Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Energy is all around us from the moment we're born, in the clothes we wear and the gadgets we use. Unlike money, energy is a fundamental part of the universe. Each of us has an energy footprint. In the developed world we each use around 25 kilowatt hours of electricity per day. This is the equivalent of charging your phone more than 1,000 times a day.

But Australia is still the lucky country when it comes to energy. Not only do we have resources such as coal and gas, but we also have unlimited sunlight. The amount of sun that falls onto our roofs is one of the highest in the world. One only has to fly across Western Sydney and my electorate of Fowler to see how popular this technology is in Fairfield, Liverpool, Cabramatta, Edensor Park and other suburbs. With more than 3.4 million solar systems, Australians are embracing renewable energy because it means they save money on their energy bills. They can also contribute to creating a cleaner energy environment.

But there are two obstacles we need to tackle when it comes to electrifying our homes with renewables. The first issue is that solar, however successful it has been, has not helped those who are not fortunate enough to own their homes. Furthermore, rental units with solar are still a rarity. We must ensure we are not leaving people behind as the momentum for an electrified world increases. Therefore, it's critical in our debate over the affordability of owning a home to not forget the renters and those socially and economically disadvantaged.

The second issue is that the 3.4 million solar systems generate a lot of solar electricity in the middle of the day, but there's no infrastructure at the moment to store this energy, despite us having experienced a solar boom for close to 20 years. The government has given a rebate for solar, financed by all of us who pay for electricity, but somehow we have neglected to create the appropriate channels to use it more efficiently.

We now have the ridiculous situation where solar systems are being switched off remotely by energy retailers and are seeing valuable renewable energy evaporate, instead of being used effectively. Surely this has to change.

The predicament we are now in, with people facing higher energy bills and no solar storage technology, is due to past government's inaction and failure to develop policies that enable collaborations and solutions to deliver the framework and an electricity infrastructure program for a cleaner energy environment, such as batteries to store the solar energy generated in the middle of the day to be used later on. While the government announced the community battery program recently, this is just a drop in the ocean, because we need a large-scale program to be more effective.

Surely we can look at what other parts of the world are doing in this space when we know that we need to develop such infrastructure. How can we electrify our homes using the maximum amount of solar energy? In this morning's forum on electrifying parliament hosted by my crossbench colleagues the member for Wentworth, the member for Kooyong and Senator Pocock—and thank you to the member for Wentworth for having this MPI—we heard that landlords could be incentivised to install solar on developments, including apartments, which can ultimately reduce energy costs for renters and ease the cost-of-living pressures. The technology is there to put solar on these developments, and renters can get a share of solar on their buildings.

High-rises can have solar walls that generate energy. We can also send solar power from our roofs into our electric hot water heaters and use this just like a battery to absorb extra solar. We must find pathways and incentives to make solar available for renters and unit blocks as they have missed out on renewable benefits for decades. We can assist in introducing heat pumps to generate hot water—this is very energy efficient—and remove fossil fuel driven hot water generators from our homes. The member for Indi and the member for Warringah also mentioned this technology.

We should also revisit the solar rebate scheme because, since the introduction of this scheme, solar panel prices have halved, so maybe it is time to support more community solar and batteries so whole communities can have lower electricity costs.

Overall, in the push for everything to be electrified, the government needs to bring the different stakeholders together and develop a strategy to enable ordinary Australians to benefit from this transition, especially families in south-west and Western Sydney, like those in my electorate of Fowler. Ultimately, it is our responsibility to ensure that all policies are equitable and inclusive for every single community in Australia to reap the benefits of a cleaner energy world.

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