Solar debate: It’s time we were given control

WHILE Canberra continues to debate the merits of local solar and batteries and what future we can or can’t have, Australian people and businesses are taking the lead. They are voting with their feet, writes Tim Williams and Lisa McLean.

While Canberra continues to debate the merits of local solar and batteries and what future we can or can’t have, Australian people and businesses are taking the lead. They are voting with their feet.

Record numbers of businesses and households are buying up solar, while developers are connecting to recycled water, more people are sharing their cars and houses, and mobility as a service is growing, underpinned by faster, smarter, cheaper data networks, including the internet of Things (IoT).

But there is only so much we can do as individual communities and companies.

It’s time Australians were given control of their utilities and a stake in them: Control to not only start reducing their household utility bills through new Next-Gen services, but to get revenue out of it.

Record numbers of businesses and households are buying up solar.

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How is it that a country like Germany with a limited amount of solar exposure is on track to generate 100 per cent renewable energy?

Many Germans actually own this infrastructure themselves.

They are getting the benefit of free energy from the sun and wind, and recycling their water and waste to get the financial benefit of the free energy, but also making money by selling it back to the grid.

Imagine, instead of all of us paying a handful of outdated, inefficient and entitled utilities, we could keep that money and, thanks to Next-Gen kit, also get an income from the energy we generate.

Add cheaper recycled water for 70 per cent of our needs, and car share (removing the second biggest household expense of a vehicle) along with cheaper connected data networks and we could finally smash household bills and reduce the cost of living.

It’s time for some change to open up traditional, centralised infrastructure markets, and start new growth areas to allow in smart precinct ­business and services and DIY infrastructure.

Open Cities is a new national peak association that represents Next-Gen precinct infrastructure and services.

We want to talk about people as “presumers”, not consumers, and we want people and businesses to get a direct stake in the hundred- billion-dollar plus infrastructure budget.

Open Cities is calling for a new vision to transition our utilities to the future with planning targets that lock in Next-Gen data, energy, mobility, waste, water infrastructure solutions and services in all new growth areas.

It’s time to look to the future and ask, “what do we need?” — and then build it, not continue to look to the past and replicate it.

Australia’s centralised big pipe in, big pipe out approaches to energy, mobility, telco, waste and water are now up to 75 years old. They have become too expensive and struggle to be sustainable.

When utility laws and regulations came in, it would never have been imagined the same utility models would still be in place, excluding innovation, sustainability and affordability.

But look what’s happening: We are still pumping wastewater out to sea at our pristine beaches while communities lose local water to mitigate heat island effect.

Mums and dads, families and communities cannot economically access homegrown energy or water — even though it’s free and technology is available to harness it.

We need new utility and mobility service models that put innovation and people at the centre, not last-century solutions.

Utility costs continue to rise because the same traditional infrastructure costs more. And centralised utilities continue to use market-­enabled powers to shut-out new thinking and change. Consumer confidence and trust in the National Electricity Market has collapsed.

The market’s own regulator admits in its 2018 review that the system is at an all-time low.

This centralised or linear economic approach to services is creating an environmental crisis that is unsustainable.

But it is also creating a new class of working poor, beyond the elderly and vulnerable, who cannot afford ongoing high utility bills or may never own a house or car. The waste crisis profoundly highlights the failing of our last century linear approaches — dumping waste in landfill rather than realising the millions of dollars in savings from reusing our waste.

The world is showing us up, as European, US and Asian countries close the loop and keep the benefit.

Centralised utility markets enshrine out of date and, in many cases, entitled business models. They rely on an obligation to service all customers and are enabled by market settings to assume all future growth is entitled exclusively to them.

This needs to change. We need new utility and mobility service models that put innovation and people at the centre, not last-century solutions.

We can do this across Australia by new planning targets and by actively preferencing modes of building and living that benefit our families, our communities and our businesses.

With 18,000 new dwellings approved nationally every month, governments need to act now and set targets to embed smart infrastructure in new growth areas.

That’s a big opportunity to do world’s best smart infrastructure.

Professor Tim Williams is a Global Housing & Smart Cities expert, Arup Asia Cities lead and the newly appointed Open Cities chairman. Lisa McLean is a zero carbon economy expert and Open Cities ­co-founder/ CEO