Ep. 376: The Energy Transition and the Politics of Renewables with Jono La Nauze and David McElrea | Australia’s Labor Podcast

Well, let's talk about this issue of transition from fossil fuel energy to renewables.

Now, Johnny, you mentioned in your opening remarks there that there was an environment in Victoria in the last 10 years have started to really focus on this particular area.

Take us back.

How have the politics of energy transition played out over that time since Environment Victoria has started to pivot its focus and its resources to organising around this?

Yeah, it was probably a bit longer than 10 years.

The fun thing about preparing for this episode was looking back through history and recalling different fights at different points in time.

And I went back really to when i was first starting to engage on energy issues and which was when tony abbott was also starting to engage on any energy issues and you'll recall when he uh rose to become briefly prime minister he was on the warpath to destroy uh you know a working emissions trading scheme a carbon price and all the infrastructure um around that what's changed just absolutely fundamentally since then is the whole real, the physical reality of the energy grid.

It is unrecognizable from his time.

When he came to power, renewables generated less than 15% of our electricity and more than half of that was actually legacy hydro.

So only a very small amount of electricity was coming from wind and solar.

13 years later, Renewables account for 45 plus percent of the electricity that we use.

But more than that, they are 45 percent of a growing pie and the amount of energy being produced by coal and gas is rapidly shrinking.

We've seen we're now... 40 terawatt hours a year less in terms of coal and gas generation than we were in tony abbott's time and yet we're producing overall 80 terawatt hours more so wind and solar have tripled in scale they're the only growing industry in the energy sector alongside storage but in terms of who's actually generating the electrons and they've gone from being this kind of niche almost nerdy, weird industry to the big players.

And instead of being picked on, in some cases, they're even being accused of being the bullies.

And that's fundamentally changed the political economy of the whole debate to the point that, and I'm sure we'll go into this, but that the opponents of renewable energy are fundamentally on the back foot.

They're reinventing arguments that they've had in the past, but it's a rearguard action.

And We should be careful not to be too hubristic about that.

There's a lot still at stake and they're doing damage, but it's fundamentally changed the environment in which we're operating in the political economy and the whole thing.

David, do you want to add to that? Does that story match your experience or understanding of this journey as we've moved to focus on transition to renewables?

No, I think that's right.

And, I mean, we've all obviously had to live the climate wars over the last 20-plus years.

So, you know, we've all been through it.

So John O's nailed it.

From a political perspective, we've seen the impacts it's had on the electoral map in terms of really the loss, arguably the reason for the loss for the Liberal Party of its entire urban, virtually its entire urban support.

I think