployed, but we are seeing a lot of eight hour batteries in the pipeline in Australia. I think the first one, the Limondale Battery in New South Wales, I think is now fully energised as well. But the economics are interesting because yes if we start with the eight, then battery will be charging during the eight cheapest hours of that 24 hour period and discharging during the most expensive eight. And then you are left with eight that you haven't used, but they're probably eight that are kind of in the middle. And so, you think, well, if I move that eight hour battery to 10, how much arbitrage opportunity is there gonna be between within those eight hours that are just middling little hours that probably haven't got much spread.

Tom Raftery: 8:46

Yeah. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast was because from what I see, Australia's really at the cutting edge of this. I think I've seen more longer duration storage deployed in Australia than almost anywhere else. Maybe California's interesting as well in that perspective, but you're, to use that expression at the coal face. So, how is it working there in Australia? I mean, I know you've different states in Australia. You've, you talked about South Australia, but there's other ones like Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania. How is it working in those different states? How is the battery deployment going? How is the renewable rollout going? How is the coal plant and gas plant shut down going you know? Talk to me a little bit about that. I know it's, that's a big question, but we got time.

Gavin Mooney: 9:44

There's quite a bit to unpack there. In terms of the coal close down or phase out, so AEMO our market operator has just released the final version of its latest what's called the integrated system plan, which is a roadmap or a blueprint for Australia's energy power system transition essentially out to 2050. In particular, what transmission will be needed, what capacity regarding sort of rooftop solar, grid scale solar, wind, the breakdown between offshore and onshore wind, and also storage, whether it's utility storage hydro for example. Whether it's consumer storage, whether that's your a stationary battery or a battery inside an EV, how much of that storage is passive? How much of it can be controlled? So that came out and it has changed a little in the last couple of years. It's released every two years. And what has changed is we have a new state government in Queensland and they have pretty much committed to keeping their coal plants open as long as possible. So that's a little bit disappointing for many people. But the majority of coal will be going in the 2030s. I think almost all of it's gone by 2038 as at a kind of national level. We'll just be left with some in Queensland. I think coming back to your broader question there's a lot of things we could touch on. We've got rooftop solar is quite a big thing in Australia. And then, we were talking about batteries. I think we could divide that into the residential batteries as well as the, grid scale ones. Where would you like to begin?

Tom Raftery: 11:20

Well, let's talk about it from the residential side first, because the rollout of residential solar and batteries is huge in Australia. Now, Australia has great sun, solar resources, great insolation there. but I think it has been heavily influenced as well by government subsidies, right?

Gavin Mooney: 11:44

It has. If we look back at rooftop solar in the early days, I mean, you are right. Australia is well suited to it. So we're a very sunny country, not only in terms of the number of sun hours we get, but also the strength, the intensity of that sun. We also have a housing stock, which is mostly detached dwellings. We don't have that, it's not a particularly large proportion of the population that lives in apartment blocks, and so there's a lot of roof space. Then you combine that with residential electricity rates, which have traditionally been fairly high, and then early government incentives in the sort of late teens sorry, not late teens. The late naughties actually was when they really tried to get the, rooftop solar industry going. And it really did, it scaled up and as it scaled, costs came down and the uptake accelerated and it really took off from there. And it's become, I think we have the, greatest per capita amount of solar installed in the world. We have more than one in three homes have rooftop solar in the state of South Australia. It's more it's one in two homes. So that's a total of over 4 million across the country. And I guess it's just become normal. You're driving down the street, every third house has rooftop solar. It's just a thing here. It's not unusual to see, and I guess that neighbour effect probably has a little bit of power in it. I think, you know, it's, oh, they've got rooftop solar. Yeah, we should get rooftop solar. Yeah, it's very common here.

Tom Raftery: 13:14

And residential batteries?

Gavin Mooney: 13:16

Yeah, so I guess solar created the conditions that made batteries a desirable thing to have. Because, we have so much rooftop solar that we actually have too much of it in the middle of the day now.'Cause the average household isn't consuming much energy in the middle of the day, but it's certainly generating plenty and that floods the grid, reduces grid demand sends wholesale prices negative many days of the year. And storage is something that can really alleviate those challenges. And so last July, the federal government started a programme called the Cheaper Home Batteries Programme. And it was a subsidy which covered about a third of the cost of residential storage. And the scheme has just exceeded all expectations. I mean, I think in the first six months of the scheme we had installed more batteries than in the last five years. It really took off. It blew through it, its budget pretty quickly and has had to be extended. And now where we are now, it's nearly a year in, the latest numbers I saw was over 430,000 batteries amounting to about 11 gigawatt hours of storage. Which is, in terms of the storage capacity that's the same order of magnitude as the amount of grid scale storage we have. But this is distributed and it's been done in under a year. So I think it's incredible really.

Tom Raftery: 15:12

Yeah, and of course that situation as well lends itself very nicely to the rollout of EVs but I'm not sure EVs have taken off as much in Australia as they have in Europe, for example. Is that, a fair comment or has have things picked up in the last few years?

Gavin Mooney: 15:33

No, I think that is a fair comment. We were slow to start with EVs. We're still fairly slow. I think that's surprising for a country that went all in on rooftop solar.'Cos you know the idea that you could charge your car essentially for free, off your rooftop solar would be quite appealing. There are a few reasons for it though. So first and foremost a lack of models. For a long time it was Tesla and a few, fairly premium European models like the, iPace the Taycan, the e-tron. We just didn't have much selection. Whereas, you've got Europe and China, that, that had dozens of models. I think another nuance here is that whenever I go to Europe, I'm always amazed at the narrow streets and the tiny cars that are designed to drive long and park in these narrow streets. We're the opposite here. We don't have particularly narrow streets and we have a lot of SUVs. They're very popular. And also the tradies like to drive big utes, big pickup trucks. Those vehicles were not the first ones to come out with compelling, competitively priced sort of EV options. I'd say it's still an area where we're struggling. And I think also, Australia's a big country. We do fairly long trips. People will drive Melbourne to Sydney 10 hours. They they won't really think twice about doing that. Whether range anxiety was genuinely a thing or whether it should have been a thing but wasn't really justified we can discuss that, but it was enough that people were reluctant, I think to buy an EV. And towing is another issue. People liked to go on road trips, towing their caravan, towing their boat or also and that is something where I think EVs still struggle a little bit.

Tom Raftery: 17:19

Yeah. And We're starting to see now EVs be used in vehicle to home applications. At least here in Europe. My own car does vehicle to load. So when we had that blackout last year, for example, I was able to power devices in the home from my car. Is, that something that's being thought of at all in Australia?

Gavin Mooney: 17:43

It is, and we have high hopes for it. And I think the recent events in South Australia the wind drought we were talking about earlier, if we'd had substantial vehicle to grid for those days, I think it would've been, very helpful. So it is coming, I think we're just on the cusp of more widespread adoption. But what has held it back has been a lack of agreement, sort of a lack of a standard interface. And also the bidirectional charges are, they, they're not cheap. I think it's not everyone that wants to spend thousands of dollars on one of those to just power their home or sell a bit more energy to the grid. The business case is a little bit harder to make, but I believe it's something that will be very important to the energy system of the future. Everyone eventually is gonna have an EV at home. It's a massive battery on wheels. We should put it to work.

Tom Raftery: 18:37

I mean, Australia's obviously kind of a living lab for what's happening in the transition, I gotta think. What about the likes of virtual power plants? Because if everyone, well, not everyone, but if, half the houses have solar on the roof and a good proportion of 'em have batteries, surely that's a no brainer to roll out a virtual power plant. And for anyone listening who isn't familiar with the idea of a virtual power plant, the analogy I like to use for virtual power plants is it's like cloud computing. Cloud computing. You've got hundreds of computers all stacked together in a data centre, and it appears to the user like a single computer doing their email or doing their CRM or doing their whatever. Similarly, a virtual power plant isn't a power plant. It's hundreds or thousands of batteries acting like a power plant, all kind of abstracted into a single seemingly single device. And it's often home batteries that are used in virtual power plants to look like a power plant. Is that something we're seeing coming out of Australia, seeing as you are in that living lab,

Gavin Mooney: 19:42

living

Tom Raftery: 19:43

in the future?

Gavin Mooney: 19:44

Yes and no. They're certainly talked about quite a lot. One of the conditions of that cheaper home batteries programme was that I think that to get the rebate your battery had to be VPP enabled so it could join a virtual power plant. But where it's interesting, I think there's two areas. One is whether smart tariff design can get you many of the same benefits anyway. And the second is the psychology of it. So starting with the second point the mentality of many Australian people is that they've spent their money on buying this battery. Why should they let their utility take control of their battery in exchange for what they view as a pittance, maybe one or $200 that get paid a year. And I think it's easy to see the consumer's point of view in that, they've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on this battery and the utility says, yeah, we are gonna make a huge profit from this by when we get a 20,000, dollar per megawatt hour spike. We'll be, selling your energy and we'll give you a few hundred dollars for it. So VPP uptake has been very low. If you look at the fraction you know of, of all the batteries that have been installed in the last year, I think it's something like five or 10% that have joined A VPP.

Tom Raftery: 21:04

Is that a matter of bad incentives or psychology as you mentioned, or both or something else?

Gavin Mooney: 21:11

I think psychology is definitely a part of it. And for me, I think the incentives, yeah, they need to be more realistic.'cause that's just not very much money. I'm sure there's a level if the utility paid enough that people would say, okay now we're talking, let's go. But I think if you look at it from the grid's point of view, we have tariffs emerging here where every consumer will be given the, if they want it, three free hours of electricity in the middle of the day. And that's a sort of, the idea is that people will run appliances when it's free and they'll soak up all that excess rooftop solar generation that we were talking about. And similar tariffs reward the consumer for not drawing from the grid during the evening peak. And they might have very favourable feed-in tariffs. In other words, you might be paid handsomely for any energy that you discharge from your battery into the grid during that evening peak. So I think with a tariff that's designed thoughtfully like that, you can probably get most of the VPP benefits without, coming up against that psychology of the consumer feeling like somebody else is controlling their battery. I mean, it's something that I did here in summer when I had plenty of rooftop solar. The battery was full every day. I would discharge 10, 15 kilowatt hours each evening for quite a decent price. I felt like I was making some money, I was helping the grid the, my utility was happy as well I still felt like I had control of the battery.

Tom Raftery: 22:45

Leads me to another question though. people in the early days of the internet talked about the digital divide, where the people who were better off could access the internet and people who were less well off maybe didn't have access or had less access. In Australia in the energy transition, is there an energy divide between those who can afford solar and batteries and EVs versus those who can't?

Gavin Mooney: 23:16

There definitely is to some extent, but I think it's not as clear cut as you might expect. So starting with batteries, which is the most recent one, there's been a fair degree of postcode level analysis of where these batteries are being installed. And there isn't a high correlation with the biggest batteries are all going to these really fancy suburbs. It's actually the opposite. It's sort of the outer suburbs maybe where people have, the large land, lots of rooftop solar or something like that. So batteries definitely not. EVs, the EV uptake has improved by the way since we got a lot more Chinese models coming onto the market. As the selection improved, EV uptake has improved. And I, again, I wouldn't say they're just toys for the rich. It's not something that everyone can afford, but I don't think it's necessarily the case that people who want an EV are excluded. And it's similar with rooftop solar. from a finance point of view the payback on rooftop solar is just four to five years generally. And so it's not really that bad. It pays for itself quite quickly. But I think where we do have a challenge that needs addressing is renters, for example, they can't put on rooftop solar. Apartment dwellers struggle as well. And so this idea of the, it's called the solar sharer programme, I think the three hours of free electricity per day that's available to everyone, regardless of whether you're a renter or an apartment in a house, homeowner and so on. And so that's one of the ways to kind of democratise this access to the cheap energy.

Tom Raftery: 24:57

Okay. There's another thing that has started here in Europe in the last year or two, where you can go down to the likes of your local hardware store and buy solar panels that you can hang on your balcony if you're in an apartment and just plug into an outlet in your dwelling. So if you are a renter, you can suddenly put solar panels, like I say, on your balcony or wherever, plug 'em into one of your outlets and somehow through some magic, it manages to push electricity into your home and or your apartment or whatever it is. I've forgotten the name of it is that available in Australia now as well?

Gavin Mooney: 25:41

This is the balcony solar or balcon craft is that… came out of Germany wasn't it? I've certainly heard about it. It's not something I think that has been passed as legal here in Australia yet. From what I've heard from some, electrical engineer type friends. There's a few concerns that people have about hooking that up, just plugging it into your home. A few, I think a few hoops they want their manufacturers to jump through first. I guess it will help for people in apartments. It's not something we'd expect for people who live in a dwelling, where they've plenty of roof space. I think it's really interesting. I like the idea that… I understand the panels, they might generate around a kilowatts maybe a little bit under something like that. So it's not gonna cover all of your load, but it's, you're doing something, I think what really helps.

Tom Raftery: 26:30

Yeah,, they're usually one or two panels, and the panels are about 500 watts each, is my understanding. They've only just recently, in the last few months become legal here in Spain, so I've been watching it with a bit of interest.

Gavin Mooney: 26:41

And are they packaging it with a battery as well? Because I've heard someone in the UK talking about getting it as well, someone I didn't expect to, and they said it comes with a small battery. And so then you know you could actually start supplying more of your household load.

Tom Raftery: 26:56

Yeah it, if I remember correctly, and it, the battery's optional and it's a two kilowatt hour battery, so not huge, but not bad either.

Gavin Mooney: 27:05

No, it all helps, doesn't it?

Tom Raftery: 27:07

Yeah, exactly. Now we're talking very much about Australia at the moment. Let's, widen the lens a little, first off, I wanna ask about the energy transition itself, because for some people it can be about climate, but it's increasingly becoming about national resilience, I think. are what are your comments on that?

Gavin Mooney: 27:32

Definitely, I think it always was, but I think what has sharpened people's awareness is the Iran war, which hopefully is kind of behind us, I think, still to be confirmed. That has really highlighted that electrification in general is increasingly an energy security strategy and not just a climate solution. I mean, it really exposed for us in Australia just how vulnerable we are. Australia's known to be an energy superpower in the real traditional fossil fuels. We're one of the world's biggest exporters of coal, one of the world's biggest exporters of LNG. But we import a lot of liquid fuels. I think we are the world's largest importer of diesel, and that's a country with just 27 million people. So we also, the world's highest or one of the world's highest consumers of diesel per capita. And if you wanna know why, it's because it all goes into, or half of it goes into road freight, mining, agriculture, long distance trucking and so on. But, there was a shortage and it made people realise how vulnerable we are. And in the last three months for which we have data, the interest, the sales in EVs really skyrocketed. I think March was something like 12% share of sales. I think April moved up to 15 or 16%. And in May we topped 20%, which I know those numbers are modest by European standards or Chinese standards, but for Australia that's record breaking numbers. So it'll be interesting to see if it continues, if that's really been a shot in the arm for people realising that electric is the way to go.

Tom Raftery: 29:20

And it's fascinating as well because as you say, a lot of it is for road haulage. And Australia is a big country, as you mentioned earlier, but in China, we're starting to see the sale of HGVs that are electric, surpass the sale of HGVs that are diesel. So is that something that Australia's looking on as well and thinking, hmm.

Gavin Mooney: 29:45

it is. I mean, trucking is nearly half of our transport emissions. As I said, we're one of the world's largest importers of diesel. And so yes, electric trucking is something that is starting to take off here. There's one or two companies that are leading the way building out charging depots. I heard the first run from one company was done just a few months ago, and they are looking at electrifying along the eastern seaboard essentially. And what's interesting is how quickly it pays for itself. I, saw one piece of analysis that suggested even if the government paid to build out all the charging infrastructure, and even the fleets as well, it would all pay for itself within about four years or something like that. And a lot of that is because an electric prime mover electric truck just doesn't cost that much more than a diesel one now. I think the difference used to be about double and now it's not parity, but it's it's getting a lot closer.

Tom Raftery: 30:45

Right, and we've talked about Australia and to a little extent China. We'll come back more to that, but how about India? Because India may be the first major economy to industrialise with solar at scale. How big a break is that from history?

Gavin Mooney: 31:03

I think India's really interesting Possibly the most important climate story of the coming decades. And that is because most of its energy demand growth is still in front of it. So if you look at the scale, it's the world's most populous country. It's also the world's fastest growing, major economy. And I remember when I saw that India had a net zero target of 2070, I thought, crikey, China's 2060 was bad enough. But it just shows the size of the task ahead of them. But yes, they do seem to be, India seems to be on a slightly different path to the west and China. I think it helps that its economy is not so energy intense. It has a more services oriented economy, but also it seems to be already building out, a lot of solar rather than going down a coal route like China did. So it's really interesting 'cause India is industrialising at a time when renewables are already the cheapest form of new generation in many locations. And it, it looks like it will be the first major economy to industrialise in the solar age. Obviously. Not gonna be easy though.

Tom Raftery: 32:16

Yeah. No. And so they're gonna essentially leapfrog the fossil fuel era.

Gavin Mooney: 32:22

I don't know if they're going to. They're not gonna do it without fossil fuels, but I don't think they're going to go all the way into fossil fuels and then dig themselves out, by going to, no pun intended, into wind and solar. There are challenges, India, very populous country. It's a large country, but it's not the largest. So there, I don't think they have a huge amount of space, for example for rooftop solar like we do here in Australia. They've made really interesting progress. Things like the railway network almost entirely electrified. That's been done sort of in the last 10 years. I understand. But it's not just about installing generation, is it? As it's, we now need to look at the transmission build out. How are we gonna integrate these large quantities of variable renewables and all those other sort of system level challenges.

Tom Raftery: 33:07

Hmm, And India's neighbour, Pakistan is a, an interesting country as well in terms of their solar rollout.

Gavin Mooney: 33:15

Fascinating. Fascinating. Yes. a grid that became increasingly expensive and unreliable whilst at the same time the price of importing solar panels from China plummeted led to many people installing rooftop solar and sort of going their own way. And I think it's fascinating. You could look at satellite imagery of some of the towns and cities in Pakistan, and you can see just in, in a few years we've gone from rooftops that were largely bare to rooftops that are completely covered in solar panels. It's a fascinating story. It's a great example of a sort of bottom up led transition. And again it's, not going to be easy. I think that the easy part has probably been done. It's now what are these solar panels doing to the grid? How are we gonna integrate them? How are we going to sort of manage these wild fluctuations in, in generation?

Tom Raftery: 34:08

And it's not just Pakistan either, there, there are lots and lots of countries in Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa as well, which we don't hear as much about, but are who are doing fascinating things with renewables in large part, as you said a second ago, because the cost of renewables has fallen so much in the last few decades, it is now the cheapest form of generation. Are there any other particular countries that you think people might be unaware of where fascinating things are happening? Vietnam, Indonesia, African countries, talk to me about where you're seeing the really fun and interesting stuff happening.

Gavin Mooney: 34:53

Yeah, there are quite a few which are sort of, you're right below the radar. They don't appear in, in all the major headlines. I think Nigeria is quite an interesting one where we're seeing, many households that could afford it would have backup diesel generators because the grid was unreliable. And a lot of these people are now getting solar panels. So solar is competing with diesel. That's similar to what has been happening in Lebanon, where again, unreliable grid, they actually have sort of community diesel generators there. It's not individual gen sets at the household level, but almost like microgrids supplied by these community diesel plants. And again, rooftop solar or solar panels are starting to replace those. And a lot of these community diesel operators have gone out of business. I think Ethiopia is a very interesting case. They banned the, the import of internal combustion engine vehicles 'cause the diesel bill was just too high for the country. So they are electrifying fast. It's also a country with huge hydro resources, potentially a little controversial in some cases. But, Ethiopia is a real outlier with a very high penetration, as you can imagine, of electric vehicle sales now. Nepal is another one, where EVs are really taking off. I think in Vietnam, is it Vin Fast, the local local manufacturers. There's a huge EV uptake in Vietnam as well. yeah, I think it's fascinating really. There's a lot of little stories, like you say, it's not just China, India, Europe, Australia, but there's little pockets of innovation and transition happening, sort of bubbling up all over the place now.

Tom Raftery: 36:34

Yeah, all over the place and over the next five years, what do you think is gonna change most? Will it be generation? Storage? Transport? Tariffs? Customer behaviour? Something else entirely? It depends?

Gavin Mooney: 36:49

A lot of those I think will change, but for me, the one at the moment is storage is just changing the game. Solar became really cheap. We installed a lot of solar. It obviously doesn't generate at night. It generates most in the middle of the day. That's okay if you can shift a lot of flexible demand so you're consuming that energy in the middle of the day. But it's a little bit inconvenient, isn't it, let's admit? Storage is now allowing people to consume that solar at night, during the evening peak. It's a real game changer. It's meaning that we are able to make better use of all that solar that we have been installing. So I think for me, that is the one that's gonna continue, to really change the game, whether it's grid scale, solar behind the metre, but I think it's, the pace at which things are changing on that front is really exciting at the moment.

Tom Raftery: 37:38

Okay. And for people who are listening who want to act on this, where should they start? Electrification? Flexibility? Procurement policy? Engagement data? Something else entirely?

Gavin Mooney: 37:50

I think electrification is key here because it's a way that people can save money as well. I mean, electrification, I think electrification is efficiency. So, if you're able to instal a heat pump, you're gonna be consuming far less energy, wasting far less energy. Similarly for an EV you avoid the maintenance costs, you avoid the fuel costs. We are lucky in Australia if you can power your EV from your rooftop solar, you're essentially paying almost nothing to run that vehicle and so on. So I would say yes, efficiency and electrification in general is a great place to start. I realised that not everywhere is like Australia, where you can put on rooftop solar, within a week and be up and running and get a subsidised home battery to help out as well. But I think there's quite a lot that people can do.

Tom Raftery: 38:39

Fair enough. And after this conversation, what's one way you'd like listeners to think differently about energy security?

Gavin Mooney: 38:47

I think just if they weren't thinking it already, just be aware that any sort of dependence on another country probably isn't a great idea. And that's been brought into sharp focus with events in the Middle East in the last few months. And the best way forward has to be generating it yourself. And I don't mean necessarily at the individual household level, but on your shore, because no one can turn off the sun. No one can stop the wind blowing. So those are uninterruptible sources. They're variable, but they're always gonna be there at some point. So that's the clear way forward.

Tom Raftery: 39:26

Okay, time now Gavin for the lightning round. So quick questions, one sentence answers you up for it?

Gavin Mooney: 39:35

Alright, let's go.

Tom Raftery: 39:37

Okay. Cheapest energy or most resilient energy?

Gavin Mooney: 39:41

Most resilient.

Tom Raftery: 39:43

Okay, What technology still gets underestimated?

Gavin Mooney: 39:46

Heat pumps.

Tom Raftery: 39:48

Very good. What gets too much attention?

Gavin Mooney: 39:51

Solar and wind not generating all the time.

Tom Raftery: 39:55

What should governments stop doing?

Gavin Mooney: 39:58

Overemphasis on policy and legislation.

Tom Raftery: 40:01

Okay. What should businesses electrify first?

Gavin Mooney: 40:06

It depends on the sort of business. But if you want a certain, a more serious answer, I mean, if it's a trucking business, then you know, I think transport would be a good one. If it's a typical corporate entity, then maybe building emissions and that sort of thing.

Tom Raftery: 40:21

Okay. What will surprise people by 2030?

Gavin Mooney: 40:26

How far we've come.

Tom Raftery: 40:28

Okay, and finish this line. Less fuel, more. Dot.

Gavin Mooney: 40:33

Happiness.

Tom Raftery: 40:37

I love it. Alright a left field question for you now. If you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for the energy transition, who would it be and why?

Gavin Mooney: 40:52

Oh gosh. I'm gonna have to think about that a bit. Tom, We'll go with fictional, I think. it just has to be a sort of superhero, someone that is believable, credible, someone that people are going to want to follow, so that we get away from the idea that it's all the crazy scientists saying that the, climate change is a problem and we need to transition to renewables, but if it's someone that people really believe in and trust, then I think people will follow.

Tom Raftery: 41:25

We're coming towards the end of the podcast now Gavin. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Gavin Mooney: 41:36

No, I think we've been all over the place, thanks, Tom. We've done rooftop solar, batteries. We've gone around the world. No, that's been great. Thank you.

Tom Raftery: 41:46

Sure. Great. And if people, Gavin would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Gavin Mooney: 41:54

I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so that is probably the best place to find me. I'm always happy to connect and exchange ideas with people.

Tom Raftery: 42:01

Great. I'll be sure to put your LinkedIn contact information in the podcast show notes if anyone wants to meet up with Gavin on LinkedIn. Great. Super fantastic. Gavin, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast

Gavin Mooney: 42:14

My pleasure, Tom. Thank you.