Press conference, Lidcombe, NSW
CHRIS BOWEN, MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY: …every household the opportunity to be more in charge of their energy use and their energy production. Turning from energy consumers to energy producers, energy prosumers. And that is true of solar panels on the roof and batteries in the garage, but increasingly batteries in the driveway.
EV take-up in Australia is at record levels. When we came to office, one Australian bought an electric vehicle every 50 minutes. Now, one Australian buys an electric vehicle every three minutes.
That is great for getting people around our country in the cheapest, most efficient, lowest-carbon way. But also, the battery in your car will usually be five times more powerful than the battery in your garage, as important as batteries in garages are, and no one thinks they are more important than me. So it is really giving Australians the opportunity to be in charge of their energy.
Many, many Australians are interested in getting solar panels on the roof, a battery in the garage and then a battery on wheels, which they can charge during the day when energy is cheap, or negative, and then use it to charge their home the grid at night. They can go from having an energy bill to having an energy rebate. This is all about giving Australians more choices and putting every Australian household in charge, so they are not just getting a bill from a coal-fired power company, like we all used to in the old days, but producing their own energy and trading that energy.
So today is a good step forward. Last year, we partnered with Amber through ARENA for a small pilot of vehicle-to-grid charging in Sydney. It has been massively oversubscribed.
Many more Australians want to participate than we have been able to provide places for. So today, we are doubling the number of households to 2,000 roughly. Now, with all due respect to the 2,000 households who are participating, we are not really doing it just for those households.
We are doing it for the broader grid. What we will learn through this pilot, what our regulators will learn, what our operators will learn, what our energy companies will learn, what households will learn and what the Government will learn, and to help vehicle-to-grid charging reach critical mass. It will help the vehicle-to-grid charging industry get up and running in Australia.
We made it legal. We passed the Australian Standard. We have done all those things, but there is still a long way to go.
We have work to do with vehicle manufacturers on warranties. We have work to do to make sure Australians who want vehicle-to-grid charging have that capacity. So this is an important process and an important part of expanding the work through Amber.
I thank Amber for working so closely with the Government and with ARENA to make this pilot project more of a reality, so we can all get on with the job of vehicle-to-grid charging. Just while I am here, to add to Sally's remarks, what we have seen during the week is a reduction in energy bills, which of course is very welcome, but also today the release of the National Greenhouse Inventory, showing a substantial reduction in emissions in 2025 of just under 10 million tonnes, a reduction of 2 per cent, one of the largest reductions outside COVID.
Importantly, there has been a 3.8 per cent reduction in our energy emissions. Our energy emission's carbon intensity is the lowest it has ever been in Australian history, the amount of carbon produced per kilowatt is the lowest it has ever been. And importantly, although it is only a small reduction in transport emissions, 0.6 per cent, it is the first meaningful and sustained reduction in transport emissions outside of COVID, when it was illegal to leave our houses.
So I am very pleased with these results. There is much, much more work to do. We are not yet reducing emissions by enough, but we are reducing emissions by a lot more than we used to be.
And again, the transport emissions that we are seeing come down do not even reflect the big uptake in EV purchases this year. These were last year’s figures. So I am quite confident that, in the future, transport emissions will show even more positive news, to build on the big reductions in energy emissions that we are getting, and also reductions in fugitive emissions, which are welcome.
Of course, there is always much, much more work to do. But these are encouraging figures which, as I said, build on the energy bill reductions we saw earlier this week. What is good for the planet is good for your pocket.
This is good news. I always say renewables are the cheapest form of energy. Some in Australian politics do not believe that.
They are increasingly out of touch with Australian households, who are taking up batteries in record numbers, particularly in the suburbs and regions, and taking up renewable energy at a record rate. More than 50 per cent of the energy produced in Australia today is renewable, so this is a good step forward. Thanks, Ken, for having us in your house today.
And thanks to everyone who has made this possible, I think we're going to Amber, then ARENA and the Electric Vehicle Council. I will take questions on this announcement first, and then I will take questions on other matters today. CLAIRE RAINBOW, AMBER: Thank you very much, Minister.
Thank you, Ken, for hosting us in your home today. I am privileged to be here to represent Amber for this milestone event as we move from a pilot of 50 vehicle-to-grid sites to enabling 1,000 homes in Australia. That is Australia’s largest residential vehicle-to-grid rollout.
How exciting. As a mum of two, I know what an investment it is to buy a car. I am in the process of buying my own vehicle.
Now, that investment does not just get us from A to B, it gets us so much more. Vehicle-to-grid enables households, people like Ken, to use their EV to power their homes. They can top up with cheap renewables and cheap grid energy, power their homes when the sun goes down and they are using that evening load, and then, at their discretion, participate in the energy market.
They can use that energy to sell back to the grid, displacing fossil fuels and earning what generators earn in exchange for that energy. We have got started. We've got 25 sites live today, so we are seeing the real results.
Our customers are earning, on average, about $2,500 per year in energy savings. We saw a customer in South Australia, on a heatwave, earn $500 in just a couple of hours. So the savings are there.
If we think about that over an eight-year warranty life of a car, that is upward of $20,000. What a great return on investment to add to your EV purchase. At Amber, we are an energy retailer and a technology company.
We pass through the wholesale cost of energy, which means we have no fixed tariffs. Customers have the opportunity to maximise the value they earn out of that EV. As I said, they can earn what generators earn and use the solar they are putting into their cars, or cheap renewables they are able to top up their car, to sell back to the grid and support the renewable transition.
We also believe as the Minister mentioned. We have also been working for a long time on building battery automation technology. We have 70 per cent of all automated batteries are using Amber’s technology today.
We are licensing that technology to partners in the United Kingdom and Europe. We are seeing control is a large part of the proposition here. It is people like Ken investing in this technology and we need to make sure we are building that technology in a way that works for lives of our customers.
Ultimately, this is a vehicle that needs to get Ken and his family from A to B. So we need to make sure the car remains charged and available to drive as required. At Amber, we are building technology that allows customers to maximise that asset while having no minimum charging times, so they can use vehicle-to-grid at their discretion.
We have a significant waitlist, as the Minister mentioned. We are totally oversubscribed. We have had at least 6,000 plus customers join the waitlist to date, and we are seeing huge interest in vehicle-to-grid.
We are talking with a number of OEMs about getting involved in this program. This program is not possible without our partners here today. So thank you to the Minister and to the Government for your investment in this technology and for making it possible for Australians today.
Thank you to our partners at BYD. BYD has come on board as an EV manufacturer to warrant all participants in this trial, and we are working with BYD to continue that roadmap to enable vehicle warranties for more EV drivers in the future. It is a very exciting time.
Australia is leading the way. As I mentioned, our battery technology is now being licensed to partners in the United Kingdom and Europe, and we look forward to offering vehicle-to-grid there as well. We are building world-leading technology here in Australia, and then leading the world in that energy transition.
Do you want to join the waitlist? Come to the Amber website and sign up. I would love to see you as one of the first 1,000 homes.
DARREN MILLER, ARENA CEO: Thanks, Claire. Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Sally.
I just want to start by acknowledging the Dharug people, on whose lands we are today, especially during National Reconciliation Week. It's important to pay respects to Elders past and present. With ARENA’s projects now numbering 843, I think about all the First Nations communities around Australia on whose lands those projects are built.
Well, it is an incredibly exciting day today. ARENA first started talking about and thinking about vehicle-to-grid in 2018. So here we are, many years later, and we have finally started to gain some real momentum with Amber, with StarCharge and with BYD, as we have heard.
We have got the first 50 in the first tranche of this project, and we were so overwhelmed by the opportunity and the waitlist, as you heard from Claire, with 6,000 people now on the waitlist, that we decided it was prudent to expand the trial and try to introduce new models. We have got one vehicle manufacturer today, BYD, with one of its models that it is happy to warrant for this program.
We have got more than 100 models of EVs in Australia. We need a future where every one of those vehicles has the right standards and vehicle-to-grid technology unlocked, where people have confidence that the warranty will stand up to use in the home, and where all of us, as we look to purchase EVs in the future, can access that technology. ARENA has a goal of having five gigawatts of vehicles enabled for vehicle-to-grid by 2035.
So here we have one vehicle, at roughly five kilowatts. We want a million times more than what we see here today on the grid, able to plug into people’s homes, saving thousands of dollars a year, by 2035. We think this is an incredibly achievable goal.
The technology is moving very quickly and, with the likes of Amber, StarCharge, vehicle manufacturers and the support the Government can provide, I think this is incredibly achievable. I wrote an article on LinkedIn a while ago about buying a vehicle and getting a battery for free, and that is exactly what you get with vehicle-to-grid. You bought a vehicle for transport, and you have got this huge battery capacity that comes for free to help power your home, save you energy in your home and stabilise the grid as we increase the penetration of rooftop solar around our neighbourhoods.
So thank you to everybody involved. I just wanted to call out one special person in my team, and that is Eloise, who has got two babies. One is Cameron, who is 11 weeks old, and one is vehicle-to-grid, and I am still not convinced which one she loves more.
But she has come out in the rain with her young baby to be part of this event today. So thank you to Eloise. Thank you all.
JULIE DELVECCHIO, ELECTRIC VEHICLE COUNCIL: Thank you, Darren. Australians are taking to electric vehicles in record numbers. We know that in the most recent month, 22 per cent of new car sales were electric vehicles.
The exciting thing about vehicle-to-grid is that not only does it allow people to save about $3,000 a year when they switch to electric vehicles, it also means they can make money. And so we have families like Ken's, and others, who are actually seeing money land in their bank accounts every month as a result of vehicle-to-grid. This trial is going to expand the number of families who can do that.
At a time when every dollar counts, it is really exciting to see electric vehicles able to provide cost-of-living relief. One of the things we know is that the benefits of vehicle-to-grid are not just delivered to those who have a vehicle-to-grid enabled car. It delivers benefits to the grid.
It reduces the cost of energy for everybody. So the people getting the benefit are not just the ones who are part of this particular trial. As an industry, we are really excited to see the potential of vehicle-to-grid grow in Australia, and we know Australians are really interested in exploring how they can be part of this trial.
We know there are 6,000 people on the waitlist for this particular trial. So the interest is really there. We know the savings are significant.
In one example, one of Amber’s customers saved $500 in South Australia in one afternoon alone. When you think about families and the sort of financial pressures that many of them are under, this is a really great opportunity. So we are delighted to be part of this announcement.
CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks very much, Julie. What we might do is take questions on this announcement between all of us. Darren will take the really hard questions.
Then Darren, in particular, and perhaps Julie can step aside while I take questions on matters of the day. Any questions on this announcement? JOURNALIST: I am just wondering how quickly you think this is going to become commonplace and mainstream.
I think you said, when initially launching the vehicle-to-grid program in 2024, that it should be available by the end of the year. It has taken a bit longer. What are the remaining obstacles?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, vehicle-to-grid has been available since we did the Australian Standard, but that is just technically available. There is a lot of work to do to actually get the hardware available, to get common understanding about how it works, to get the car manufacturers to provide the warranty support necessary, and for the regulators and operators to be able to build it into the system.
So it is available now. You can do it. But it is hard work.
You have got to line up your household, your car manufacturer, et cetera. We want to make it a lot easier for people. It will take a while for it to become more commonplace, that is the truth.
But things like today will make it faster, easier and quicker for people. JOURNALIST: How hard has it been to bring the other car manufacturers on board? CHRIS BOWEN: Look, there are some car manufacturers who are more forward leaning and helpful, like BYD.
There are others who will take longer. But I think ultimately, consumers and the community will demand this. If you are deciding what EV to buy and you have got one that will allow you to do vehicle-to-grid or smart charging, and another that will not, that will impact your decision as a consumer.
JOURNALIST: What is your reaction to Mr Abbott being appointed as Liberal Party President? Do you think he will have much of an impact on the Coalition’s energy policy? CHRIS BOWEN: I just warmly welcome Tony Abbott’s election as Liberal Party President.
I cannot think of anyone better. I mean, this guy single-handedly took a big Liberal Party majority and destroyed it within two years. So, as far as I am concerned, and as far as all Labor Party people are concerned, the more Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin are involved in setting Liberal Party policy, the more out of touch the Liberal Party will be with mainstream Australia.
I mean, he has stepped aside from Advance, which is a sort of weird, right-wing, extreme campaigning group, and he is taking more of a role in Liberal Party management. Tony Abbott has been utterly out of touch with the views of mainstream Australia for 20 years. If he is going to play a bigger role in Liberal Party policy, that is bad for the Liberal Party and good for the Labor Party.
JOURNALIST: He was known as quite a formidable Opposition Leader. Do you think he will have much influence on Angus Taylor? CHRIS BOWEN: He was also a disastrous Prime Minister, removed by his own party, and then he lost his seat.
So if he wants to take a bigger role in setting Liberal Party direction, that is something the Labor Party welcomes. JOURNALIST: Just one more question on rent. It is estimated that rents could go up about $9 a week due to tax changes.
Is this a punishment to renters? CHRIS BOWEN: Anybody who thinks that the current system is working for renters needs to get out and talk to people who are trying to get into the housing market, whether they are trying to rent or buy a house as a young person. The system is skewed against young people across the board.
The tax system has been incentivising investors over first home buyers. That is what I hear in my community. That is what Sally hears.
It is not fair, and we need to take the tax concession on negative gearing and put it to work for Australia. People can negatively gear as much as they like in the future if they buy something new and add to the housing market. That means more rental properties on the market, more construction and more houses.
The tax concession for negative gearing is a good one. But the vast majority of it goes on existing housing, so it does not actually add anything to the housing stock to help renters or first home buyers. Young people right around Australia, Sydney and elsewhere, are looking at the housing market and thinking, ‘I have got no chance.
I pay a lot for rent and I just cannot build enough savings to get into the housing market.’ And not everybody has the bank of mum and dad to fall back on. But investors are turning up at auctions and competing against first home buyers with a negative gearing tax concession in one pocket and a capital gains tax concession in the other, and they are outbidding first home buyers.
It is just not fair. So our tax reforms are carefully designed and calibrated to give first home buyers, in particular, a better chance. JOURNALIST: There are reports this morning that your department needed to take half a million dollars from the Clean Energy Regulator to fund the home battery scheme, which has had its budget revised from $2.3 billion over four years to $7.2 billion.
Is it a conflict of interest for the regulator to be funding the subsidy program? CHRIS BOWEN: No, not at all. I have seen Mr Tehan’s comments and the Opposition’s comments.
Firstly, I welcome the Liberal Party confirming yet again that they oppose this enormously popular policy. They are making the choice for Australians very clear. A couple of points on the Cheaper Home Batteries policy.
It is very carefully designed. It is built on the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, which has been successfully implemented across Australia since 2000 in relation to solar panels. We have expanded that to batteries.
It has the most rigorous safety standards, a higher level of inspections, and it has been an outstanding success, taken up by the Australian people. I knew it would be very popular. It has been even more popular than people might have expected it to be.
That is the reason why we needed to manage the budget. These sorts of movements of funds are quite common and quite regular between different government programs, to make sure the right amount of money is available. This has been an enormously popular program, which the Government is very proud of, and it is most popular in the suburbs and regions.
It has played a big role in helping us reduce bills because, if fewer people are calling on coal and gas at night, it is reducing bills for everyone, not just those who have got a cheaper home battery. We are for that, Mr Tehan and the Liberal Party are against it. Now, Mr Tehan has written to the Auditor-General.
His press statement says this morning that he has got a Shadow Minister not across the brief, because the Opposition already wrote to the Auditor-General in February asking for an audit. So they can just keep on writing the same old letter. While they are writing letters, we are getting on with the job.
We are giving Australians options to reduce their energy bills and their emissions at the same time. JOURNALIST: Should the battery scheme be means tested, given the majority of people accessing this scheme are homeowners who have the means to install solar panels? CHRIS BOWEN: Again, the biggest take-up is in the outer suburbs and regions.
This is not the rich, inner-city, leafy areas. This is electorates like Mitchell. The highest take-up in New South Wales is Mitchell, which is in outer Western Sydney.
The second highest is Greenway. And regional areas, in particular, are taking this scheme up with great enthusiasm. As I said, if someone gets a battery, it is good for them.
It can reduce their bills by 90 per cent. They can go from getting a bill to getting a rebate. But it is good for everyone because it is substantially reducing the call on expensive gas, in particular at nighttime, which is reducing bills for everyone.
JOURNALIST: Just on the antisemitism Royal Commission, the Government has blocked Commissioner Virginia Bell from considering documents relating to counterterrorism funding. How can she do her job without access to the full range of information? CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I do not necessarily accept the premise of the question.
We are supporting the Royal Commission. We are giving the Royal Commission all the powers that royal commissions always have. This is a very important Royal Commission and we are supporting it in its job.
JOURNALIST: Can I just ask about the Capacity Investment Scheme? You announced a successful tender last Saturday, but there has been a new tender on Monday. There has been some discussion and speculation about finessing some of the rules or some of the design of the scheme.
Is there any advance in efforts to get some of those projects over the line? CHRIS BOWEN: No. I mean, yes, we announced a good auction result last week across the NEM, which is very important.
I think the important thing about that auction is that it is based on economics today. I have been very clear, including in the podcast with you, that wind has faced challenges right around the world, not just in Australia. But the good thing about wind projects, Yanco Delta being the most spectacular example, winning support through the CIS auction, is that they have bid in the economics of today, not the economics of years ago.
Projects that put in bids with the economics of a few years ago are struggling. That is no secret. But the projects that are bidding into the auction today and are winning include wind.
So that indicates that we are getting the balance right. JOURNALIST: Labor says the global fuel crisis has highlighted how critical it is to regrow the shipping industry. So will the ANL Kokoda cargo ship be deployed to pick up fuel shipments?
CHRIS BOWEN: It is a separate matter. The development of a strategic fleet is very important for Australia’s resilience. It is a core part of our agenda as a Government to make sure Australia has the capacity we can call on, including when there is a geopolitical crisis going on.
And they will get more frequent, not less frequent, in this environment. So the strategic fleet is an important election commitment, and an important election commitment like this takes time to get right. Minister King has been doing that.
It is separate to fuel, of course. We have separately underwritten 800 million litres of extra fuel imports. I will give my Saturday update tomorrow, at my regular Saturday press conference on the fuel situation.
That will include an update on Export Finance Australia support for fuel shipments into Australia to make sure we have a buffer in these typically difficult and uncertain times. JOURNALIST: What is the primary purpose of the ANL Kokoda then? CHRIS BOWEN: Well, it is part of the strategic fleet.
The strategic fleet that we are building, ship by ship, will be able to move all sorts of goods around Australia, not just fuel. JOURNALIST: When will the Government be responding to the Senate inquiry into misinformation and disinformation around climate and energy? CHRIS BOWEN: I am not entirely sure, but soon.
We have had the Senate report. Senator Ananda-Rajah and that committee, did a good job. I will be responding in due course.
JOURNALIST: Today there is a New South Wales inquiry into data centres. Are you concerned about the amount of power and water that these centres use, and just how it comes online? CHRIS BOWEN: Australia is one of the hottest markets in the world for data centre investment.
It is a good thing. We welcome that investment, but it has got to be done in a framework. As you know, last month I put to the state and territory energy ministers a framework which they almost unanimously adopted.
Every state and territory, with the exception of Queensland, adopted that framework. That framework requires new data centres to, one, bring their own renewable energy. That is additional renewable energy, not renewable energy that is going to be built anyway.
Two, they must be flexible and have redundancy built into the system, so they can turn up and down as necessary. And three, ideally, they should be located near power generation. States and territories are working with us, and we have asked the Australian Energy Market Commission to give us options on rules to ensure new data centres coming into Australia have to comply with those rules.
So we welcome the investment. We welcome the jobs. I saw one of the big global data centre developers say just this week that Australia is one of the best investment environments for data centres.
Why? Because of clean energy. Clean energy is not a barrier to data centres.
It is an essential ingredient. We do need to be involved in the data centre revolution around the world, partly for sovereign capability, referring back to your previous question. But it has got to be done right.
Data centres bringing their own new renewable energy is an important part of that. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.