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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Australia has long been considered an international pariah on climate policy. Governments on both sides have regularly been criticised for failing to act fast enough.

But one Australian - a former climate advisor to US President Joe Biden - thinks that we’re uniquely positioned to become one of the most successful zero emission economies in the world.

Today, inventor and scientist Saul Griffith, author of ‘The Big Switch’, on his plan to transition Australia into a clean energy future.

It's Monday, February 14.

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SAUL:

Lalala la la

RUBY:

Hello?

SAUL:

Hello!

RUBY:

Saul is that you?

SAUL:

It is.

RUBY:

That's nice humming.

SAUL:

I didn't know you were coming in right then…

RUBY:

How are you today?

SAUL:

I’m good. I had a swim just a few minutes ago so I’m actually great.

RUBY:

Excellent, so thank you so much for doing this interview. I really appreciate it, I really enjoyed reading your book.

SAUL:

You are one of the first, how was it?

RUBY:

Well, I felt optimistic after reading it, which is pretty rare in these times.

SAUL:

Wow, I have succeeded!

RUBY:

Well hopefully the optimism holds once we’ve had this conversation. So let's get into it. I wanted to start, Saul, by asking you for your assessment of the state of climate policy in Australia, because I know that you’ve recently returned after spending the last few decades in the United States working as an adviser, at times, to the Biden administration on climate; and in the private sector on a number of energy projects. With that kind of background and insight, what do you make of things here at home?

SAUL:

So mostly from afar being in the US, I followed Australian climate through the lens of essentially our federal government's announcements on the global stage and rightfully, you could be appalled with Australia's performance over the last 25 years.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Australia is taking action on climate change is getting the results that other countries are not getting.”

Archival tape – Unidentified Reporter #1:

“Not according to global news headlines criticising Australia as the weakest link, for being wedded to fossil fuels”

SAUL:

We've been in the small group of nations that's really agitated for holding back the IPCC process.

Archival tape – Unidentified Reporter 2# :

“Tears shed over rising seas driven by climate change, with the finger pointed at Australia's coal dependence.”

SAUL:

…being as non committal and pushing out commitments as far as possible…

Archival tape – Unidentified Climate Activist #1:

“So Australia, coming out of the COP in Glasgow, was very much lumped with some of the biggest climate villains in the world: like India, China, Russia, Brazil.”

SAUL:

So my expectations were very low of Australia.

Upon arriving on the ground. I think, born of a number of things, including the forest fires in recent years, that Australians are more ready than the rest of the world to start really actualising change. And then I was really excited by the amount of great work that's being done at state level.

And even better than both of those things, I think because Australia has had this rooftop solar revolution where the electricity that comes from your rooftop solar is the cheapest electricity you can buy in Australia. 30% of households have already got it on their roofs. That’s 30% of Australians who have already had a positive experience in participating in climate solutions.

That's a higher rate than anywhere else in the world, and I think we can leverage that and say, you know, we've taken the first little step, which is small rooftop solar, and let's take the next five steps and let's lead the world.

RUBY:

Hmm ok! So can you tell me about those steps and why you think they’re the most important thing to focus on right now?

SAUL:

I think that a lot of people here are hungry for, you know, what can we do? It's been a conundrum since the Al Gore movie where you watch the whole movie, you're like, Oh, I want to be bold on climate, and so what do I do? And the answer, up until recently, has been: well, buy a stainless steel water bottle and recycle your plastic bags.

But I think deep down, people know that's not actually what's going to solve the problem. And what will solve the problem is electrifying our cars, electrifying our homes, electrifying our kitchens, electrifying our heat; providing that with renewable electricity and potentially even nuclear electricity, that is the simple, short summary.

And to frame it all in terms of climate, we are really at the last point where we can do that and beat our two degree target.

And then to touch upon the economics, we've seen incredible cost reductions in the price of the critical components in the past decade. 10 years ago to buy a kilowatt hour of batteries, it was a thousand $1,000 wholesale. Now it's down to about $150 wholesale, and we're going to see that go to about $75 a kilowatt hour. So you can use those cost curves to actually predict when we're going to do well economically.

And in fact, if you model it out through 2030 - this is not using magic or voodoo.This is just the cost curve reductions that we know are already happening. By 2030, every Australian household will be saving $5,000 a year on the cost of vehicle ownership and the cost of all of their energy. So that's $30 billion a year that we don't need to be sending overseas to buy oil. And that is an enormous cash influx that we can expect in our communities.

RUBY:

Right. Saul, you absolutely can’t have this conversation without talking about the fossil fuel industry. There is a widespread view in Australia that it is necessary for our economic security. So, what are your thoughts on why we believe that to be the case? Is this down to the success of the fossil fuel industry - its ability to capture and sway public opinion, to insert itself into this debate?

SAUL:

Well, I have a couple of thoughts when you say that: the fossil fuel lobby is obviously very strong, I actually think we've had a bit of a narrative problem in Australia. Australia has a very unusual economy globally. Our economy is so much based on our primary exports, a lot of which are fossil fuels.

And so the people who seek to slow down action towards the solutions have had very fertile ground in Australia to run a fear based marketing campaign. You're going to lose your jobs. We're going to lose the steel industry. We're going to lose the coal industry. We're going to lose this, that and the other. So it's been a dialogue of loss in Australia, because we've focused on the export economy.

But the dirty reality, and the dirty secret that no one wants to tell you is we only get the profit margin on our exports, so we only get a small fraction of the 80 billion we export. Yet we have to pay full price for what we import, the 30 billion in oil. So in fact, already in Australia, this idea that fossil fuels are a net export winner for us, it's not true.

So the big opportunity I saw in Australia was to reorient the conversation to what's called the demand side, where we use energy in a way from the supply side, because on the demand side are all of the things that we have to win. It's not about what we're going to lose, it's about the savings that families are going to reap. It's going to be about the huge number of jobs that are going to be created in our communities. It's going to be, quite honestly if Australia does it well, we're going to expand our export industries enormously.

But there is no time left for indecision. And I think what has been benefiting the fossil fuel lobby is profiting off people's indecision and then purposefully making the solution sound like they're not quite there yet. Or, you know, there's options. And I think this strong messaging that I'm trying to deliver, like now is the time to electrify everything, is really to counter those messages.

No, we know what to do. We know the timeline we have to do it. So let's just do it.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Saul, we’ve been talking about what you see as the way forward in tackling climate change in Australia - shifting entirely to electricity, made via renewables, and phasing out fossil fuels.

This is a plan that the fossil fuel industry obviously would oppose. But there is a bigger issue here, and that is the Australian government. Because the amount of political will that would be necessary to make something like what you're suggesting possible is huge, it can’t be underplayed - and I just wonder when you look at both sides of politics, because we are coming up to an election, do you see any hope of that kind of action?

SAUL:

We are starting to see the right commitments being made at state level.

Archival tape – Unidentified Reporter #1:

“Big news out of Victoria today is that they are going to match the Biden administration and try to cut emissions by 50% by 2030.” x

Archival tape – Unidentified Reporter #2:

“New modelling suggests New South Wales long term ‘net zero by 2050’ target will attract more than $37 billion of private sector investment…”

SAUL:

What you would love is to see the upcoming election that's about to be called fought on this issue with both parties, because both of them could stand to win by selling this future to the Australian public, and then delivering on it.

So I think there's not a lot of reason if you look backwards at both parties that we will have this level of ambition. But to be honest, it's only been possible in the past few years for anyone to sort of really be able to convincingly say, Okay, the jury is in now. We have the solutions we need to cover huge portions of the economy and decarbonise them and do it while having these economic benefits. I think it's a race for politicians to do the best storytelling.

There are people within both political parties, if not at federal level, who are providing the template for the language, providing the template for the plans, the regulation, the legislation, the capacity building, and it's a matter of time for the federal government to pick up on it.

The time is up for the planet, so we really need to make sure that it's this election that Australia chooses whichever team chooses to be the boldest and the biggest.

RUBY:

I would say neither of them are particularly bold or big, at this point.

SAUL:

I share your negativity on what we have, but it's not impossible to turn things around. I believe we need to make sure that the people ask for this, and if we demand it, then the politicians have to go there.

RUBY:

And Saul, what you're outlining, if this is possible and just say we were able to achieve something like this, I mean, how much difference do you think that realistically that would make? Because so much of what happens in the next few years depends on what China and India and Brazil do next. So I suppose, what do you see as the advantage of trying to pull something like this off is, to try and decarbonise an economy like Australia's when you take a step back and you look at this in a global context?

SAUL:

That question is fabulous, how to even answer it? The 26 in COP 26 means it was the 26th Conference of the Parties of the International Panel on Climate Change. 26 times, all of the world's governments have met and they have failed to go anywhere near the level of ambition required to give us the one and a half degrees that science demands. The very definition of idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I think if your model of change is: the world will stumble through those bureaucratic institutions and collectively do this all roughly on the same time schedule, that's really not how history works and it's not how change happens. Change really happens when a small group of people make great change in one place, and then that change looks so good that it's attractive to everyone else.

And if you were to cherry pick the country with the easiest path to total decarbonisation, the easiest path to having that also save the citizens money and improve the quality of lives of everyone - Australia is it.

The economics work here first, two, three or four years earlier than it's going to work in America. Five, six or seven years earlier than it's going to work in Europe.

This is the chance for Australia to lead the world if we go really fast and we prove that this works and we do first pilot homes, then pilot streets, then pilot small towns and pilot suburbs and show that this is the path and it is inevitable. It's not like it's not going to happen another way, we will decarbonise through electrification.

The cynics will say, Oh, but the climate outcome is going to be determined by the future of India, China and Africa. That is true. But we can influence how quickly India, China and Africa do it, by showing them the way.

RUBY:

Saul, thank you so much for talking to me about all of this. I appreciate it.

SAUL:

Thank you very much for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The Australian government has evacuated the country’s embassy in Ukraine as fears of a Russian invasion mount.

On Sunday Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said the remaining staff at the Australian embassy had been ordered to leave.

And in NSW the state Labor opposition has won the seat of Bega, pushing the Coalition further into minority government.

Four by-elections were held over the weekend, following a number of high profile resignations in NSW politics.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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