From Australia’s Energy Sector to scaling Unicorns, Albert Bielinko, Climate Tech Partner at Telstra Ventures, discusses the challenges for residential adoption of renewable energy and shares his insight into what it takes to build and scale a unicorn. Below are key excerpts from the Podcast.
Solar Rooftops AUS vs US and Climate Change Impact
Australia is the number one country in terms of per capita adoption of residential solar. So one in three Australian households actually have solar. We have 3.4 million households in Australia with solar today, which is actually around the same as the US market, even though the US has 10x the population of Australia’s 25 million people.
So, you know, it is a market that’s incredibly well suited for it. And so that’s a company really taking the world by storm with pollution. So we’ve just been drawn to companies that have a product that is really making a difference. And it’s just been a process for us in the last few years of really understanding the depth of the problem and just very active in looking for companies either directly reduce carbon or mitigate the conscious of climate change. We think it’s really the biggest challenge of our time. And so there’s an increasing kind of focus on it, especially with a lot of us on the team having kids and I can’t lie that that’s also been a big part of the impact of the chain.
Renewable Generation Stats and Goals and Government Support
Australia’s energy system is actually undergoing a massive transformation and has been for many years now, but it’s really accelerated because of price reductions and a number of other other reasons. In particular, renewable wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of energy in the world.
So that’s been a massive tailwind and Australia has a really strong desire to accelerate that. And the government years ago created feed in tariffs to subsidize the really high cost systems that existed at that time. And that really was the start and it led to the enablement of scale for the manufacturers and it led to lots of grassroots education campaigns that really spread the word really effectively.
So Australia at the moment is trying to accelerate and double the level of renewable generation each decade from now to 2050. And so it’s really a massive goal that’s been set at a government level, Australia-wide and Australia has a target to actually reduce its emissions by 43% of the 2005 levels by 2030.
So ultimately, the aim is to have renewables account for 80% of electricity generation by 2030 which is quite an audacious goal. So if you, if you look at where we stand right now, actually, coal is the number one source of, of electricity generation and and power in Australia.
So the last few years I’ve seen a dramatic adoption of residential solar, aiming for that 80 to 82% of total renewables generating 80 to 82% of electricity generation by 2030. So then it’d be a bit more concrete about it.
So of that 3.4 mil of total households that I mentioned, there’s about 310,000 per year new residential installs that are occurring on rooftops. So it’s, it’s really been a significant thing, a really significant movement that’s occurred in Australia.
Rooftop Solar accounts for more than one quarter of Australia’s total Renewable Energy Generation.
It’s really exciting the way now renewables, you know, rooftop solar is now more than a quarter of Australia’s total renewable energy generation. So as a category, just rooftop residential solar alone is very, very material of itself. And really what we’re fighting against is the burning of black and brown coal at large power stations.
Government Support and Challenges to get Solar Rooftops in the Past
The government adoption has been one of the biggest government support initiatives, and has been one of the biggest things that’s really moved the sector along. The whole challenge of getting us to 3.4 million households.
So I think in the early days, it was actually very expensive, very high upfront cost. The financing models were still much less mature than they are. Now, when there’s lots of financiers in the market that can, that can make something zero upfront cost.
There was also a really strong education requirement for a lot of households who were simply not very aware of what rooftop solar was. Even contractors were not that great at explaining it back in the day. And it was a large purchase that had lots of complexity to it.
So ensuring that the panels were in the best location or were in the optimal orientation was something that wasn’t yet perfected. They didn’t have the right software to really empower them, that’s now available with Open Solar and just the actual power factor that the panels are much larger.
Why Solar Rooftop has become more Accessible now
I’d say one of the biggest reasons is government support. So the government provided really strong feed in tariffs. And that’s been gradually reduced over time. So even year on year, you’re seeing the feed in tariff drop by several $100 for a typical system, up to $1000 which is meaningful for a household. And that kind of mirrors the decrease in the system.
I think the governments generally did quite well, with awareness campaigns as well. So I think that’s something that generally many groups globally can and should keep investing in. There’s even some Facebook groups that are active today that a really great source of information, peer to peer, knowledge sharing and quality assurance, for the people considering solar. Just people helping each other and getting up the curve and understanding the benefits really clearly that’s been a really strong driver of the space. Australia is also an extremely lucky country, we have an abundance of solar. So I do genuinely believe that Australia can be a solar energy superpower. So not only is the adoption today really strong but also the ability to export some of that sunshine globally.
