Engineering the Future of the Renewable Energy Transition

• The secret to better solar cells? Think like a baker
• ‘Balcony solar’ and plug‑in systems could help cut your energy costs. But only if rules change

• We can’t air-condition our way out of a hotter future, says UNSW expert
• UNSW technology to help bring solar and battery storage to apartments
• Can Australia green its heavy industry? It’s hard – but necessary

Josh Wilson MP 0.00

I don’t think it’s wrong to describe it as the most significant economic system transformation in probably a century, and maybe more.

So we've seen households do solar, we've seen large scale sort of solar farm type enterprises, but we know that there are schools and offices and large format retail and community facilities that have significant roof space that could go further in deploying solar.

The more you electrify transport, heating, hot water, cooking, the more you electrify all of those sort of energy uses, the closer you get to having 100% renewable and storage world.

Julien Epps  00:56

Hello and welcome to a special Engineering the Future podcast. I'm Professor Julien Epps, Dean of UNSW Engineering, and I'm delighted to be joined by the Hon Josh Wilson MP, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and Assistant Minister for Emergency Management. We're both here to discuss Australia's energy transition and the role that government and academia can play in helping to achieve our emissions reduction goals. That includes how electrification and decarbonising industry can provide us greater energy security and secure our future economic prosperity. Josh has been the member for Fremantle since 2016 and was re-elected for a fourth term in May 2025. Congratulations! Key parts of his work include energy efficiency and energy performance programs for households, businesses, local government, and developing Australia's first national climate risk assessment and national adaptation plan. Welcome, Josh.

Josh Wilson MP  01:54

Thanks, Julien. Good to be with you.

Julien Epps  01:57

I might start with just a broad question to kickstart the discussion. What do you see as the biggest challenges in terms of delivering a successful energy transition across Australia?

Josh Wilson MP  02.08

It's a really good question. I think the biggest challenge is maintaining momentum it is an enormous undertaking. I don't think it's wrong to describe it as the most significant economic system transformation in probably a century and maybe more. So we've made significant progress. I think Australians will have seen that certainly through the first quarter of the 21st century, but we've got a long way to go, and the only way we'll get there is to maintain momentum. And one thing I think the community will understand, but it's important to know is that we're not making that transformation in a steady state set of circumstances, it's a dynamic set of circumstances. So our energy system is growing, and the global and regional circumstances are changing. And so to undertake that transformation while the system is alive and expanding significantly, and while we manage regional and global circumstances, like we've seen this year with a conflict in the Middle East and an unprecedented liquid fuel supply crisis, is really the biggest challenge, and then you could break down from there into a set of sort of subsidiary challenges. I mean, you said at the beginning that while we can we can think of our energy system alone, the reality is our energy system is integrated into every other part of life. Absolutely, and one of the things I try to say to help describe the opportunity we have in Australia is that we should not only have as our ambition in Australia the sort of the task and the opportunity of becoming a renewable energy superpower, but also of becoming a clean industry powerhouse, and that part of the equation where you take all of the things that we are delivering and deploying and designing from an innovative point of view in the energy transition and sort of decarbonisation more broadly to take renewable energy on the one hand and see it help us create green hydrogen, green aluminium, green steel. that is an enormous opportunity and should be part of the way we see ourselves into the 21st century and the contribution that we can make in helping our region and the globe more broadly decarbonise, which we have to do to tackle dangerous climate change.

Julien Epps  05.12

Thanks. It's a very exciting prospect, isn't it? It's a lot to take on, and I guess it's sort of like being part way through a marathon. But a lot of exciting things ahead, and I love your description as a as a superpower. I think this is a really amazing opportunity for Australia, and of course, Australia leads the world in the uptake of rooftop solar and household batteries. What's your take on the opportunities, but maybe also the challenges that this presents?

Josh Wilson MP  05.45

I mean, the opportunities are still significant. Like we do, we do look at that part of the transition and recognise it and celebrate it. We should recognise this as a world-leading achievement to be at the point where we're pretty close to two in five households with solar, and just in the last 14 months through the Cheaper Home Battery Program, where we've seen 500,000 batteries distributed storage become part of the picture, which we need to soak up all that abundant solar energy and redeploy it at the peak time. Australia has in quick time gone to number three in the world in total deployed battery capacity, behind only China and the U.S. And on a per capita basis, we're number one. So we're number one for distributed solar, we're number one for distributed battery storage. But if you're at two in five, you have to ask yourself, what about the other three in five? And we do recognise that at the moment, the uptake of some of that technology in a category like owner-occupied single detached dwellings is very high. The uptake for renters, the uptake in apartments and strata accommodation is significantly lower. So we see that very clearly, and we're trying to address that with some programs like solar for apartments, and considering how changes in technology. I mean, whilst I've been here in Sydney just last couple of days. I went and visited an innovative business in Jerome Laxale's electorate, where they are developing sort of portable battery storage, which is something that a rental household might be able to make use of in time to come if they want to have some storage capacity of their own that they don't have to depend on their landlord for. They could potentially take advantage of a solar sharer type program where there's three hours of free power in the middle of the day, soak that up and redeploy it for their for their own use, and that kind of technology might be one of the ways that we make progress into those areas where we haven't yet achieved our potential. So I think that's very exciting. Some of those some of those things are challenging. the need to ensure that the energy transition is equitable, is paramount for this government, but not an easy thing to achieve. So I mean, again, while I was here yesterday, I was with ministers Penny Sharp and Rose Jackson from the Minns government, because between the Commonwealth and the states and territories, we're funding energy upgrades for social housing. That's a program that aims to upgrade 100,000 dwellings Australia-wide by 2030. That's probably a quarter of the social housing stock. And in New South Wales, they've reached a milestone of 15,000 out of their target of 37,500 households. Every time we make that upgrade, a social housing tenant who would typically be occupying older housing stock that is not particularly energy efficient, which means they don't get great value for whatever cooling and heating they might be using, and they're in circumstances where energy prices really impact on their on their budget and their circumstances, when we make those upgrades, they get they get what they should have: a more liveable dwelling that will be naturally warmer and more efficient in cold weather and cooler in warm weather, but also their energy costs come down, and they need it more than other parts of the Australian community. But it makes a contribution to that broader system-wide change.

Julien Epps  09.44

It certainly does, and it's great you talk about the equity dimension because, of course, there are many renters and apartment residents and lower-income households that want to participate and want to benefit from this, and I think some of my colleagues have done research that shows us might be up to $9 billion worth of generation potential, on the roofs of apartment buildings and so on. So it's a great opportunity, but more complex, as you say, and great to see the emergence of some of these new technologies. You touched on this idea of plug-in solar and battery technologies that can be maybe installed on apartment balconies and things like that, and give people some flexibility. Being an engineer, of course, I'm pretty interested in some of the technical dimensions. And of course, when you have this massive solar generation capability, each photovoltaic panel is a generator of its own, and when you have millions of them, suddenly you have a very different kind of grid to what we had even just a few years ago. So I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are about how to maintain a reliable and a resilient grid when you've got these millions of generators.

Josh Wilson MP  10:52

Yeah, I mean, you, Julien, you have much more technical expertise in this area than I do, but I think the community can understand that we're making a transition from a system that once upon a time had some large sources of energy generation that was then pushed out through a through a network to all of the sort of end points of the web, from the centre out to the periphery, or you can almost think of it almost like a tree, from the trunk out to all of the tips of the branches and the leaves. The system now is becoming fundamentally different with generation and demand and storage happening everywhere in that tree, and while it is complex, and while at the outset you might say that's going to be a real challenge, I think people can understand that the distributed nature of it does give it a kind of a resilience and strength of its own. I mean, the truth is, if you have a single point of generation, a coal-fired or a gas-fired power plant, and you have a problem there, I mean, we are, when people talk about stability issues in Australia, they do not occur because of renewable energy generation. They occur because of aging coal-fired power stations that, from time to time, have issues that require them to shut down part of that plant, and that's where you suddenly get a really large subtraction of energy and a problem that needs to be managed. The more that we have a system where generation is happening all over the place, in some ways, the more resilient it will be. And households and small businesses that are taking up solar and batteries, as we discussed before, coming on air, are experiencing that themselves, and literally experiencing the opportunity to have an energy system that is connected into the grid, but can, in some cases, operate self-sufficiently. But, but system-wide, there is a challenge to incorporate all of these new sources of generation, both distributed solar and energy storage, but large-scale solar, large-scale wind, large-scale storage.

Julien Epps  13.17

And it's a bit of an experiment as we go. This is the fascinating part, and of course, the key word is transition as well. Part of what you describe is the end state where we have this ability to sort of switch in and out of the grid and have this sort of reliability. But along the way, some of the things we have to build are essentially kind of experiments, and I say that, of course, with some self-interest because colleagues run these, real-time digital simulation labs where we can mock up essentially what the effect of maybe a big solar farm would be on the grid or something like that, and help, hopefully, at least help industry to de-risk some of these projects where we honestly don't know exactly how it's going to work out.

Josh Wilson MP  13:59

Yeah, and I mean, UNSW on a previous visit, I've been here to one of the labs where all of that kind of modelling can happen, and we're using it and benefiting from it as we have to. but it's also something that regional partners are able to send folk from their utility operators and come and have the benefit of that kind of sort of sandpit environment where they can they can test how their system will work as some of the changes that they are undertaking will occur, I think that goes to the heart of what should be the Australian project, leading our transition in our national interest, our economic, social, and environmental interest, but at the same time being prepared to share that knowledge and that innovation for the benefit of our region and globally, I think that is Australia at its best, and the university sector makes a huge contribution to that.

Julien Epps  15.03

That's very generous. I think we love to play a part in this, and of course, universities exist for societal benefit, and that's very much the strategy our university has. It's very complex, of course. You've got you've got government, you've got academia, you've got the grid operators, you've got the energy markets, and of course consumers as well. And interestingly, of course, they've got quite a lot of advocacy, and they're certainly where they have capacity to install solar, for example. And of course, colleagues have worked on things like the Sunspot Solar and Battery Calculator. You enter your address in, and then it estimates what sort of system size, cost, how much you'll save privately, and simply. How do you think households are going with their decision-making on what to install and how to go about that.

Josh Wilson MP  15:54

Well, I think that awareness and literacy is kind of comparatively high on a global basis, but it's growing, and the importance of it can't be overstated. At the end of the day, we're making a transition because the Australian community sees the good sense of it, the necessity of it, and the value, and ultimately, for me as a representative and for government, where we're seeking to enable and facilitate the change that the Australian community knows can and should occur, and one of the ways in which we've, we've got that strong sense of shared purpose is because of the direct participation and exposure to this technology. I mean, when you get to the point where two in five households have solar, to some degree, the idea that academia or government or industry needs to convince people of what this energy represents and how it can operate is a sort of, is a is a misunderstanding. Like the direct participation and understanding of it in people's everyday lives is helping to shape and accelerate the transition, but I think you're absolutely right, and it's probably true in almost every area of life. The more that people take advantage of these things, the calculator you described, I know the Commonwealth has a Energy Made Easy website. There's a range of resources that people can go and look at to help understand what their circumstances are, and what opportunities they have to use energy better. in the first instance, to reduce their costs, and you don't need to necessarily install a solar or a battery to do that. it's like with people's insurance or with their banking or other areas, any time spent looking at what your what your current situation is and what your options might be in terms of your retail energy plan or other sort of more simple measures that you might take to reduce energy use or increase the efficiency of the way you use energy will deliver you cost savings that are almost immediate.

Julien Epps  18:17

It's great. I mean, it's fascinating that there's this advocacy at the sort of household and individual level. Fantastic. Of course, still being quite a complex transition, there is a role for government to play. I'm curious, how you see that role, now and into the future.

Josh Wilson MP  18:34

Well, I think in this portfolio area, led by Minister Bowen, who's one of the most committed, capable members of the government. Like it's a privilege to work with him and his team as an assistant minister in this space. But it is a case of trying to do everything everywhere all at once, and it goes back to the very first question. It's a big change. It's a change that's happening everywhere.

Julien Epps  19:03

It is.

Josh Wilson MP  19:10

And we want to, on behalf of the Australian community, responding to that kind of bottom up enthusiasm for a sensible change that tackles dangerous climate change makes us more self-sufficient and delivers the cheapest kind of decarbonised economy in the future. We want to do stuff at the big level, so it's that like rewiring the nation kind transmission kind of project. We want to do things at that at the distributed level. Minister Bowen recently announced that we would we would change the nature of the SRES, the Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme, which previously had some size limits that focused on households, so up to 100 kilowatts. We've now expanded it to. Cover the 100 kilowatt to one megawatt range of solar, and that is precisely because we see this gap in what Minister Bowen calls the missing middle. So we've seen households do solar, we've seen large scale sort of solar farm type enterprises, but we know that there are schools and offices and large format retail and community facilities that have significant roof space that could go further in deploying solar, and so we've expanded the SRES, which is the government sort of subsidy program, to help ensure their support for that kind of change, so we, we've got a national energy performance strategy because we know it's not just about generation; it's also about energy efficient appliances and the built environment and all of those things. So absolutely, it's a it's a quite comprehensive array of things, and while the Commonwealth does recognize that we've got a leadership role on behalf of the community, we are trying to do our work in partnership with states and territories, in partnerships with academia, partnerships with the private sector and the civil society part of Australia, and the best thing that Australia has got going for it is that sense of shared purpose and that kind of broadly-I'm going to say broadly cheerful. It's impossible to be cheerful every day, every hour of every day. There are frustrations in every area of life, but that broadly, cheerful, can-do, down-to-earth Australian way of saying, what an opportunity for us. Let's do this together.

Julien Epps  21:43

And then the success belongs to everyone as well. Absolutely, absolutely. It's a complex transition, and part of that, of course, is electrification, which is a key enabler of greater renewable energy use and decarbonisation. How far do you think we are along the electrification journey?

Josh Wilson MP  22:04

Well, if you wanted to look at final energy demand and where Australia where electricity as a proportion of final energy demand sits, clearly we've got a fair way to go, and electrification for people at home. I mean, when you think of all of our energy sources in the stationary energy space, so the way in which electricity is produced that you get from the power point in your wall at the moment, still draws on coal and gas as sort of hydrocarbon sources of that power. Over last summer, we got to about 50% renewables. So 50% renewables, 50% hydrocarbons. We want to get to 82% renewables by 2030, and eventually it will be all renewables. we're making fast progress in that way, but we also use energy, liquid fuels in transport in particular, and we also use gas as a source of energy for heating and cooking and industry. With if we want to get to net zero by 2050, which we've legislatively committed Australia to do, obviously you've got to move off those sources of hydrocarbon sources of energy, and electrification is the key to that. The more you electrify transport, heating, hot water, cooking, the more you electrify all of those sort of energy uses, the closer you get to having 100% renewable and storage world, and so there are energy efficiency and clearly emission benefits that come from that, we see that pretty clearly. A number of the things that we've done are supporting that. we're seeing it carried forward by projects like the sort of electrified postcode, electrified 2515 kind of undertakings, where you'll have a whole community that will work together to see what it would be like for households in that area to move off gas as a direct source of energy to households and take up electrified transport and so on and so on. And we are leaning into it in other aspects of our suite of policies and programs. But I mean, as we get towards the end of this year and the big climate conference that will be held in Turkey, electrification as one sort of touchstone objective is emerging as what we believe will be a key theme of this year's climate conference, and we welcome that.

Julien Epps  24.58

Great, and there's a lot to do there, as you say, transport and heating and much more. And it's interesting that you also touched on liquid fuels because there will be occasionally situations where electrification isn't the perfect solution, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. Just touching on a couple, I guess, particularly technologies for hard-to-abate sectors. we have sustainable aviation fuels, for example, would be important for probably long-haul flight and so on. Green methanol, green ammonia that can cut emissions for that, and in fact, UNSW has spinout companies in this area as well. OzAmmonia, for example, and then also taking conventional engines, for example, and then introducing more renewable diesel or introducing more hydrogen. It's again an area that we're experimenting with, and have a spinout company called Decarice. I'm just interested in your take on that. That's going to be part of the solution, but some of that some of that's more ready than other things. in some cases, yes, we can start using it. In others, it might be still a few years away.

Josh Wilson MP  26:12

Yeah. Well, that exactly as you say. I mean, that the transition has elements that are well established. Solar PV is one where the technology works. It's the efficiency and productivity of the technology is getting better and better and better. It is. The costs are getting lower and lower and lower. then there are parts of the transition that are that are emerging and where we're trying to make progress both in the sort of the technology curve and the cost curve at the same time. Green hydrogen is one example of that, but there are a lot, and that sort of low carbon liquid fuel endeavour is important. Minister Bowen and Minister Catherine King announced additional Commonwealth's support for progress in that area recently. as you say, and I think people at home would understand. there's not really a technology at the moment that could see passenger aircraft operate cross-continentally with batteries. That at the moment you need some kind of liquid fuel combustion to operate an airplane like that. We can move away from existing aviation fuel, which is a hydrocarbon, to a lower carbon form of that fuel, and we need to, just as we need to find lower carbon energy solutions in some industries where electrification at the moment won't get the job done. Some of those areas will involve, there are probably some aspects of that at the moment where we're on the early part of a path that will go forward. Some are on the early part of a path that we might well find is a dead end. That's the nature of innovation and change.

Julien Epps  28:08

It is, isn't it? It's quite the whole energy transition is a bit of an experiment on the fly, and I do want to reassure the audience that we have, I have many wonderful colleagues at this university and others as well working on these challenges. So we will do our best to confront them. One of the other interesting parts for me, I probably like you have been more interested in the energy transition, but it's much broader than that as well. So we're going to need green metals. We'll need green materials like green concrete, green plastics. We're going to need a vibrant circular economy, and of course, in a faculty of engineering, we have a lot of mining engineering, and critical minerals turn out to be a key part of this. So it's a really broad and quite complex future that we've got ahead of us to really decarbonise fully, isn't it?

Josh Wilson MP  28.59

Indeed, and it goes back to that point about yes to Australia being a renewable energy superpower. Yes to Australia being a clean industry powerhouse. We've been, we've got some traditional strengths in iron ore, for example, but green iron and green steel. I mean, we need to keep working towards that overall decarbonisation objective, and it has to go across every area of life, Australian life, but life everywhere. A lot of the focus is on energy per se, but when we set our updated 2035 emission reduction target under the Paris Climate Agreement, of course we recognise that if you want to get to the point where you've reduced emissions on 2005 levels by between 62 and 70 percent, you need to get emission reduction in every. Area of Australian life, so it needs to be in agriculture, it needs to be in industry, transport, the built environment, and so on. and we are focused on that, as are all of our partners in the private sector and elsewhere. But we've created, for example, the guarantee of origin scheme, which I'm responsible for. Now, that's a certification scheme that means that the production of hydrogen, aluminium, and so on can occur in a way that makes it clear what the carbon intensity of that product is, because we know that we will make progress in Australia. We already have, but we will continue to make progress in decarbonising those industrial outputs, and we want Australian manufacturers and producers to have the benefit when they engage with and trade with the world of being able to show that progress because the world wants it. Yes, there is already an emerging premium on those kinds of decarbonised outcomes, and that's what we mean when we talk about being a clean industry powerhouse. We mean that we will be able to say to the world, we know you need green iron. Here's the regulatory and sort of certificate basis on which our trading partners can have that confidence, and our producers can get the benefit of that kind of achievement.

Julien Epps  31:22

Great, great. That segues very nicely into renewable energy uptake in commercial and industrial users, because of course that's another big piece of the puzzle. And in many parts of industry, there's been enormous progress. Actually, in the energy transition and decarbonisation, but there's still, of course, more that we can be doing. one thing you can't help noticing when you fly over, for example, big warehouses is there's still a lot of roof space there that's unoccupied. What's your thoughts on whether we're using the full potential, for example, solar on warehouses and in farms and commercial rooftops and so on?

Josh Wilson MP  32:01

Well, we're certainly not. we're not using the full potential. I mean, we're not using the full potential in households, as I said before. You get to two in five. I mean, eventually we want five in five. But and that expansion of the of the SRES, the small scale renewable energy scheme to accommodate a subsidy for that missing middle, those medium-sized solar deployments that we think will help. In my electorate in Fremantle, the city of Cockburn developed a new recreation facility called the ARC about 10 years ago. I'm going to say, and they decided, it was a very forward-looking, sustainable facility. They decided to put a solar array on the on the roof that was one megawatt. Now, I think at that time, it was the largest solar array on a on a local government recreational facility in Australia. That's not the case anymore because, of course, in this area, one of the great things for if you're if you're fortunate enough to have a ministerial role like mine, is that you're constantly going to things that are the biggest, and then the next week there's something bigger, and the next week there's something bigger, and that's true when it when it comes to solar arrays, and it's true when it comes to green hydrogen electrolysers and all of these other things, but there is a lot of potential in that in that sort of the medium side of the small and medium private enterprise sector, but also I would say probably with the equivalent scale of built structure in the in the public realm schools. people often say Parents for Climate, which I think is a fantastic grassroots organization. I did a an event on Monday night, sort of politics in the pub that had a bunch of people coming, including a number of people from the Parents for Climate movement, which is which is a really dynamic and persuasive part of our of our community, and they are advocating for solar on schools. Now, a number of state governments already have those programs to put solar on their facilities. The change that we've made to the SREs will make it easier for state governments that want to take advantage of the roof space that government schools have, and private schools can do the same to deploy that for their own benefit. I mean, reduce their operating costs to virtually nothing you'd expect when you think that schools generally are at their peak form of operation between nine and four. I know that my mum's a teacher, so I know that teachers don't just work from nine till four, and schools don't just operate from nine till four. But, but that's a perfect example of something that, in a country like Australia, you put lots of solar panels on a school. The vast, vast majority of energy use of that enterprise. Is going to be covered just directly from that solar panel, and realistically, it will be exporting to the grid. So there's lots of opportunities.

Julien Epps  35:02

Fantastic, and I guess there's then the next scale up, sort of commercial and industrial renewable energy opportunities. I know many of my UNSW colleagues are doing research in this area. What do you make of the possibility to build microgrids and islanded grids at the sort of gigawatt scale, particularly for the sort of heavy manufacturing, the data centres and the mines and so on?

Julien Epps  35:28

Well, there's a lot of opportunity and there's a big need, and this is one of those ones that really crosses over between our own national interests and our opportunity, and I would say our obligation to be a supportive partner in the region, particularly with our Pacific family. So as a Western Australian, Western Australia sits apart from the national grid, which some people wouldn't know. So we have the Southwest Integrated System, which is where Perth and the Southwest of WA is, and then we have the NWS Northwest Integrated System in the north, and they are standalone systems. That Northwest system obviously serves a lot of really significant industries, and so we are seeing those industrial players look at and move towards the deployment of renewable energy because it's the cheapest form of energy generation, and because it gives them control and self-sufficiency. Australia has is a is a huge continental landmass with population to some degree concentrated in a handful of big cities, but with lots of people living in rural and remote regional and remote communities, and the ability to ensure that those communities don't rely on diesel generation, but instead have an integrated off-grid system that would combine solar batteries with some kind of backup, which might be occasional backup diesel generation, but rarely. Some of the work that's being done, I know Charles Darwin University on trialling and integrating that kind of system is of great potential value for us but really important as something that could be deployed in the Pacific and for Indonesia, nation nations that where small, remote, isolated, and island communities at the moment are heavily reliant on diesel generation. And I was in Port Moresby earlier in the year for the Pacific Regional Energy and Transport Ministers meeting at the time when this recent fuel crisis was probably at its peak. For Australia, we are we are energy self-sufficient when it comes to our stationary system. So we have the renewables and also the gas and the coal that power our electricity system. We are dependent heavily when it comes to liquid fuels for transport. But in the Pacific, 85% of all of their stationary energy comes from diesel generation. So for them, that liquid fuel supply crunch was not just about transport and people looking at prices at petrol stations and thinking about how that affected them at the household and business level. It was literally about their whole energy system and to the extent that there are technologies which we can help develop and expand the use of in the Pacific, that will be of transformative value for those communities. And I think all Australians would sort of feel like that's again that's who we are. That's what we want to do and who we want to be in the in the way that we work cooperatively and supportively with our Pacific family.

Julien Epps  39:03

Very much. And it's been a big disruptive year, as you say. We've got enough challenges with the energy transition, but yeah, a lot of new challenges as a result there. But I agree. I think one of the great privileges, certainly as a university, is to be able to work with neighbouring countries on some of these shared challenges and share the insights, and then where we have ways forward. Then to share those also. Another piece of the puzzle here is energy efficiency. So, of course we can try to use less energy and make that somehow part of the solution as well. And I think we often think about reducing electricity use, but there's even sometimes the potential to collocate compatible industries. So we have some industrial processes generate. A lot of heat, for example, as waste that could be then used by other industries, and there are even industries, remarkably, of course, that need carbon dioxide. if you have a tomato farm, you need carbon dioxide. So I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these sorts of opportunities into the future: energy efficiency and co-location of industries.

Josh Wilson MP  40:16

Yeah, well, we say in my in my department that the cheapest and lowest emission energy is the energy you don't use in the first place. So while we focus on producing renewable energy and storing and redeploying renewable energy, we do need to recognise that we can we can simply use less energy and use energy more efficiently, and achieve the same overall outcome and work on both sides of that of that equation. So we've got a big focus on that, and we talk about sort of energy performance because within that basket of things, energy efficiency is one part. So a person could understand you might have in your home an air conditioner that is not efficient, so it's using twice as much energy to get the same cooling outcome as a more efficient system. So you make that change, get the same outcome: half the energy, half the cost. You should do that. Other aspects of energy performance include what we call time shifting. there are times in our system right now, in the middle of the day, when there's more solar energy than we can use. If you take energy demand, which might be running a pool pump, for instance, which could frankly happen, or a pool filter, which could happen at any time in the 24 hour cycle, if you made sure that the pool pump always operated in the middle of the day when there's all that abundant energy, then you're essentially, you're matching up energy demand with energy abundance, rather than having those things sort of offset. I mean, the last thing you want is a lot of energy demand at the energy peak time when there's less energy and it's more costly. Absolutely. So that sort of that time shifting, there's a series of elements like that, and even if we look at the built environment and our and our houses, yes, at the moment you might say I want to make my house more energy efficient, and you'd think to yourself solar batteries, energy efficient heat pump, but probably the first thing you should ask is, is my house insulated? Is my house well insulated? Because the most, the biggest step forward you'll get in terms of the energy efficiency of a of a dwelling is through insulation, both for its impact and for its kind of cost benefit, so we know that we need to keep a focus on that because of what of what it offers across the board, and it's similarly the case in you would sort of say in other areas of efficiency or broader sustainability, both from a circular economy point of view. I mean, we're already obviously at the point where we are looking at and funding and leaning into solar panel recycling and battery recycling, because there's no point producing these things having the benefit of them, but then finding that the material value is lost. There's some fantastic stuff being done around repurposing end of life vehicle batteries into the form of distributed storage for off grid energy systems, those kinds of things. And then there is the opportunity, as you described, even where there is a kind of a carbon factor to apply that in a in a closed sort of supportive way. I've seen some work done at waste facilities, for example, where the heat from the waste facility is providing energy. The captured carbon dioxide is feeding into sort of a blueberry farm. where that where that carbon dioxide is accelerating the growth of blueberries and not being lost into the atmosphere, and so that sort of opportunity for Australia as a society and an economy to advance that the broad sustainability piece or endeavour has many, many, many, many aspects. It does, doesn't it? We want to sort of see them and hold on to them and join them together as much as we can

Julien Epps  44:49

I fully agree, and I think there's some amazing opportunities. Just months ago. The university launched the ARC hub for Photovoltaic Recycling and Sustainability. So, we've played a big role in creating solar, the photovoltaics that we're using across the nation, and now it's our turn to play a role in working out how we can effectively recycle these. And they have their own challenges, that's for sure. But it's wonderful to have the support of the Australian Research Council to help drive that work forwards, and as you say, maybe build another new industry that will be important to the future.

Josh Wilson MP  45:24

Yeah.

Julien Epps  45:32

With the time we have, I want to touch briefly on climate change and weather. Of course, we're busy trying to mitigate climate change with the energy transition, but in the process, still we're starting to experience some quite extreme weather events that create quite a range of different risks, including to the energy system itself. How do you think we're tracking in that area?

Josh Wilson MP  45:52

Well, it goes back to the beginning of the conversation about the energy transition. I mean, we are at the beginning of a massive task. That's the truth. We are we are making progress in Australia to meet ambitious targets to set and meet ambitious targets, but we are at the beginning of a process that's going to require sustained, urgent effort for decades, and it can only happen effectively on a global cooperative basis. So there's some aspects of the energy transition that we can pursue ourselves, and that we can benefit from directly, irrespective of what happens elsewhere, Australia. our target of 82% renewables by 2030 is in reach. Whether we whether it's 82% exactly in 2030 or 80% and 82% the year after won't really matter. that kind of progress is occurring, and I and I think is irresistible. the task of reducing emissions and getting dangerous climate change under control can't be done by Australia alone, but we've got an obligation considering our advantages and circumstances to play a leading role, and we are. but there's a lot further to go, and it needs to it needs to be advanced in every area. And while we do that, while we do that without relenting, we need to recognize that climate change is already with us, and we are being affected as everywhere around the world is being affected by both acute climate events and by chronic climate effects, and those two things are worth thinking about a little bit separately. A lot of people will focus on the acute climate events, which could be a big bushfire or a cyclone or a coastal erosion event, but the chronic climate effects, which we will experience in the form of hotter, drier periods, summers where you get a run of very hot weather that affects the human community, or hotter and drier conditions that affect the natural environment and agriculture, possibly through drought or other kinds of conditions; those are already with us, and they are they are intensifying. And the national climate risk assessment that we delivered last year shows that very clearly, and therefore the necessity of responding to those things that are with us already and can't be avoided is ever present, and that work on adaptation and risk reduction and resilience needs to accelerate along with all of the other work that we're doing. And my two roles, supporting Minister Bowen as his assistant in climate and energy, and supporting Minister Christy McBain in emergency management, kind of bring those two together, and we certainly recognise in the Albanese government that we all of us need to do better at bringing our focus from that sort of an event has occurred. Let's deal with it and recover from it and support that community well. Of course, we do, and we need to keep doing. We need to make sure we've got enough effort at the at the anticipatory end, so that we are preparing for and minimizing that those kinds of impacts because preparing for, adapting to, minimising, being more resilient in relation to those things is the least cost, least harm approach, that's something that we see very clearly, and we need to work with the states and territories and the broader community to make that sort of adaptation mindset a kind of a lens on everything. and we think, I mean, a little bit like the energy transition, it doesn't need to be something that is that is necessarily wholly new and burdensome. it really a lot can be achieved if as we do the things that we will ordinarily be doing, building a new bridge. We use the science and data that we have that says if you just put that new bridge in at exactly the same level and in exactly the same way as the bridge that was there 100 years ago. It won't be adapted to the way the world's changing. So you're building the bridge anyway. Just build it on the basis of that scientific information and analysis, and it will then be adapted to the things that are beginning to occur, and it's the same in the built environment. Keep lifting the standards of our commercial and household dwellings. the stuff we're doing in the energy performance space, which is primarily designed to bring down energy costs and is very effective in that way is inevitably actually making those houses better adapted to extremes of weather. So often, often these things are happening with multiple co-benefits. Yes, we just need to make sure that we've got that perspective in order to put ourselves in the in the best position to deal with the things that we can't avoid.

Julien Epps  51:38

Fantastic, and I particularly appreciate the dependence on science and data. I think this is again one of those really fantastic areas where universities and government can cooperate so well. And I have to mention work that many of my illustrious colleagues are doing on climate risk and response exactly these areas monitoring climate and modelling and making predictions to exactly as you say try to mitigate the effects that we're experiencing.

Josh Wilson MP  52:05

I mean, I think if it's not UNSW somewhere, like resilience of solar panels, right? I mean, yes, we're deploying solar panels. You might say I need a solar panel. I want it to be the most energy efficient solar panel I can get. In other words, I want it to give me biggest bang for my buck when the sun strikes it in terms of the energy output. Yes, but one of the ways we need to look at solar panels in areas affected by storms and particularly by hail events is are those solar panels designed in a way that is robust to the particular weather circumstances that might apply in that jurisdiction? That jurisdiction gets cyclone events or events that involve hail.

Julien Epps  52:49

Yes.

Josh Wilson MP  52:50

Are those solar panels designed to be resilient to hail or not? Now they can be, and they should be, and we can do work which universities pioneer that make sure that's the case, and that's what we want to achieve.

Julien Epps  53:02

Exactly, and we're very proud to play a part in that. You've been very generous with your time, Minister. We're almost out of time here, but I can't help asking also about skills, which is one of the other big things that universities do, and we do hear from industry that there's an intense demand in this area. Yep, is this something you're also hearing? Do we have enough skills to power the energy transition? Give it that we're still just part of the way through the marathon.

Josh Wilson MP  53:29

Well, we don't have enough yet because the pace of change will kind of accelerate. The opportunities will accelerate. So it's kind of a, I would say in some ways it's a good problem to have, because if you're a young person and you've got an interest in all of these fascinating challenges, right, then the world is your oyster.

Julien Epps  53.54

I mean, we couldn't agree more.

Josh Wilson MP  53.55

We need people to come and get roll up their sleeves and get involved in this incredibly interesting and consequential endeavour. And it has literally 50 different professional dimensions. It does. You don't have to be an electrician or engineer necessarily. You can be a system operator for that, of course, of course. environmental management, carbon farming, project management. I mean, climate analysis.

Julien Epps  54:28

Yeah, it's a long list, isn't it?

Josh Wilson MP  54:37

On and on and on and on and on. 

Julien Epps  54:32

And the points I would make there are: these are fascinating careers, really interesting, challenging work, well paid. And this is going to go on for decades. So it's not just a blip in, a transient thing. No, and you're solving climate change. Yeah, so that's right. But with that, the Hon Josh Wilson MP. Once again, many thanks for joining me and for the lively conversation. I think it's really fascinating to hear your thoughts on such an important topic. Thanks for taking the time to be with us.

Josh Wilson MP  55:23

Thanks, Julien. Nice to be here at UNSW again, and a fantastic conversation.

Julien Epps  55:27

Wonderful. Thank you.

I hope everyone tuning in has found it interesting and thought-provoking. Join us again soon for more engineering the future events and podcasts.

VO 55.25

You’ve been listening to UNSW’s Engineering the Future podcast, highlighting the people and ideas creating real-world impact and enabling Progress for All.

Don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated on upcoming episodes.

Check out our show notes for details on in-person events, panel discussions, and more fascinating insights into the future of engineering.