The central role of universities

Members of the audience, my goal today is to encourage an inclusive approach to combating climate change through working with communities, and highlight the role of universities in achieving this outcome.

The biggest impediment to weaning our economy off its dependence on fossil fuels is not technical. It’s not mining. It’s earning agreement from landholders and land custodians to build the solar farms, the wind farms and transmission lines that will deliver the renewable electricity that will make fossil fuels obsolete.

In its strategic plan, Universities Australia points out that modern universities “have evolved to play a central role in social and economic progress.”

With that central role in mind, as we battle the scourge of emissions, our university academics can help to unravel the contradictions and impossibilities in the public discourse.

We must enter the battle with science, technology, market designs and policies that acknowledge the role of energy in our society.

Our civilisation runs on energy. A robust supply of energy is as important to the health of our civilisation as is a robust blood supply to your personal health.

Given this, there are some imperatives and approaches that we must keep in mind.

• We must build an abundance of solar and wind power generation before we tear down our coal-fired power stations.
• We must supply clean energy at low cost so that everybody can benefit.
• We must never take the attitude that because our new energy is clean, we can use it with abandon. Even if you can afford to put excess solar panels on your roof so that you can run your air conditioning during a summer afternoon with your windows open, don’t! Remember that to manufacture those extra solar panels, somewhere a mine was opened or expanded.
• We must find a solution to the tension between local environmental protection and the imperative to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

If we get it right, we can defeat the BANANA in the room.

What we know

Meeting these unprecedented challenges demands rational planning and evidence-based thinking.

These are the tools of the trade for universities.

The shift to clean energy isn’t easy. To the contrary, it is the most difficult economic transition ever undertaken by humanity.

The debate about the reality of climate change has, thankfully, all but ended.

But the debate about how to mitigate it, divides our society. Caught between the factual errors and competing interests, public confusion reigns.

How can universities bring objectivity and clarity to the debate?

Well, let’s start with what we know.

We know that the deployment of utility-scale solar, rooftop solar, onshore wind and offshore wind are urgent.

We know that the Australian Electricity Market Operator, AEMO, expects the last coal-fired electrical generator to be switched off in 2038.

We know that our economy and individual consumers will not tolerate blackouts, so we must put the alternatives in place before each successive coal-fired power station closure.

The available alternatives

Globally, countries are investing in four scalable zero-emission alternatives to fossil-fuel powered electricity generation. These are solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric power.

In Australia, hydroelectric power provides about 6% of our electricity generation. However, it is forty years since we built a hydroelectric power station and there are no plans to build any more.

In Australia, we have a legislated ban against nuclear power, and even if we reversed the ban and started a journey to embrace nuclear power, it would take 20 years or more before the first nuclear generated electricity started to flow.

That leaves Australia with no option but to exclusively invest in solar and wind power to replace our coal-fired and gas-fired power stations.

Along the way, we need to build even more solar and more wind capacity to meet the expansion in consumption as we wean our cars and trucks off petrol and diesel, and wean our factories off coal, oil and gas.

This means that land currently used for agriculture, recreation or left fallow, must be shared with solar farms, wind farms and transmission lines.

Failure to resolve these competing interests has resulted in an unexpected slowdown in investment in renewable power.

The Clean Energy Council – the peak body representing the clean energy industry in Australia – reported late last year that 2023 was shaping up to be the worst year for large-scale solar and wind power investment since records began in 2017.

The BANANA in the room

A large fraction of the stalled progress can be attributed to the BANANA in the room.

Okay. BANANA is an acronym, standing for ‘build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.’

The more academic and less emotional terminology is the Greens’ Dilemma, a term coined by J.B. Ruhl from Vanderbilt University and James Salzmann from the University of California.

Ruhl and Salzmann define the Greens’ Dilemma by posing a question, “How can environmental law be reformed to facilitate building climate infrastructure faster without unduly sacrificing its core progressive goals of environmental conservation, distributional equity, and public participation?”

More simply, the Greens’ Dilemma is the challenge of reconciling local landowner and environmental concerns, with the global imperative to tackle climate change.

Landowner resistance to wind turbines and transmission lines is significant.

In recognition of this, the government asked the Infrastructure Commissioner, Andrew Dyer, to investigate the causal factor. The recommendations in Dyer’s Community Engagement Review will help, but its publication is very recent and it’s too soon for any impact to be felt.

On the resistance by environmentalists, let me give you three examples.

First, in south-west Victoria, near a village called Willatook, a 400 megawatt wind farm was awaiting final approval after more than ten years in development, including four years of environmental assessment.

However, during the biodiversity mapping, the habitat of a handful of brolga cranes and southern bent-wing bats was discovered.

The developers proposed measures to mitigate the impact, such as set-back zones or relocation, but, in August last year, the Victorian Government imposed constraints on the project that made it financially unviable.

The second example is in New South Wales, where up and down the coastline, community groups are angrily campaigning against proposals to build two offshore wind farms – one off Port Stephens and another further south in the Illawarra.

This is not an example of NIMBYism. These wind farms are not in the protesters’ back yards.

This is an example of BANANAism – build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

The community opposition is fuelled by myths and falsehoods that whales and other marine life will be injured or killed, and tourism destroyed.

To make it worse, community discontent is being exploited by some politicians who are prepared to propagate anything and everything – contradictions, inconsistencies, impossibilities – to garner votes.

The third example is that just last month, the construction of a special-purpose terminal at the Port of Hastings in Victoria, intended to support the final assembly and testing of offshore wind turbines, was disallowed.

In order to protect 92 hectares of wetlands, the ruling will delay the closure of brown-coal generators that emit a massive 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

It is imperative that we find the balance between local and global interests.

The faster we do so the better. We know that climate change is already having a devastating effect on our planet’s biodiversity.

Three billion animals were killed or displaced in the bushfires that ravaged New South Wales and Victoria in 2019 and 2020.

And we know that in the absence of rapid investment in zero emissions alternatives to fossil fuels, these extreme weather events will get worse, with devastating loss of habitats and increasing risks of extinctions.

Consideration of emissions as a duty of care

Another aspect of the Greens’ Dilemma is the risk of entrenching an unbalanced perspective in the law.

Right now, we have a ‘Duty of Care’ bill being debated in the Senate. If adopted, federal ministers would be required to consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on children and young people when exercising their powers, such as approving a coal-mine expansion or new gas fields.

Unfortunately, withholding approval for new Australian coal mines or gas wells will not make one iota of difference to global consumption because it is at odds with global realities. The reality is that emissions will only go down if global demand for fossil fuels declines.

Were Australia to deliberately reduce our coal and gas exports, China, India and Japan would not say thank you to Australia for drawing their attention to the need to stop using coal; instead, they would purchase the shortfall from Russia, Indonesia or South Africa.

Japan, China and Germany would not say thank you to Australia for drawing their attention to the need to stop using natural gas; instead, they would purchase the shortfall from Russia or Qatar.

Thus, if the Duty of Care bill were to be legislated, it would not protect our children and future generations from climate change. Indeed, it might inadvertently leave future generations worse off through the loss of taxes on export revenues and present-day salaries, taxes that would support investment in future benefits, such as education.

On the other hand, the duty-of-care argument is justifiable if the investment demonstrably reduces global consumption of fossil fuels.

In that light, consider that every gigawatt-hour of electricity generated by a new wind farm does exactly that, because it displaces a gigawatt-hour of fossil-fuel generated electricity.

This measurable mitigation of global emissions means slower climate change, reduced loss of habitats and lower risk of extinctions, contributing to a better environment for future generations

Thus, courts and regulators taking global emissions into account to approve a wind farm is a stronger rationale than taking global emissions into account to disallow a coal mine.

I am not aware that this perspective on duty-of-care arguments is currently being considered. If it were to be adopted, it would add more certainty to the approval of the wind farms that we must build in order to meet our renewable energy targets.

This perspective is perhaps something that the legal minds among you might explore.

Return on investment

Investing in clean energy in Australia will give consumers a better, cost-effective, green alternative that will push our ageing coal-fired power stations out of the market and reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Even better, as Rod Sims and Ross Garnaut have eloquently argued, by investing in renewable energy to power the conversion of our major exports such as iron ore to decarbonised alternatives, Australia will contribute to an even larger reduction of emissions at the global scale.

Investing in decarbonised versions of our existing exports will be expensive and it may be necessary to develop creative ways to fund it. Perhaps, Rod, you will soon share your views on funding this worthy endeavour.

In short, Australia needs to build massive quantities of solar and wind electricity in this and the next decade. Some of it will be connected to the electricity grids that power our homes, offices and factories. Even greater quantities will be off grid, to power dedicated facilities for producing decarbonised products for export.

Universities in aid of the national interest

So, given these imperatives and opportunities, what can universities do to aid the national interest?

A lot.

Although we have much of the technology required for the clean energy transition, there is still considerable need for innovation.

Universities can undertake the fundamental research that is too slow and too uncertain for companies. There are many opportunities that fall into this category, such as cost effective and environmentally benign recycling of lithium-ion batteries and solar panels.

Universities can do research into the economics of efficiently using energy.

Universities can tackle the hardest to abate sectors, such as aviation and cement production.

Universities can help mining companies develop improved mining practices, such as using green hydrogen to extract metallic iron from the so-called red mud that is otherwise the toxic waste product of alumina refining.

Universities can promote creative solutions that support traditional lifestyles. For example, develop healthy, tasty meat substitutes that will reduce emissions from the agricultural sector.

We need to improve the integration of rooftop solar and behind-the-meter batteries into the electricity grid without creating instability. This will require the kind of detailed modelling of system economics, reliability and security in which university academics excel.

Batteries need to become cheaper and more durable. It is particularly exciting to see the new generation of sodium-ion batteries being commercialised after decades of research and development.

With all those batteries needing to be replaced on a regular basis, we need to conduct research not merely into recycling chemistries but also collection methodologies and the sociology of consumer compliance with recycling incentives.

Finally, it is worth remembering that fossil fuels are also used as chemicals. The alternative chemical input for producing decarbonised exports is hydrogen.

Currently, producing hydrogen from water and renewable electricity is too expensive and too unreliable. Universities would serve our society well by working with manufacturers to solve the cost, reliability and complexity challenges of green hydrogen production.

Research into a just transition

These are some of the obvious areas to direct university research.

But underpinning all of this is the social license for the construction of wind farms and transmission lines to power the replacement of coal-fired electricity generation and to power the facilities that will produce decarbonised versions of our exports.

There is thus a growing imperative for our universities to undertake sociological, economic and ethics research to help politicians, communities and industries agree on deployment plans that ensure a just transition in which landholders and first nations people benefit alongside industry and consumers.

For example, social sciences and economics researchers can analyse jobs, housing, revenue streams, decommissioning plans and other proposed benefits for landowners and communities.

Environmental and land-rights legal academics could address the legislative aspects of the Greens’ Dilemma, including an analysis of the duty of care argument as it applies to approving the needed renewable electricity assets.

Social sciences can help the market economists and system planners who want every owner of an electric vehicle to plug their car in whenever it is not being driven. This is a project called Vehicle to Grid.

To make it work, drivers would have to plug in perhaps five times per day instead of once per week. I drive an electric vehicle and there is no way I would do that. But with sufficient understanding of what motivates drivers, could we design incentives that will earn the cooperation of drivers?

For our metropolitan consumers, universities can do social-impact research to understand the risks of creating a society of haves and have nots, with homeowners benefiting from solar rooftops and large batteries, leaving renters with none of the direct rewards but incurring a disproportionate percentage of the cost of the fixed network charges.

As a reservoir of ideas, and as a touchstone of intellectual integrity, our universities can foster community evidence-based thinking, to head off at the pass the many fallacies currently underlying this debate, such as the aforementioned falsehoods about wind turbines killing whales.

Systematic thinking embodied in the engineering and scientific methods, and critical thinking embodied in studies of literature and philosophy, should help both sides of every issue to be evaluated with tolerance and eager consideration of opposing views.

Every day, university graduates and academics should contribute to evidence-based decision making and solutions that favour the greater good.

Progress is not served by avoiding inconvenient truths.

It is an inconvenient truth that, just a few weeks ago, the Copernicus Climate Change Service declared that the global average temperature for the 12 months to the end of last month was 1.52°C above the preindustrial level.

Now, temperature rises above 1.5°C must occur for several years to be sure this threshold has been exceeded, but the trend is clear. From now on, issuing the call to keep 1.5 alive will erode credibility.

The last mile

Political will is not enough.

We need to focus on deliverable solutions.

You cannot run a pure solar and wind powered electricity system without a solution for long-duration, weather-related supply shortages.

Battery storage is crucially important but can only go so far.

The simplest way to manage long-duration dips in the renewable energy supply is to keep gas capacity in the system. Gas capacity that will be infrequently used, but able to save the system under extreme conditions.

Several years ago, I was criticised when I spoke about the importance of gas in the clean energy transition.

In indirect support of my position, in December last year, AEMO concluded that Western Australia will need to increase its gas supply by more than 2% per year.

Nationally, AEMO forecasts that gas will “have a continuing role in the integrated energy system,” with an ongoing role for gas generation “to support and firm variable renewable energy generation.”

The problem is that a 100% solar and wind electricity supply would be very expensive. It would also require disproportionately more mined resources.

It would be more cost effective and require significantly less mined resources to build a 90% solar and wind electricity supply, leaving rapid-response gas generators to supply the final 10%.

That final 10% will generate a relatively small quantity of emissions that could be dealt with by offsets.

In short, we need to find the quickest path to a very good low-emissions future rather than delaying it by pursuing perfection.

Jobs and skilled workers

Jobs are key. Heidi Lee, who will participate in the panel session that follows, has led comprehensive analyses at Beyond Zero Emissions on how renewables and low-emissions projects can deliver substantial numbers of jobs.

To fill those jobs we need a growing, technologically skilled workforce.

That starts with outstanding secondary school teachers.

In 2012, I co-founded a company named Stile Education to support secondary school science teachers with high-quality instructional materials.

Most importantly, we acknowledge the central role of the teacher, thus the classroom resources are delivered to the teacher, not the students.

Which means we still need science teachers! And we always will.

But too few students who might be interested in becoming science teachers are doing maths and science subjects in Years 11 and 12.

As Australia’s Chief Scientist, I undertook work on what I referred to as Informed Choices – an initiative designed to inform students that they are more likely to succeed if they have completed studies in foundational subjects such as English, maths and science.

Universities can provide guidance to secondary school students by promoting clear and consistent advice about the value of studying fundamental subjects.

Universities could do even better by collectively agreeing to enforce prerequisites instead of individually abandoning them as soon as there is a downturn in student demand.

Without prerequisites in maths and science, we face a spiralling decline of relevant teaching capacity. Given the shortage of teachers, fewer students are encouraged by their schools to do maths and science in their senior years. This makes it increasingly difficult to recruit students into the technical degrees where they will be trained to be part of the workforce Australia needs for the clean energy transition.

There is no simple solution to this problem, so I will leave it to the Vice-Chancellors to ponder.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by returning to where I started – the central role for universities in social and economic progress.

When it comes to tackling climate change, if the BANANA in the room prevails, progress will stall, and our emissions will remain unacceptably high.

Our goal must be to build an abundance of clean energy, which will require that we solve the Greens’ Dilemma.

The role of universities when facing national challenges is to find solutions.

Your role as individuals is vital, to find solutions that will help us build the new before we demolish the old.

On our journey to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, Australia has said no to nuclear power; we have said no to hydroelectric power. We have said no to climate change.

Ergo, we must say yes to solar power and yes to wind power.

We must find ways to make them work. At scale. Quickly.

We owe it to current and future generations.

May the Force be with you.

Thank you.