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How Australia Became The Worlds Battery Champion

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TITLE: How Australia Became The World’s Battery Champion | Deep Dive Australia 01: Darren Miller CHANNEL: Cleaning Up Podcast DATE: 2026-06-29 ---TRANSCRIPT--- The same consumers who put rooftop solar in are now interested in batteries and we’ve had about 350,000 batteries go in under this cheaper home batteries program over the last year. That’s in the context of 10 million Australian households. So, 3.5% of all Australian households have bought a battery for their home in the past year. I’m pretty sure that Australia is the number one battery market per capita on the planet by a long way. You add to that the enormous strides that have been taken in the large-scale grid batteries, of which the uh Neo and uh big battery in South Australia, which was a bet between Elon Musk and one of our billionaires, Mike Cannon-Brookes, back in 2016, was the notable start of that.

that’s one of the things that our non-Australian audience will have heard about. You build it in 90 days or it’s free, I think was the bet. [music] Hello, I’m Michael Liebreich and this is Cleaning Up. Keen fans of the show will have seen that in late May, early June, I took a mammoth trip around Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. It was great to meet so many of you in person at the Cleaning Up events that we hosted in Singapore, Sydney, and Melbourne, when I spoke at the National Press Club of Australia, at the Energy Efficiency Council conference, and at the Energy Retailers and Generators Association of New Zealand meeting in Wellington. While I was in Australia, we recorded our first ever deep dive. That’s a series of nine episodes with leaders of the climate and clean energy scene, in which we explored in detail where Australia is leading the world, where it is not, and how it got there. This is an important moment for Australia. The country was extraordinarily exposed to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, being the largest per capita importer of diesel in the world. It’s also uniquely dependent on China as the destination of its mineral exports and the source of a lot of its technology imports. And in November, Australia will be co-president with Turkey of the COP climate summit in Antalya. So, it was really fun to go deep and over the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing from guests including Chris Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy of Australia, Lily D’Ambrosio, Minister for Climate Action of Victoria, Professor Martin Green, the pioneer inventor of so much solar technology, David Pocock, the former Wallaby rugby star turned senator, and thought leaders from across the energy sector. What we’re going to do with these episodes is put them out every Monday to complement the regular weekly show that will still go out every Wednesday. Make sure that you don’t miss any of the episodes of this Australia deep dive or any of our regular programming by signing up to our newsletter at cleaningup.live. You can also find it on Substack and we’ll put a link in the show notes. To kick off the first episode of our first deep dive, I’m delighted to welcome Darren Miller, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, one of the key national organizations helping to fund and build the next generation of clean energy solutions and who also supported our trip to Australia. Please welcome Darren Miller to Cleaning Up. Before we get started, I’d like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land on which we’re recording. I’d like to pay my respect to their elders, past, present, and emerging. Darren, hello. Michael, hi. Great to see you. We’re going to start where we always start, with you saying who you are and what you do. Brilliant. Yeah, so I’m the CEO of ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Uh I’ve been doing that for about 8 years now. ARENA is Australia’s federal government agency responsible for giving grant money to new renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency projects. Uh we’ve done about 840 projects over the 14 years that ARENA’s been around. I’ve obviously done eight of that. Um and uh we have 8 years, not eight of the projects. Correct. 8 years. Uh hundreds of projects. Uh and ARENA’s got a capital base, if you like, of about 14 billion Australian dollars, so roughly 10 billion US. And we get to deploy that on new technologies right across the the spectrum of energy, renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency. Uh prior to that, I had about six or seven years in the renewable energy space, both as a innovator in technology, uh in rooftop solar, in batteries, and uh and latterly in electricity retail, uh before I sold that business and uh joined ARENA. So, that was as an investor and it and entrepreneur. Investor, uh consultant, and operator. You are called the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Now, some people might think that an agency is a team of bureaucrats, you know, writing reports, making plans, drafting regulations. There are agencies that do that. That is not what you do, correct? not a policy shop. The the policy of renewable energy is done by the department attached to the ministerial, the government side of the business. The agency is a separate body governed by a board of eight eight board members. We have our own act of parliament and our own statutory funding. And our job is simply to provide funding to new technology projects in those domains of renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency. And we make our own decisions to appoint. Our minister has delegation for any project that needs to have a grant of over $50 million. Other than that, it’s board and CEO and management decision-making. Uh and so we’ve been doing this for, as I said, 14 years now, over 800 projects. And essentially, we have looked at the portfolio of opportunities and segmented our work into uh working in the solar space. We think Australia has a lot still to offer in both R&D as well as deployment of solar, so that’s one of our priorities. We’re working in the grid and battery and storage space. The grid is decarbonizing uh and going renewable rapidly, and so there’s a lot to do in that space. We’re still working in the distributed energy space because we’re such a powerhouse in terms of our rooftop solar and increasingly batteries and soon to be vehicle-to-grid. Uh and then we move into heavy industry, hydrogen, heavy industry decarbonization, and transport uh uh is a is a further pillar of our work. You talk about investing in projects. I’ve got the Australian pronunciation, projects. I’d call them projects, but are they actually projects? In other words, are they assets? So when you talk about a project, is it from your perspective, it’s a project, but actually it’s a company. It’s an It’s like an almost like a venture investment, or what are these? Are they asset investments or venture investments? I like to I like to think of ARENA as a benevolent equity investor in that we have the mindset of an equity investor. We scrutinize and diligence the deals that we do, the teams, the the the definition of the projects, uh the finances that they bring along, the knowledge sharing that they offer. But ultimately, we want to give our money to that project and not see that money come back because we want that, you know, it is uncommercial. We don’t expect that money to return, but we are not investing working capital in a company. We’re investing in an experiment that that company wants to produce, whether that’s further research, a first-of-a-kind deployment, or even a large-scale deployment of something that’s not yet taken up by the commercial market, we define the scope of what we provide finance to as a walled-in a project. It obviously does go and support that company’s pathway, but we’re often asking for co-investment debt and equity from from funders to come along and and join that project definition, which we provide funding to. And we we aim for about one-to-one as a rule of thumb, you know, a dollar from Arena, a dollar from third-party investors into that company or that project. Um but yes, we’re we’re looking at the companies, the the talent, the financing plan, but experimenting with a particular uh problem that that company is trying to solve. Okay, so now if that is a first-of-a-kind project, um then it’s relatively straightforward cuz that project is a standalone thing and so you put in the some equity, you say, “If you can match this one-for-one, we’ll go build this.” And non- well, I would call it non-dilutive funding. So when it’s a when it’s building a first-of-a-kind plant, I kind of get it. But um when it is a company, you said you’ll fund a piece of research. What about could that be a um you know, a trial program, a roll out of a you know, a pilot or something like that? It could be. But but it wouldn’t be if somebody just says, “You know, I’m building this business. We’re doing, I don’t know, um commercial rooftops and I just need core funding. I’m trying to raise 10 million Australian dollars to go and build a company.” You would say, “Well, I’ll fund some of your rooftops, but I won’t fund the company.” Is that right? Well, we would say something like, “Okay, you you’ve got a business here doing rooftop solar. What’s the innovative thing you’re trying to do?” And they might say, “Well, we’re trying to capture the heat from the back of the panel, for example. We want to put a heat sink and you know, that’s experimental and it’s unproven.” We would say, “Great. That sounds like a good idea. Let’s go and design or you design the experiment to to do the research and development for this new thing that bolts onto your core business. So, we’re looking for innovation. We’re not looking just to fund that company’s general journey. Okay, so you’re not funding That’s for the venture market. And for and for debt and for other kinds of equity and debt. Okay. But it’s been it’s very interesting cuz I’m on I’ve been quite a few times on the other side trying to raise money and you know, most recently in my trucking company PragmaCharge, um you know, non-dilutive funding is wonderful as long as it isn’t too complicated. So, I hope you’re not complicated. I think we’ll have to come back to that. Um So, do you because everything is innovative and the companies or projects are learning, um do you insist that that learning do you help do you say, “Well, why would we fund you? Okay, it is research. What are you researching?” Help them with the protocol. Do they then have to publish that? Yes. Yes. So, one of our core functions, in addition to providing funding, is also knowledge sharing. So, we enforce that almost on every project that that project has to open up as much as possible. We respect IP. We’re never looking to hold IP ourselves, nor are we looking to restrict how people use their IP. But we’re always looking for how that project can inform the general industry and the general population about what they learn and do. We don’t want to be funding the same mistakes over and over or even when when there’s a success, we want that to proliferate. And so, a core part of what we do is knowledge sharing. In addition to that, we bring the industry together. So, we’re often bringing um if it’s EV charging we’ve done, we might bring 10 or 12 of our projects who’ve done EV charging in different ways together in a room for 2 days, and they get to talk to each other and open up about what they’ve done. That’s also a core part of the knowledge sharing work that we do. And then taking insights back to government about sharing policy ideas, not formulating policy, but saying uh you know, like for example, right now we’ve got an issue with um heavy vehicle electrification. We’ve got a front axle weight limit threshold, which is breached by electric vehicles, and we’re taking that back to government and the department saying, “Look, we need to adjust this regulation to allow these heavy vehicles to compete on a on a even footing with the So, you’re doing some of the blocking and tackling tackling using presumably you got a fantastic network at this point. I mean, 10 billion US, 14 billion Australian dollars. That’s a lot of money. Um, has it is it because it’s been going 14 years you don’t notice that it’s a lot of money or or is it it feels like a lot of it for this sort of thing it’s a lot of money. journey. So, we started with $3 billion when we were first born in 2012. We lost a billion through some dark periods of time through government processes the time in around 2014. sort of claw claw back clawed back because we had a coalition government that didn’t want to fund this kind of work and and uh we were then a $2 billion agency. And in 2020, the the coalition government actually to their credit refunded Arena with another $2 billion. And the labor government in the last four years has added $10 billion to to all of that. So, it has grown rapidly recently. And the government has given us many many programs of work thematically themed thematically designed programs of work with money attached to them and given it to Arena to to do because of we’ve been set up and operating successfully for so long. We’ll get on to some of those because I know that some of those were was the hydrogen I’ve used that word. I I I lose hydrogen bingo I have to buy the drinks. Hydrogen head start and then you’ve got SAF funding. You’ve got so you’ve got core funding and then you’ve got these programs. But before we go anywhere near that, I want to use I want to do one of I want to do our first let’s learn about Australia time out. Yeah. Um the coalition uh and you cuz you said that there was the change of government. Um, the 88% who are not Australian might not know coalition between who and what and and how does politics sort of The coalition um is essentially the Liberal National Coalition which is a center right of politics in Australia. And the labor government is the center left of politics here. We also have a further right, which is a group called One Nation, and further left being the Greens. Generally, well, in fact, in all times in Australia’s history, um a government has been won and governed by the center right or the center left. And right now we’re in a center left environment. As I said, in the 2014 period when Arena was uh and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation was being looked we we looked to abolish those two agencies. That was under a coalition center right government. Uh the Labor government came into power 4 years ago and has been scaling up its work in renewable energy in that time. And um I’m not sure if you know, I think you may know, I was on the UK Board of Trade uh with a certain Tony Abbott. And so I’ve got actually uh you know, spent quite [clears throat] a bit of time with him. And you know, it’s very interesting because in some issues he and I very closely aligned. I mean, real belief in trade and wanted to get, you know, low costs for uh the the general public and for I think hard I think it’s called the sensible center. Actually, I’ve used that in my pragmatic climate reset. Turns out that that phrase was invented by Tony. And obviously in other areas um like uh climate and the urgency and how much we should spend on it and how we should and governance in that area, we’re not quite aligned. But I wanted to just take that opportunity and we’ll do that a couple of times as we go through um to make sure that our non-Australians are getting a little bit of a cultural or economic tour of Australia. So you’ve got the the core funding, you’ve got the the the top-up funding. Yeah. Um and I suppose we will need to talk about that top-up funding, the hydrogen, because just recently some of that was also clawed back, but clawed back under the current government. In other words, there was a a decision I think you you had 4 billion of Yeah. hydrogen headstart money, and that has been cut, but some other money has been given to you. So talk us through that. So just if if you talk about hydrogen, for example, so when the the Inflation Reduction Act came into being in the US. uh like many uh other economies, said, “What’s our response to to something similar?” And so, Hydrogen Headstart was born out of a response to that. It was firstly a $2 billion pool of funding that then got expanded to $4 billion, essentially for Arena to pick hydrogen projects to fund to provide production credit subsidies. So, there’s no risk to the taxpayer until the project is built and hydrogen is being produced and used, and then we provide a credit. And we’ve been running that process for a number of years now. We’ve actually just given the authority to seven further projects in the second round of funding to come forward for their full applications later this year. Now, as you rightly said, we just lost a billion dollars of that four in the last budget cycle. And really, ultimately, this is a question of reprioritizing. Hydrogen had its hype cycle. It hasn’t performed as people wanted and expected, and so there’s been a moderation of ambition, if you like, in terms of the funding put forward. We still think that there’s some good projects there, and we think we can do a good job with this remaining billion that we have. But at the same in the same breath, we had the Hummis crisis, and the government has scaled up its ambitions into low-carbon liquid fuels, diesel, and sustainable aviation fuel most notably. So, we actually got 1.1 billion given back to us to do sustainable aviation fuel. So, it’s swings and roundabouts for Arena on some of these budget programs over time. I’m reminded of the quotation from a US Senator. I’m not quite sure which one it was, who said, you know, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real money.” Um but because you you have just on hydrogen, I should reveal my you know, just connection just in case you know, anybody afterwards finds out and says, “Well, why didn’t you mention that?” I’m an advisor to a um to an Arena-supported company, which is Hysata. Um I hope it’s going to produce the cheapest and best electrolyzers in the world. And also, Um, Infrastructure Partners is one of the leadership circle members supporting cleaning up and they are one of the consortium that one of the winners So Copenhagen yet built, but they have won the hydrogen head start one. that that was our first project [clears throat] that we announced, the Murchison project in Western Australia, which is it’s a $16 billion project of which we’re funding about $800 million through production credits once it’s built and running and they bid into hydrogen head start one and we we look forward to their getting to FID and and production. You know, I don’t want to offend a sponsor or a guest by saying perhaps we might say if it gets funded. I mean if if because the the economics still have to pan out and we don’t need to go into huge detail about about hydrogen economics here. But but but just to complete on that though, you had you have funded other projects in the past, so you’ve you’ve actually you know, not just High Saddle, but there is a there is a list of other you know, hydrogen or No, we’ve we’ve we’ve we’ve funded about 60 hydrogen projects of various kinds it’s $75 million or $100 or something like that. It’s about $300 million of projects across the hydrogen spectrum. Um, including, you know, scaled up 10 MW electrolyzers. This is excluding the the very large 1.5 GW [clears throat] electrolyzer that is the Copenhagen project. But we’ve been doing this since 2017 off the back of what was a very hyped up as we know, you know, mindset around hydrogen arena. Uh, I think we always had a middle of the ground middle of the road kind of mentality to it that we thought it would be needed for very hard to abate sectors and and decarbonization into industry. of the the top of my hydrogen ladder, yeah. Exactly. So so we’d never we’ve never really funded uh, road transport in hydrogen, but we have funded a gas injection project because we just wanted to make some hydrogen to get our hands dirty. We wouldn’t probably wouldn’t be doing that again. We’re now looking to the much heavier industry uh, space is especially the green steel opportunity is where we hope hydrogen plays a significant role. I’ve called blending of hydrogen into the gas network the stupidest idea from stupidville because you take this incredibly difficult expensive thing that you’ve made and you then reduce it to the value of its heat content only instantly. So you instantly essentially destroy its value. So I’m not a big fan. No. So we think that the most promising use for hydrogen especially in an Australian context will be green iron production in the future. And so green iron will Indeed steel making as we know represents roughly about 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions on a CO2 equivalent basis both the upstream methane leakage as well as the actual energy CO2 emissions from the energy side and interestingly and the problem that we’re trying to tackle here at Arena in Australia is using our very low lower grade Pilbara ores which don’t play nicely in a direct reduced iron process. So we need to find a new kind of process to upgrade those ores to be ready for an electric arc furnace and we’re working with some of the very biggest steel producers and miners and and and industrial companies to prove out how we can use the Pilbara hematite ores in a green iron process and we think the most likely pathway is using hydrogen of which we think green hydrogen should be the way to go if we can get the costs low enough and you know we’re both supporters and you’re a supporter and we’re an investor if you like in High Sider. It’s the likes of that kind of innovation that has to be has to be there for hydrogen to play a meaningful role. Green steel that’s one of the reasons I’m excited about being here in Australia because you can do as much desk research. Okay it’s not I’m not doing perhaps I’m still in the sense this is desk research because I’m not out there in a mine or in a steel plant but I’m you know I’m looking forward to getting really under the hood of green steel talking to Ross Garnaut the Superpower Institute and so on because there’s a lot that you have to believe in order for it to happen. But it feels to me like figuring out how to use those Pilbara ores for DRI, because it could be green green hydrogen DRI, it could be blue hydrogen DRI, it could be natural gas DRI, it could be in China, Yeah. It could be in Australia. Yeah. But you got to figure it out because that’s such a vital vital resource for Australia. it’s a two-step process for Australia. The first is to prove that those ores can be produced in a low carbon way. Whether Australia gets to then do the refining in Australia is a secondary question because you have to believe a few more things for Australia to be the one who both mines the ores as well as refines them into pure iron. Now, that’s uh obviously requires huge capex of both the uh midstream process of the green iron uh production plant as well as the huge build-out of solar and wind. I believe Australia can do the solar and wind very cheaply. I’m not yet convinced we can do the midstream [clears throat] as cheaply because we’re a expensive country to do business in. It might be that we prove the technology in Australia through the work we’re doing, but that the likes of China or the Middle East take those ores and produce them in a low carbon way. That is an open question. In fact, the whole thing is an open question, but we’ve separated our thinking into those two parts. First, can we do something with the ores in a in a low carbon way, and secondly, where might that happen? Who can best build those facilities to make that happen? Yes, I’m very struck by uh the fact that right now you take Australian ore and Australian coking coal, Yep. move them to China, and they combine or they they they process them there. Correct. So, um it feels to me like the only reason to take not to take Australian ore, but to process it in Australia is if your renewable electricity is cheaper than China’s. And I guess my worry would be that their electricity would be cheaper than Australia’s. So that Which means the ore would still get be exported. I’m not worried about that. I I actually do believe that with the work that I’m seeing happening in Australia, and a lot of it is funded by Arena, that we will get our electricity core electricity price from solar down below $20 Australian a megawatt hour. So $15 US. I I think we can do that. And you have a program. I mean, you know, you don’t think it in an abstract way. You think it as the guy who’s got 10 billion uh 14 billion Australian dollars to deploy against things like that. So we’ve put exactly on that topic. Well, we’ve got a program which we call mega demand, which was a slogan just to say what we want is large loads that are ready to go so we can experiment with new solar technology. We’ve provided $45 million envelope to Fortescue to allocate 500 megawatts of their 1.5 gigawatt solar portfolio that they’re building out in the Pilbara to essentially experiment with new ways of deploying solar with robotics, AI, prefabrication. We had a global challenge that we launched a few years ago. We had 117 applications to come and do work in Australia. We’re now deploying these technologies with Fortescue with our funding help. We’re looking to replicate this model with two or three other EPCs and developers. So we will have Australia will be a giant experimental sandbox of solar innovation through the work that we’re putting forward. And I believe that through the work that the likes of UNSW and and the other universities are doing on cell efficiencies, we’ll get that way up. And the work that we’re doing with Fortescue and the others in this experimentation in place in Australia, we’ll get the the cost of deployment way down, and we’ll have electrons at $20 a megawatt hour. Now, we have a rule on cleaning up. You use an acronym UNSW. You used SAF before, and I didn’t call you out on it. Did I use SAF? I’m going to apologize to the audience for breaking my own rules. Although, I am the only person who’s allowed to break my rules, but no. Um so, SAF, sustainable aviation fuel. UNSW, the University of New South Wales. Now, I let’s just go off on a on a little bit of an uh of a diversion there because that is Professor Martin Green’s university and uh he’s a legendary figure uh whom I will be speaking to on this trip and um um what what is the setup? Why UNSW, University of New South Wales? What’s so special about them? I won’t steal Martin’s thunder cuz he’ll tell the whole story, but essentially Martin and his team were the inventors of the PERC cell, the passivated emitter rear contact conductor cell, which is which was up to about 85% of world solar production. The technology’s moving to TOPCon, which is also a UNSW invention. So, that core technology invented in Australia is in the majority of the world’s solar modules today. Now, we Martin will tell you that there’s a theoretical limit of a single cell silicon at 29% efficiency. We’re We have modules today at about 25, 26%. So, we’re approaching theoretical maximum for the current technology set. Through the work that we’re doing and others around the world and and Martin and his team, we’re looking at tandem cells, so stacking technologies on top of silicon. We have a target of getting above 30% efficiency efficiency cheekily chosen by us because you can’t do it unless you can unlock tandems. But, if you talk to the researchers, they believe they can get to 40% by 2040 and and in that kind of time frame. And we shouldn’t underestimate what efficiency does for the economics of solar. Uh it it is an unlock for the cost right throughout the supply chain downstream of the module. And so, we’re working UNSW and other universities that we’re funding are working hard on the efficiency angle and Fortescue and the others with our help are working very hard on the deployment angle. And these two things should come together with within the next few years to prove we can manufacture electrons cleanly in Australia at under $20 a megawatt hour, which is the first ingredient you need to give yourself a chance of green steel. But the other part of it is the capital expenditure on the actual plant, the green steel plant, which we have to make sure we’re cost-competitive globally, otherwise we will have wasted our cost advantage on the electrons because we haven’t got an efficient plant to produce the green iron. Now, my theory, or my thesis, my thesis, I think it is, is that probably blue hydrogen remains cheaper than green. And the reason is just the amount of energy you have to put in to um the sector, you know, to to split water back into the products of that you’re you’re well, you’re you’re turning it back into a the products of combustion back into a fuel, essentially. Um and it gets harder when it becomes um an e-fuel, so an an e-SAF, and pure cuz then you have to collect the carbon as well as doing that to the water and then combine them and so on and so on. But when it just comes to the hydrogen piece, I’ve reached the point um by looking at lots and lots of different uh cases and and diving deep into the um the numbers, where I think that just blue blue, and it can be done right, has to be done right, caveat, um is going to stay cheaper than green. Now, if that’s right, is there a another agency can you also research blue hydrogen, or do you have to say no, that’s not renewable energy, and therefore we’re going to let our colleagues over in the Australian, I don’t know, non-renewable energy agency, or somebody else research blue hydrogen in cuz it’s a you you should have two horses in this race as Australia, right? Yeah. So, look, it’s not it’s actually an open question. We’re actually looking at turquoise hydrogen as an agency right now, which is methane pyrolysis, so the uh decomposition of methane in the absence of oxygen, we would be interested in in looking at that technology. We just need to figure out if it’s eligible under our act, and we’re doing that work right now. But but that would be potentially turquoise. That is That’s taking biomass and pyrolyzing it. So, it kind of counts It could count as renewable. we funded a company called Hysata, which is a publicly listed company, to do a pyrolysis project using waste biogas. Yeah. That’s not scaleable. So, if you’re going to do green steel, you need massive volumes of input energy feedstock. And so, we would need to be using fossil fossil methane at some point in that transition. So, uh I think there’s an argument to say we’re supporting a downstream electrification opportunity and displacing fossil fuels downstream. We’re yet to make that argument with our our lawyers, but if we can, then and that’s eligible, then we’d we’d love to support these kinds of projects that look at alternative pathways. But it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of an in-pretzelment because you could take the same natural gas, the same fossil gas, and you could make that hydrogen using uh steam methane reforming with carbon capture. Correct. Uh which would be in a sense just you know, just make the hydrogen. Um So, pyrolysis is a process you think you might be able to make work through your mandate. Yes. But but the steam methane reforming not. And of course, you know, th- those are just they’re just different chemical processes for that get to the same thing, which is clean hydrogen. Yeah. Well, we’ll see. Maybe we can, and if I need you as an expert with this one day, I’ll call you up. [laughter] I It’s It’s It’s just sometimes you know, you get captured by the name because you’ve got the word renewable and it because of the way that it’s set up. And and look, ultimately, um part of our objectives in their inner act is lowering Australia’s emissions. So, I think that we need to bring any toolkit we can to that. Right now, the toolkit is probably mentally slightly constrained around the verticals, but I think a more expensive view about downstream electrification could help us. Cleaning Up is proud to be supported by its leadership circle. The members are Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arab, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Signum Capital, Davidson Kempner, Ecopragma Capital, EDP, Euroelectric, The Gilardoni Foundation, KKR, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL, and Wärtsilä. For more information on the leadership circle, please visit cleaningup.live. To keep up with all that’s going on in the Cleaning Up universe, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter. Written and edited by my long-time New Energy Finance and Bloomberg NEF colleague, Angus Mcrone, it comes out every second Monday. Angus provides the latest on the episodes we’re recording, the events we’re hosting, stories we’re watching, and what Bryony Worthington and I are up to. To sign up for the Cleaning Up newsletter, visit cleaningup.live. Let me come back to Professor Martin Green’s enormous success over decades and decades. Um I’m going to assume Shall I assume or do you want to say you you have funded pieces of that activity? Yes. Yes. So so we we have. Yeah, I mean, when when Arena was born in 2012, there was already a funding program going which we inherited called the Australian Solar Institute. We reformulated that formulated that as the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. A-Cap is the name of the program, and we have provided more than a hundred million dollars of funding to that program over the last 12, 14 years and we continue to support that program of research which funds post doctoral research and and heads towards this greater than 30% efficiency goal that is so important. And has technology from that program already made its way into It’s in the Chinese modules that we’re all buying. Yeah. Great. That you you fell into my trap beautifully. How much money did Australia make from that? Because you give non-diluted funding. In other words, you give the money away and then the technology has ended up in China Chinese modules. How how has Australia benefited from that? Well, not directly through any license fees and when you ask Martin he’ll tell you that the the the technology took too long to get to the point where it was commercialized or commercializable, the [clears throat] patent would have expired. So, it wasn’t able to be protected and in fact I would argue and I do that having this proliferate in the way has is the real benefit for the globe, for Australia from a climate perspective as well, but because it’s been so open source if you like, it’s being able to being taken up by Chinese manufacturers to produce it at very low cost, in fact below cost if you want to call it that and we’ve all benefited from extremely low module prices and the decarbonization benefit that we all get through that technology. Could you be accused of being a bit naive because you could say, well, we’ve got this fantastic technologies because you’re presumably hoping that that’s not the the the stuff that the patents expired or it was it was too long in the tooth to capture and it’s before your time and fine. But if there’s technologies that are coming out of the Australian advanced what was it called? A-Cap. A-Cap. The center for advanced Center for advanced photovoltaics. If there’s stuff coming out of that now which is useful, could you not parlay that into I don’t know, investments by the Chinese uh manufacturers to say, well, you can have this We figured out how to do uh the tandem cells, but you’re going to have to put at least X% of your production, or you’re going to have to invest at least a billion if you want to get that technology, or or or license it. We We want a certain percentage of the revenue from that set of cells.” Cuz it feels very nice to be altruistic, but um So so the easy answer is it’s not IRENA’s job to try and enforce or protect or create IP. That’s the job of the companies we support. If they can do that, good on them, and they and they’re welcome to. We will support that, obviously. As I said, we have a knowledge sharing mandate, so it can’t be totally secret. You need to show some parts of your uh experiment or the results of your experiments to the general public, but if people want to protect their IP, we respect that, and that’s really up to the commercial player to do that. We had on the show quite a long time ago Mariana Mazzucato, who wrote the book about the entrepreneurial state and tracked where all these technologies come from that went into, for instance, uh the iPhone. And uh her thesis is, “Well, they many many many of them come out of state-funded research, of which, you know, yours would be an exa- IRENA would be an example, and um and these companies become enormously valuable, and the state gets nothing, and she’s offended by that, and uh thinks that that the state should always end up owning.” Now, I have an issue with the thesis because I think it ends up being a tax on technology, effectively. Your most dynamic companies end up part state-owned, and that’s not going to make them speed up, is it? Well, what I would say is that it’s critically important that the technologies that are invented here, even if the IP is not commercialized at that level, that we have the access to that technology to deploy scalably in Australia. And fortunately, Australia doesn’t have tariffs with this technology, so we are bringing in the technology at cost or below cost if other governments are subsidizing their manufacturing, which is happening. We are the beneficiaries of this extremely cost-competitive equipment that is outcompeting coal and gas on our grids. And this is a it’s a real success story for Australia right now. So you you you want to have access to it, and of course the Chinese solar manufacturers will say, “Fine, get your checkbook out.” Yeah. So that’s access, and you’re saying that’s okay. It’s a global market, and we’re buying panels at at the low at the low cost in some cases. Let’s let’s look at some of the other areas in which you operate. Um um cuz you’ve got we’ve talked a bit about steel. Uh we’ve talked a bit about solar. You’ve also got um batteries and grid, which is now appears to be the big success story. So uh what’s happening in batteries? Just let’s use this moment to kind of educate the world on Australia’s um Well, you’ve got the solar rooftops, which I think everybody pretty much knows, more than 30% of homes. South Australia, cheap uh 75% um renewables and so on. But batteries are the new big thing. Can you just educate our audience? So we we’ve got three scales of batteries happening on the grid right now. We’ve got home batteries, which were going slowly for a while, and the government put in a program to provide about a 30% off the top of the cost stack uh rebate for putting home batteries in. That has created a huge demand from consumers. The same consumers who put rooftop solar in are now interested in batteries, and we’ve had about 350,000 batteries go in under this cheaper home batteries program over the last year. That’s in the context of 10 million Australian households. So 3 and 1/2% of all Australian households have bought a battery for their home in the past year. I’m pretty sure that Australia’s the number one battery market per capita on the planet by a long way. You add to that the enormous strides that have been taken in the large-scale grid batteries, of which the uh Neoen uh big battery in South Australia, which was a bet between Elon Musk and one of our billionaires, Mike Cannon-Brookes, back in 2016, was the notable start of that. that’s one of the things our non-Australian audience will have heard about. You build it in 90 days or it’s free, I think was the bet and and uh Elon Musk built it within 90 days and uh and um it’s gone on to to to prove the business case and the fit and the physics of that battery supporting the grid in in voltage and frequency services. I actually found recently uh when I was researching the for this Australia trip, I found the tweet that I sent on I’m going to say 10th of March 2017 or something very when that bet was made and I I was very excited. I was on Twitter still and I said that this was Elon Musk and Mike Cannon-Brookes have just called the bluff of the renewable energy causes blackout and then I’m not going to repeat the word I used. Yes, okay. Well, It wasn’t actually very actually I will repeat it. Whiners is what I called them. [laughter] So it wasn’t too bad, but I found that and that was a that was an iconic moment that most people will might remember. So those So those So that was then. These large-scale batteries are going gangbusters. I don’t know if that’s an international term, it’s an Australian term, it’s going incredibly well um uh in in Australia. I think Australia is now in absolute terms the third largest battery market in the world behind China and the US. For a country of 28 million to be the third in the world is is significant. Our per capita battery installations are I think almost double the next uh best in line. So the and uh if I could just say ARENA’s role in the large-scale batteries, our sort of uh value add has been we ran a program in 2022 to provide uh we put $100 million down, the government matched us with another 60, gave us another 60. So we said, “Here’s $160 million for for anyone who will for their next batteries turn on grid-forming capabilities, not just grid-following.” Everyone was putting in batteries in grid-following mode because it was the cheapest and easiest pathway into the market and we said, “Hang on a second. Let’s do the teaching moment. What does that mean, Grid following, grid forming? So, the the grid operates in Australia at 50 h. Uh that that frequency um signal is provided naturally by spinning mass in in coal and and gas. So, everybody can just assume that the signal is there. signal is there and it’s modulated through inertia on those big spinning masses. In a world where you take out coal and gas and you want just inverter-based technology on the grid, you need something that can provide the signal to all the other devices to produce energy at 50 h. And this can be done digitally through the inverter technology. It requires some upgrades to the software and to the hardware. Yeah. That wasn’t happening. Okay. So, that’s So, we we essentially provided the uh auction a reverse auction to the market to say bid for our money and in turn you must enable grid forming mode for your batteries. And we had eight projects sign up of which five are probably going to get built and they have proven the business case for grid forming technology and and that is what will support the grid when we start really removing uh coal and and gas in substantial numbers from from the grid. Right, because the the context here is as an example, South Australia um 75% renewable electricity behind only Denmark. Denmark is somewhere around 90%. But of course Denmark is connected to all of its neighbors. So, it doesn’t it it will almost always you would hope always be able to rely on its neighbors for backup and uh grid forming etc. etc. South Australia very famously does not have very thick connections to its neighbors. Famously I say because in 2016 uh there was a What was it? Three tornadoes and it they took out some pylons and South Australia went went black. went went black. Went dark. Right. And um uh yeah, so we’re building another interconnector this time to New South Wales. That’s not yet live, but that’ll support that. But yeah, South Australia that’s not Arena. No, sorry. I said the royal the royal we, Australia’s. [laughter] The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is is helping with finance and and the transmission companies and the government are helping with funding as well. So, that we’re strengthening our grid right now through transmission lines. It is slow going like it is Nevertheless, everywhere in the world. As you get to these very high penetrations of renewables, um, you don’t want a situation like, um, Spain and Portugal Yeah. where the the grid was unstable. Actually, not caused by renewables, but just caused by the failure to plan. It wasn’t an explicit plan and they were may or may not They did not think about how many grid-forming services, harmonic management, and voltages and frequencies and so on. So, you have a program You mentioned the 600 60, but are you Are you doing more in that area? So, we’re doing a little bit more, but basically, you know, the way Arena works and part of our success is when we see a problem and we solve it with money and a program, we like to think we can just step away and the market takes over from there. So, right now, the vast majority of big batteries going into the market and there and there are a lot of them are all going in with grid-forming capabilities. There’s only one very small slice of the grid-forming technology set that’s left to be proven and we’re working with researchers to help test that in the lab to to to ensure that, uh, the grid can actually run with no kinetic inertia. When you say what one subset, is that a a an industrial sector? Is that one type of problem that happens on the grid? Protection grade fault current is not solved. Fault current. And so, we’re working with researchers again from, um, you know, the universities we’ve mentioned before to test the hardware in real, uh, environments uh, to to see if they perform as expected before the grid operator, the Australian Energy Market Operator or AEMO, will trust that these devices can do the job required. So, [snorts] I think we’ve touched on most of your programs. Are there any we’ve missed? Um, we’ve done the solar rooftops, we’ve done the batteries in the grid, we’ve done green iron and steel. We’ve not actually we’ve not talked a lot about transportation. We’ve talked a little bit about SAF, sustainable aviation fuel, and you’ve got some new money for that. wanted to mention one more kind of battery. I said there were three types of batteries. I had the home batteries, we had the very large scale batteries, and then Arena’s been running a program called the community battery program, which is really cool at low voltage but mid scale batteries. So, these are the neighborhood things you might see on the street corners and in parks. Look like, you know, sort of shipping containers. Um and and the the government gave us a pool of funding at when it came to government 4 years ago to do these community batteries, and we were asked to do 350 of them around Australia. I think it’s been enormously successful, and it’s proven that there’s a role to play for stabilizing the grid at the distribution level with these larger batteries that are more cost effective per unit energy, as well as the portfolio effect that not every home is needing to use the battery at the same time. So, you can actually put in fewer of them than were you to distribute that in people’s garages. Now, all of that is happening. I don’t think it’s kind of one or the other. We know that people are buying home batteries, but these community level batteries are really interesting technology set because there’s so much capacity in the distribution grid to host more solar if we can move those electrons and and get the grid stabilized locally rather than uh at people’s homes or or on the And those community level batteries are very interesting because um you’ve got to hang them on the distribution grid. So, does that mean you let the distribution grid operator have those batteries? Cuz right now, they’re not allowed to. Yeah, well, now we’re getting into a regulatory minefield, but yes, typically the distribution companies are not allowed to play in the wholesale energy market, so they have to sort of um do a deal with a retailer who has who may market facing, who can trade that battery into the market for their revenue stack, and reserve some of the capacity for network services. So, they’ve got a dual use, but it requires two parties to be involved in that battery. So, I’m going to be speaking with Mark England, the CEO of Ausgrid, which is the distribution network DN What is it? DNSP distribution network service provider in the Sydney area and going up, I think, to the Hunter Valley. to Wollongong. And down down to Wollongong. So, that’s going to be an interesting conversation. Transport though, transport more broadly, what do you How do you think about that? And how do you deploy your funds? What have you got? So, we’ve been doing work for a number of years in In the beginning, it was charging networks for passenger vehicles. We’ve moved into charging hubs for the likes of Ubers and the Splinz and and the the car shares of the world. We’ve done heavy vehicle charging stations. The like I know you get One of my favorite areas because that’s what I’m doing in Europe So, we’ve done a bit of all of that. We’ve done some very interesting technology to create backbones for for buildings. So, people who have got their own off-street parking have an easy time of it because you can get a a very cheap EV charger. People who live in strata apartments or in a communal apartments have a harder time. So, we’ve done some great work putting in level one charging even for those for those buildings. So, that’s just your standard plug socket but but having a billing system to to to enable the the transfer of funds. And [clears throat] probably the most exciting thing we’re doing in the transport space right now is in vehicle-to-grid. So, in fact, on Friday, I was at um an announcement with Amber, one of our innovative electricity retailers, launching program that we’ve funded for $13.6 million to fund 1,000 EVs with vehicle-to-grid technology, which really right now the barrier is that the OEMs, the the equipment manufacturers, the vehicle manufacturers Original equipment manufacturers, if we stick to the rules of the acronyms. and stay away from the acronyms, but the manufacturers of the vehicles are being quite conservative right now about the battery warranty in the event that they used for home energy. And and so they should be. That’s an expensive piece of equipment. But we’ve got BYD are very forward-leaning and have have a have essentially warranted their their vehicles for this program. We’re looking to expand to other vehicle manufacturers to test their technology at people’s homes around Australia in this thousand vehicle program. So That’s really interesting and and I’m just um congratulations in a sense because there’s an issue that I had not thought about on I hadn’t thought at all about, which is of course if a vehicle manufacturer says, “Well, you’ve got a warranty which is I don’t know 80,000 mi.” Well, if you use the battery and you do zero miles because it’s actually powering your home um in some way, then um how do what do you with the warranty? And you it should obviously the warranty needs to be turned into cycles or something else. Something, yeah. I imagine there’s a a way to solve that, but first is to test what is this use of having a battery used in the home actually doing to the to the chemistry of this battery. And the early evidence is and one of the this comes from one of the Amber CEO, so take it from where it comes, but it may actually be helping the life of the battery by cycling it short amounts actually improves the quality of the battery over time. So if that’s true, then we should all be So car owners should be paying to allow people to improve their batteries. I mean, it’s great because if it’s going to work anywhere, it would be in a country that’s got 30 30 whatever it is now over 30% solar roofs. And the home batteries, they’re typically a lot smaller. The car batteries are 60 kWh, 80 kWh. So they they it could be very interesting. Can I though challenge you because you said we did some great work on this, we did great work on that in transportation, but you know, for all that Australia is the the world champion in solar roofs and and on homes and also now approaching that on batteries and maybe maybe vehicle-to-grid will just be the answer to the question. But you’re quite um far behind Mhm. on electrification of transportation. Yeah. 10% before before the Homer’s crisis. I think it was 10%. it was 10, now it’s about 15%. Huge success, 15%. But that’s below the world average average. 50% up on before Homer’s, 15. But still behind the world average. So one one thing is interesting about Australia, and you’ll know the stats about the rest of the world better than me, but we also have a a huge volume of plug-in hybrids. So people have been choosing plug-in hybrids in Australia because it gives them more confidence about the distances we travel. We’ve obviously got a very sparse population, but but large land mass. And so I think that um the distance is on people’s minds when choosing to buy a vehicle. And we have I think we’ve got 22% penetration of both pure EVs and hybrids and plug-in hybrids today. The Some people in the audience, whether they’re in Australia or not in Australia, will be shouting at their phones or their or their computers right now going, “Yeah, but plug-in hybrids are never plugged in or the very rare.” So the the the um the effectiveness of a plug-in hybrid is is heavily contested. And you’ve probably funded the research that has proved that. Well well actually or disproved actually the proof of that came through the Homer’s crisis because the EV charging networks were telling me within a matter of days after the Homer’s after the US and Israel attacked Iran, that um their charging utilization went through the roof, back to Christmas levels when everyone’s, you know, moving around. And this and the conclusion they reached is that people with plug-in hybrids were suddenly not filling the vehicles up with petrol or diesel, but actually getting a charge from these public charging networks. So it shows you that people with plug-in hybrids were doing exactly what you said and not using them as EVs, but the fuel crisis caused them to switch fuel essentially in their vehicle to And having been Having been on the board of Transport for London, I know that some proportion of those, having figured out where their local charger is or to just gotten used to using it, they will stick. And and I like the idea that um that the plug-in the plug-in uh uh EV is a resilience solution. Because even if you don’t use it, you could use it. Yeah. Uh and so uh that’s an interesting spin. But I I rest my case though that I’m not my right I stick with my point that it’s still Australia’s got a long way to go. Maybe vehicle to grid will help, but it won’t be in the next few years. And for and for quite a while we didn’t have a supportive policy environment to cause people to want to put EVs in. This government has put in what’s called the new vehicle efficiency standards which creates a signal to have the vehicle manufacturers put more EVs into their sales channels. So that that’s that’s going to help as well. But you also have you are world champions in one other area which is diesel subsidies. In fact, diesel use per capita where Australia is just at the right on the on the on the far right of the Yeah. chart, the place that you don’t want to be, the far right. Um and um Yeah, no so diesel diesel is a is is an issue that needs to be solved and obviously to sell against and particularly in larger vehicles where they get those rebates. Yeah, so the rebates are there for the off-road vehicles and the miners. Essentially, there’s a tax on is an excise tax on petrol and diesel and then it’s rebated to the miners and the off-road people. In theory because they don’t use the roads, but Interestingly enough, I looked into this. It’s in theory because the the diesel tax or the fuel tax was used to fund the roads and therefore people who don’t use the roads get an obvious way out, but actually that system stopped in 1992. So the fuel tax is general taxation and you got a whole bunch of users who don’t put money into that pot. So I know that there’s a big discussion about reducing the amounts and it is heavily contested. I’ve picked that up already. Yeah, and and obviously the thing that’s gaining attention is whether to switch to a road user charge for kilometers traveled. And uh that’s being uh debated and put forward by various states in Australia. It’s quite a contested space right now, but that’ll play out over time. So, Arena founded 14 years ago, 2008. 2012. Oh, 2000 Sorry, 2012. 2012. 14 years ago. I got that bit right. I didn’t get I didn’t do my maths right. So, 14 years in operation. You Here I know where I got the eight from. I see. I can see you’re after eight years. You’ve been CEO for eight years. You must have a long, long list of fabulous successes having um put 10 billion US, 14 billion Australian. Well, you’ve either put it to work or you’ve got it in your back pocket. Long list of successes. Um what are your top few? Well, um you’re asking me to choose my favorite children now, which um uh depends on what day of the week it is, but How many children have you got, Darren? Well, 800, Darren. 843. [laughter] Uh look, I would say the work we did in that grid-forming inverter space in 2022 was a a standout success. That’s caused the market to adopt this technology that’s in exactly the kind of model that we we want to see at Arena. In terms of where I’m most pleased about right now, I think the vehicle-to-grid work we’re doing is is world-leading. I don’t see other parts of the world um putting forward the the correct vehicle-to-grid standards the way we’re doing it in Australia right now, and I think that this program will be a huge success. I’m very fond of that program. But equally, I’m very fond of the work we’re doing with solar. I I am a true believer that Australia will be able to produce solar energy at a levelized cost of energy of $20 or under a megawatt hour. And the work we’re doing with Fortescue in the Pilbara, when I see Fortescue, who are very ambitious uh miner, very hard-charging, surprised on the positive on the upside by the work that we’re doing together, it shows me that we’re on the right track with that kind of technology. So, I would highlight for my legacy, if you want to call it that the future being that ultra-low cost solar goal of $20 a megawatt hour is the thing that I think stands to not only change the dynamics for Australia and give us an opportunity to build an export market that we stand to lose over time through the decarbonization agenda of that that we’re all on but to replace that with green iron green steel even one day maybe green commodities of green refined commodities through the through the use of this very low cost solar opportunity. But you switched from favorite past successes to hopes for the future which So let me pull you back to past successes. Any others that you can I grid forming batteries forming batteries. I think the work that we’re doing is presumably the the solar to date the the Martin Green and others Yeah, look I mean I think that support is critical and so fundamental. So so I’m very proud of that success. I’m proud of the success we’ve had in heavy industry. We’re doing a lot of great work in thermal energy storage. So storing heat in industry to replace gas and coal use which is such a huge part of Australia’s emissions profile. one of I think it’s one of your I don’t know if it’s a graduate or one of your proteges. I’m not sure if past or present doing solar not so sorry not solar doing thermal batteries. Thermal batteries, yeah. Um I think it’s called MGA So we’re we’re very proud of the work that MGA is doing up in Newcastle. Essentially storing heat in in aluminum surrounded by graphite. So it’s a it’s a heat transfer technology that that is quite quite unique. So this kind of technology this heat heat technology is another great success of Arena’s. We’ve funded three or four of these and we think it’s got a huge role to play in industry. So Newcastle is North north of Australia. North of Sydney sorry north of Sydney. Yes. because I’m I’m not due to visit them this trip but maybe next trip because I’m really intrigued by that technology. One thing that Um, want to ask you about which is let’s go back to your model of how you give grants and how you manage um, the non-diluted funding. Um, You have much mentioned there’s a couple of startups. We’ve talked a little bit. We mentioned I saw too. We mentioned MGA. But you give an awful lot of money to some very big companies. I mean Fortescue doesn’t really need your help. Um, and I know it’s it’s a challenge when you get so much money to distribute. 14 billion Australian dollars. Um, it’s it’s a lot easier to give that money to somebody who’s got all of the resources to go through the applications. Uh, I mean I’ve heard that it can take a couple of years between you know, sort of one knowing that you have a program there’s an opportunity and actually money hitting a bank account and [clears throat] then it comes with all these strings because you’re a public agency. Um, you you have to monitor it and and there’s a a lot of cost a lot of administrative overhead to that. So I have heard a few people, I’m not going to say who, grumbling about that. How do you respond to them? Well, look, we we want to work with as many people as we can. Um, not every project that comes to us is going to be chosen. There might be deficient there’s lots of challenges in that world around financing, around capabilities, around the technology level where there’s the right thing at the right time. So we do I have I I make no excuse for the diligence that we do in our process to figure out if this project has a chance of being successful. We do understand that we can be a heavy process for very small companies and for small grant amounts and we’re looking for new ways to deploy our funding to solve that problem. As an example, we’ve just funded a a group called the Australian Manufacturing Growth Centre, AMGC. We gave them 10 million dollars and said you go and give this away to companies doing manufacturing projects for $500,000 kind of check size. We don’t have a process that lets us do small check sizes like that, but we’ve got a fund the fund fund of fund model where we can deploy that funding with somebody else who can then go and work with the smaller companies. So, that’s one way So, you are allowed to do re-granting or to to to you are allowed to do that. stops us from doing that. So, we’ve done that with even the with that we mentioned earlier. These are small grants photovoltaic photovoltaics that are being dispersed by the A cap body. We fund one check to A cap and they disperse it to smaller companies. So, so if that small company would have come to Arena, if it wasn’t suitable for A cap or the AMGC program I just mentioned, sure, it might be a bit difficult for us to work with the very smallest companies, but we’re always looking to solve these problems. We we even fund a an incubator called Energy Lab. So, we’ve given them some funding. They work with startups to help grow entrepreneurs in the space. We’re also looking at some new programs for smaller startups just to make things easier, but but yes, we’ve got a huge volume of things coming to us. Not everything is going to be suitable for our programs. We do the best we can to restructure and find new ways to give grants or to uh point them elsewhere if need be. Darren, it’s great fun talking to you. As I travel around Australia, just give me a few thoughts on what are the issues. What do you think I would be interested in uh and the audience would be interested in in Australia, um what should I be sort of poking at? Either things that Australia is really good at or things that maybe um that that maybe Australia has not solved and you’d like me to focus in and talk to people and drill into. Well, I mean, maybe one of the very live topics right now is sustainable aviation fuel, which we haven’t really talked about. And Arena’s got $1.1 billion of funding through the latest budget to deploy to develop our capabilities in sustainable aviation fuel, but I think we’re still grappling with the question of cost of this technology. It’s very expensive. We’re talking about $800 to $1,000 a ton of abatement on today’s technologies. And the real-life question for us for a bio based fuel. That’s not the pure e-saf. That’s a bio based even much more expensive than that. We’re talking about not the standard hefa process. It’s kind of going beyond that for when you run out of that and you get into the complicated Yeah, so hefa is in the mix so but something we could do. hefa Uh basically used cooking oils and and tallow and But there’s only so much of it. So you’re only talking about the more difficult go into um canola plants, uh sugarcane in methanol or ethanol processes. Bagasse or forestry waste or or whatever. So so [snorts] we we’ve got huge feedstocks in Australia that we send overseas for processing and then we buy back the sustainable aviation fuel. The government has set an agenda and it makes complete sense given the fuel crisis to have more uh sovereign capabilities. But we need to address the cost. So you want to talk about something that we are that is a live topic. The question is what can that cost structure be in the future and how are we going to divvy up the subsidy between governments and the taxpayer or the consumer paying extra on their on their air ticket for the technology. Cuz I’ve picked up that there’s a conversation about blending mandates and I’m a big unfan. I’m the opposite of a fan of blending mandates. I like dual dual auctions. I like you know, ring-fencing being really clear that so somebody Arena or whoever CEFC uh the Clean Energy Finance Corporation or somebody would would um would buy over a 15-year period of a plant and then sell it back to an to an airline at a at a reduced price. So there’ll be an auction to buy it and an auction to sell it. That’s the approach that is used in the UK for hydrogen. suggest that the traveler passenger pays nothing? I think I think that’s a separate conversation. I think that’s a separate conversation because you have the same conversation if you have a blending mandate, then you can either pass that cost onto the traveler or government can step in and and have it in Europe, for instance, in the EU, they’ve stepped in and said, “You’ll get the proceeds of some carbon credit sales to so that it doesn’t go to the passenger.” The thing is, what I really like is I’m looking, you know, in a sense, looking for two things. One is real price transparency, a system which absolutely makes clear the most that anybody will pay for something and the least that it costs, which the dual auction does. And then the second thing I look for is if it’s not working after 5 years, they’re not delivering the cost reductions, then it should be easy to kill the program. And that’s the big problem with blending mandates, they’re very difficult to kill. Well, the design of this is happening live as we speak, so you can have some influence in how this plays out. listen to that last segment, my last little rant. But you Any other things that I should be poking at and and looking at while I’m here? Well, I mean, I think the the one thing that’s new news is is whether electricity prices at the consumer level are going up or down. Now, we’ve had years of it going up. Finally, it seems to be coming down because of the role that batteries are playing displacing gas in our system. And given that gas plays that price setting role, I think we’re on a new trajectory now of electricity prices either stabilizing or going down through the penetration of technologies. This is a new phenomenon, if you like, for the debate in Australia. But testing that would be an interesting thing. That is on my radar screen. Great. Darren, it’s a great pleasure speaking with you. And I’m very much hoping that our paths cross again later this year. Michael, thank you. Perhaps Perhaps in Antalya. Thanks for inviting me on your podcast, and I yeah, look forward to seeing you again. So, that was Darren Miller, the CEO of ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. As always, we’ll put links in the show notes to resources that we referred to during our conversation, and we’ll explain what HEFA stands for. We will also post a selection of resources for anyone wanting to do a deep dive into clean energy, climate, and the transition in Australia. With that, I’d like to thank our producer, Oscar Boyd, video editor, Jamie Oliver, head of operations, Kendal Smith, and Joe Jagger, who have both worked incredibly hard to put this trip together. The Leadership Circle, whose support makes all of this possible, and you, the audience, for spending time with us today. 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