Most Australians clueless about rise of renewables

The majority of Australians are clueless when it comes to how much progress has been made in the use of renewable energy sources to power the national electricity grid.

This finding comes from recent polling by Essential Research, and has been highlighted by RE-Alliance, an organisation working towards an energy transformation that delivers long-term benefits and prosperity for regional and rural Australia.

The latest Essential Report revealed that only 8% of Australians know how far along the nation is in its renewable energy shift, with 56% underestimating and a further 20% saying they don’t know.

The results come at a time when Australia’s main grid recently set a new renewables record, with the maximum instantaneous share of mostly solar and wind hitting a high of 73% on 9 September.

RE-Alliance National Director Andrew Bray said a coherent, national communication plan was urgently needed to give Australians confidence that progress is being made.

“It’s concerning that the good news story hasn’t been told about how far we’ve come, given we’re almost halfway to our goal of generating 82% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030,” Bray said.

Essential’s national poll of 1132 people asked a simple question: “Thinking about the shift towards renewable energy, what proportion of electricity in Australia’s main national grid do you think is currently being generated by renewable energy like solar and wind?”

Graph from Essential Report.

RE-Alliance has launched a campaign for the establishment of Local Energy Hubs in regional communities in order to fix the national information gap on Australia’s shift to renewables.

These hubs would:

• provide easy access to information in regional communities by hiring trusted and experienced local experts across subjects such as renewable energy developments, transmission projects, home electrification and battery storage, electric vehicles and more;
• serve as outreach centres, providing services to support communities in understanding and participating in the shift to renewable energy;
• be a crucial touchpoint for developers, helping to foster trust in communities for their projects through quality communication and engagement;
• address barriers to the electrification of households, small businesses and farm businesses such as lack of time or quality advice; and
• tackle complex challenges such as ensuring communities know exactly how to have input into, and benefit from, large-scale projects proposed for their regions.
   

With the backing of several federal and state MPs, and more than 40 local government representatives, the Local Energy Hubs campaign is calling on the federal government to consider the initiative in the upcoming Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

“In a low-trust environment, we need physical centres with a strong outreach program in renewable energy regions, staffed by independent local experts to help build trust and get accurate information about what’s happening out there. Local Energy Hubs can do this,” Bray said.

Top image credit: iStock.com/wenjin chen