Solar Coaster Podcast (AUS)

#8 - John Grimes, CEO at Smart Energy Council

• Supply Partners • Episode 8

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In this episode of the Solar Coaster Podcast, we welcome John Grimes, CEO of the Smart Energy Council. He joins our Technical Team to discuss his fascinating journey from his early life in the highlands of Papua New Guinea through to his pivotal role in advocating for Australia's solar and renewable energy sectors. We delve deep into the future of renewable energy in Australia, with insights that are critical for everyone in the industry. 

ABOUT THE PODCAST:
Welcome to the Solar Coaster! A podcast for navigating through the ups and downs of the Australian Solar and Energy Industry. Hosted by the Supply Partners Technical team and joined by industry professionals each episode to help you turn chaos into stability. We'll be talking about solar, batteries, EVs, Electrification and much more, so sit back and enjoy the ride.


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Welcome to the Solar Coaster, a podcast about the ups and downs of the australian solar industry brought to you by the technical team at supply partners with host Wade Allen and technical guru Andrew Thomson. Okay, welcome to the Solar Coaster podcast, brought to you by supply partners, Australia's technical distributor. We bring you sales and technical support so that you can stay current and up to date and hopefully keep you in the cart and on the rails of this exciting and exhilarating ride we call the australian solar industry. I am your host, Wade Allen, and with me, as always, our in house technical guru, Andrew Thomson, at. How are you doing, bud? Doing well, thank you. Excellent. Are you excited? As I am? Honestly, not to disparage our other guests, but this is probably our most important guest so far. So very excited. Yes. So right into that today we are delighted to have one of Australia's greatest advocates for our renewable energy industry in house. He is the current chief executive, the Smart Energy Council, our conduit between the industry and the boots and the ground and the policymakers. Mister John Grimes. John, thank you for being here. Wade, Andrew, fantastic to be here today. Excellent. Well, most of you listening would probably know John, but we love to do a little background here, and I'd love to know how John got into this whole industry right from the get go. So, with your background, how did it all come about? Where. So let's just go right back to the roots. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up? Wow, that's interesting. I was born in the highlands of Papua New guinea. You're kidding. No. So there were people that were being encountered at that time that had never seen white people before. They ran away in fear because they thought that we were ghosts. Oh, wow. So a little mission hospital the day I was born, there'd been a tribal fight, and there were dead involved. And so the villagers all came out and they were wailing and weeping for the dead. And so the doctor went out, as my mother's giving birth to me, waved a broom around his head. He's like, to shoo them away so that she could actually get some peace. And she also tells the story as a baby, right, that all the Marys, right. The women from the village came in and they pad in, you know, in feet that have never been washed. And they holding me, and she's. Yeah, that's great. Hold John, the baby. And then one of them has her breast. She's like flap, flap, flap, as if to say, can I feed the baby? Oh, wow. And that was a step too far for my mother. So she said, maybe not that, you know, but, yeah, that was my entry into the world. That's where it all began. What brought your parents to the highlands of Papua New York? Well, actually, my father was a teacher, so it was like a teaching post, but he was also been involved in the trade union movement, particularly in the. The teaching association in the Northern Territory. And then he went on to hand the teaching union of Papua New guinea across to Papua New Guineans in advance of independence. Independence was 1975, so in advance of that. That was the work that he was doing, so that's fantastic. How long were you there for? Only for a couple of years, till I was about three years old. Then moved to Darwin and we got blown out by Cyclone Tracy. Wow. It's one of those times. I remember being in the bathroom. The roof had gone from the house, so they say, go to the bathroom. Smallest room in the house. The wall had fallen in and it was plasterboard, but it was sodden because of the tropical rain and we're all huddled in underneath and we were praying that we would all be killed together. Oh, wow. Like, it was not a question of will we survive? Because it just seemed inconceivable. But, you know, that was the thing. So, four years old, very vivid memories of that time. Remember waking up, looking across and being able to see three kilometres, four kilometres to the shopping centre that previously you couldn't see because of all the houses and the trees and everything. And then in the next couple of days, of course, the water was cut off, there was no food, we were scourging around. We found Christmas presents three, four, five doors up. And actually one of those, I still have a cloth snake, which is a reminder of that time. So we lost everything. We were refugees in our own country, displaced. And we actually went to. My father got a job on Christmas island, and so I moved as a four year old to Christmas island, which is actually a tropical paradise. People only think about it as being a detention centre these days, but it is actually one of the world's wonders when it comes to nature. And so grew up on Christmas island and my father at that time went back to teaching and it was basically apartheid in Australia. So there was the. The asian workers and the british owners, and so there was an asian swimming pool and a white swimming pool. This is Australia, mid 1970s, and so the workers are basically indentured labour. They come across, they get a big debt to come and work on the island and they'd have to work it off for years. So in the middle of the night, knock on the door to my father saying, mister Grimes, you know something about starting a union, can you help us start a union here? And that was the union of Christmas Island Workers. So really amazing history and story. Then to Perth, then to Adelaide. Grew up and went to uni in Adelaide. And then I was posted, actually, I joined the air force. I spent a decade in the air force, posted to RAF Base Amberley, which is in Ipswich, outside of Brisbane. So I was a queenslander for all of a year, but gave me a good taste of what Queensland was all about, and then moved to Canberra. Been there ever since. So ten years in the air force. I did a degree at university. Ten years in the air force. I then joined the department of Foreign affairs and Trade. A degree in the air force, or did you do that previously? This is the biggest luck ever. So they actually. They sponsor you to do your degree. Now you can either go to Dun Troon and those places where it's sort of military college or they sponsor you at a civilian university. So I had long hair. I was the only bloke at the bar with any money, right? And so I had a full time job while I was studying to finish my degree at Flinders University in Adelaide. And it was. And a guaranteed job, right? So I came out and so I found myself at age 23, walking onto a floor. I was in charge of 75 people, so most of them were way older than me, had kids and families. And so as a young officer, you know, to kind of do that, I was quickly promoted to a position where actually, a year or so later, I had 430 tri service military people reporting to me. So it was exhilarating. It was a masterclass in management and leadership and organisational. It was a great start for me. At such a young age, too. That's fantastic. I would like to know what level of security you've gotten to. How top secret are you? Well, I got to the highest level, so it's what's called top secret. It's called a positive vet. And this is where actually a team of people spend six months, sometimes a year, going back and actually testing every part of your history and doing a reference and character cheque, you know, for all of the things that you could potentially be compromised on, basically. So very, very detailed. And I have a huge amount of respect for those people. You know, we do a great job in Australia. We were saying earlier that people keep us safe and we don't know about it, and that's a really good thing. And to see that world has been. Fabulous and so from the air force. Then you said you went into foreign affairs. Foreign affairs in training. I became a diplomat and I served. I was a deputy chief negotiator on Bougainville. So there was a civil war in Bougainville, you might recall, in Papua New guinea. So I was the deputy chief negotiator as part of a peace monitoring group to go and actually restore peace there. This like late nineties, or it is late nineties, 1999. Yep, yep. I was then did short term assignments in Japan and India and then a long term posting in Burma, so Myanmar. So I was the australian embassy, I was a political officer in the australian embassy in Myanmar. Absolutely fantastic. So this is a time where Burma was completely close to the world and it was so amazing because people wore traditional dresses, not because they were doing it for the tourists, because that's what they wore. Right. No advertising the world, but also very sad because the opportunities of the world hadn't reached the people. Right. So a contrast of things. So when was it, John, that you made the move to solar and why? So I founded a technology business. We took from startup to listing on the stock exchange. I exited that and then started an environmental company and I was in the water purification industry. This is the great millennial drought, if you remember. Yeah. Two minute showers. 20 05, 20 06, 20 07. That time where we ran out of water and so we commercialised this technology that took grey water from bath showers, washing machines and turned it into distilled quality water, basically. So you could use water more than once. So that kind of turned me onto the environmental thing. In 2008, of course, there'd been the global financial crisis, so I employed over 30 people. We were manufacturing, we were selling in China, in the US, in the Middle east and in Australia. But we weren't profitable yet, right. We were a startup company and of course the capital market evaporated overnight and so there was an organisation called the Australian New Zealand Solar Energy Society and they were advertising for a part time CEO. I said, fantastic, I'll do that a couple of days a week, go on some boards, maybe do some consulting. I've done the innovation and startup thing, so I knew a lot about building business and technology, and so I applied and I got the job. That organisation today is the Smart Energy Council. That organisation traces its history back to 1954, one of the oldest renewable energy organisations in the world. And these were the scientists, people from CSIRO, UNSW, James Cook University, that invented solar technology, hot water, evacuated tube, hot water, concentrated solar thermal, solar pv. So I was right at home 2008 I joined and I saw the projections, 16 years. I went to the conference in Sydney and I saw professors talking about the cost curve for solar pv. I was like, this is going to take over the world. There's no other place you'd rather be. This is the industry that's going to change everything. And of course that's exactly what's happened. And so really fighting for the industry and of course the whole political story after that. So it's been, look, I've been so blessed to have had a fantastic career and particularly to have worked in this industry is absolutely fantastic. When I first joined supply partners about four and a bit years ago, didn't even know what the smart Energy Council was. And my experience with you and the smart Energy Council to date has been. It's been interesting. It's an extremely positive one because I always feel like when something's about to derail the industry, we bring it up with you, you guys do your thing and we. And there's a solution on the other end of it. So I feel like it's. You're just so important to the industry because you are, like I said, that conduit between the boots on the ground and even us and the policymakers, the focus. I've had a relentless focus on action. Right. If there's a problem, fix it, do whatever it takes. Pick up the phone, advocate if you need to call the troops out and stage a big protest in the front of, of Parliament House in Victoria because they've completely stuffed up their rebate scheme. Well, that's what you do. And I actually met a political leader, he was the leader of the opposition. So the liberal party leader from New South Wales, 2012, 2013, he sat me down and he said, john, political parties are organised crime. He said, and if you can't hurt them, you don't matter. And never a truer word has been spoken. If you are not potent, if you are wishy washy, huge 50 page reports on something, never actually saying anything, really saying anything, not doing anything, they will steamroll over the top of you. But the flip side of that is call out those that oppose our industry, but back in those that support our industry, because a lot of good work that happens to and they don't get a pat on the back. If they don't get a pat on the back, they're not going to keep doing it, you know, so. And I don't care who it is, I've stood alongside Clive Palmer, Palmer United party with the big yellow background and done a press conference with Clive Palmer, because their vote in the Senate saved arena, it saved the CEFC credit where credit's due. I don't care. I'm about the industry, I'm about the transition. Whoever is on that is on that journey. Look at Matt Keene in New South Wales. He was a New South Wales energy minister, a Liberal, right. I was very pleased to help, even fundraise for him. Right. To help him out. Right. Anything to actually help him advance. So it's not about. It's not a party, it's about policy. It'S not about sitting on one side or the other side. Yes. Get it done. We've got to transition and this is the world's. Australia's biggest business opportunity. Right. If you think about employment, about investment, about decarbonisation, then actually we need to empower our businesses. This is where the products come from, this is where the workforce comes from. We're transitioning each in Australia, one household at a time. Yeah, indeed. And you can't do it all at once. And that is something that I've recognised with you. Like, you take on a project at a time. Like recently, you guys did a jv with master electricians to take over the accreditation, the SAA. Now, how has that been going? That's about a year old now. Yeah. So we kicked off in February. So we're tracking. And that was a big logistical project because under the law, we had to have it up and running within three months of being announced and they couldn't let us do any work or tell us that we'd been announced until we were announced. So we had three months to stand it up. And during the transition period, we were processing 600 applications per day. Now, the CEC probably never processed 600 applications a month. And so that condensed time, I'm hugely proud. Now, did it go completely without a hitch? It did not. Right. It was a complex and large project, but it went pretty well. Yeah, it went as well as it could have, considering there may have been a few hiccups, but it was very, very smooth. And the big change is this, we've made it a three year process. So you pay your money for three years and you don't have to make eye contact on that part for another three years. Right. It's a bit like your driver's licence. Right, or your electrician's licence. Right. You don't have to do it every year now, you still have to do the CPD points to stay current, but that's something you should be doing in the background anyway. And you've made that super easy and. Try to take the administrative load off. There would not be brain surgeons in Australia that are more highly regulated than our solar and battery installers. We've got to come on some common sense. Clearly, right, we are moving into this whole period of electrification, everything within the home and business, we're trying to shift away from different types of power sources and electrify, and we've heard from electricians because there's always a breakdown between the person that sells the system and the person that installs the system. And some electricians think they should be the only one selling. Well, if that's the case, we're never going to get to a renewable energy target. We'd lose so many sales. So what do we got to do to educate the salespeople? Like new energy training within supply partners has a certified consultant and site survey course so that we can educate those salespeople that are going into people's homes and selling them, because they're not just going, hey, look, you use this much kilowatt hours, the solar system's going to do this. Here's your return on investment, Bob's your uncle, now it's, and now we got an inverter on there and we got to put a battery. Well, where can we put a battery? What are you going to use that battery for all these things? Totally. So first, huge congratulations to supply partners, right? You've identified the weak link in the solar story because the installer gets there, they're very professional, but they don't know what the customer's been told, right. And you get some, some salesperson who's ever worked in solar in their life. So we see exploitation of vulnerable people, right? Huge inflation, you know, these old pensioners and they're like, oh, here's a. It'll cost you 20k for your five kilowatt system, right? The worst story I heard was it was, it was a salesperson saying, well, actually on a, but when you get a full moon you will get some reflection, you'll definitely get some production off that. It's just crap. Right? I bought those panels. Yeah, you bought from that guy. So supply partners actually training courses for salespeople, for retailers, hugely important. But your second point is also important, this is about the transition of the whole energy system, right? So it's about also understanding, sizing your battery appropriately. Are you gonna use it for just your own needs or are you gonna use it as a VPP? What about your heat pump for your hot water and your duction cooktop? What about your air conditioning load. What about the EV that you're gonna buy in six months time? And so the orchestration and bring it all together. So actually, in my view, it is the solar retailers and installers that are our climate heroes, right? These people need to be recognised for the fantastic work. They do agree. The reason I'm here is because I am shit scared about climate change, right? I think things are way worse than we're being told. I think we're in for a bumpy ride. It is only industry at scale that can actually make the difference. Agreed. 100%. And so I just say, good on you to everyone in this industry, but it also means we've got to upskill because we want to not just reduce your power bill, we want to basically get rid of your gas bill and your petrol bill all in one interaction. So it's great news for our industry because people have long term customers that trust them and rely on them. You can now go back and mine that to say, well, what about all these other services? What about EV charging? What about the battery, you know, going on? Right. As the economics change, that whole opportunity opens up. We have a huge, huge future in front of us. Oh, man, there's so much value in personal information. That's what I still don't understand is that those who were the climate deniers mean, surely you like saving money even if you take the environment aside, like, don't you like not paying for petrol? Don't you want to get like almost no electricity bill? Like, how, how can you be against the idea of that? Yeah, that's why I love it. Right. Because it's an economic argument and we save the planet as a free bonus takeaway, right. It's like fantastic. So stay on the economics. That's absolutely great. Completely agree. In the spirit of you continuing wanting to get things done, which is great, recently I got an email from the smart Energy Council looking to give you objections for how the CEC has handled the whole approved product. Listen, so is. And you've put in a tender to the CEr to take this over. Can you give us an update on that? You look probably the red hot issue that I get bailed up at every solar event is someone complaining about the CEC product listing process. And the complaints are, it takes way too long, it is way too complicated, and it in turn costs us a lot of money because it's not the$5,000 fee, right, to get your inverters listed, it's the fact that it's going to take them twelve weeks minimum to look at it. Right. And then I've heard stories where people have been held out of the market for six months, seven months, twelve months. Right. And so the cost of their business is, in that time, I could have shipped 20 containers to Australia and the cost of my business is $2.5 million. Right. And what was happening is the CEC takes in the fees, but they don't resource the programme. So it's one or two people. So you call them up and say, well, what about, you know, when's that going to happen? Oh, that person's sick. That person's on leave. I know. That person left. That person. That person. So you have one person left. That person. Right. And so what we did is because it's about a service to industry. And so we went to everyone and said, what does a really good functioning service look like properly resourced? So we actually designed something that had 18 staff, because if we can give people approvals in three weeks and four weeks, right, then the cost of doing business goes down and that reduces costs to the consumer and actually everybody wins in that process. Yeah. And it's not even an integrity thing surrounding the safety of. It's just the process. Someone's already done a test of the products that got a certificate. It's basically a process to say, is this a valid certificate? Does it cover the right things? Does it meet australian standards? Right. And see, the manufacturers that we're dealing with now, they can move very quickly. I was on the phone to a manufacturer this morning talking about a change in the as 4777.1 standard. And I said, hey, if you can make this alteration to a product, this is going to be so much better for business. Are you considering it? And they said, yes, we're considering it, but it's going to take us probably until the end of the year before we can implement it. And I said, why is that? Surely it's just a small change? And they said, yeah, look, no problem, we've sorted our part. The hardware is very, very easy to change, but it's the CC listing. The other point is they're actually making policy decisions. So you remember there was a change to panel labelling? Oh, yeah, right. The tests were basically exactly the same, but the panel label had to be updated. Now, this is something that could have actually crashed the entire industry, and particularly people like yourselves who are holding stock, distributing stock, people who have done contracts on stock, diabolically bad. And the CEC wouldn't move on. It was only when we brought huge pressure through the government, through the cerdental and the industry that they made any concession at all. So again, it's about, you know, who you're working for, what's the service you're providing? And look, I've spent a year, you know, a decade more, 1617 years, I've been very diplomatic about this stuff. Right. But enough's enough, you know, and that's really, that's. And so the call out was when I talked to the CR about this, and I talk about the delays, for example, and other things, and the Cr said, well, we've never heard of that. And so if you don't tell the cer, they don't know. Right. And so my call out was, if you've had a problem, right, this cost you money, please tell the CEr they're making the decision, because if you don't, then we're just going to continue to get what we've always had. I think the big problem in our industry, and we've seen this, is everyone expects that somebody else will solve the issue. So that's where kind of, we've taken lead. We've identified issues on a few occasions now and we've raised it to you and you've jumped straight on it. But, yeah, the feedback from installers and other companies is, oh, look, someone else will sort it out. And kudos, supply partners. You are one of our lead members. Lead membership is the top tier. Right? And so you give us resources, but my call out to the whole industry is swing in behind us. We're a bit like an insurance policy. You wouldn't go on your roof if you didn't have insurance. Right? Yeah. Well, you shouldn't be in the industry if you don't have an insurance policy because, you know, when something really happens to, we're going to do something about it. A good example, I was visiting a retailer the other day and I was talking to the CEO of the retailer and he was telling me his frustrations about this particular standard and how it's crazy. And he rattled it all off and I said, look, I completely agree with you. And he said, I'm getting nowhere talking to standards Australia. Said, are you a member of the smart Energy Council? And he said, no. And then I gave him all these examples of the inbuilt DC isolator issue, oversizing of current. There was the DC cable issue. There are so many issues that when you've gotten involved, yes, you didn't necessarily implement the fix, but you were the conduit that led to the fix. So get onto the council totally. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, to manufacturers, to retailers, definitely join as a member. But we've got another programme which people might be interested in. That is a smart installer programme. So this is for installers. And guess what? It's entirely free of charge. Right. And so. And what we do is we'll give you access to all of the standards. Standards. Four triple seven, 5333, 5349. You know, the battery standard and all free of charge. If you went and tried to buy them from Sanders, Australia, it's probably about $7,000 you need to invest. And then we've got all the training modules there that are free of charge. And we're to create a community, a peer to peer community where people can actually mentor new people into the industry and solve technical problems together. So get on board. Yeah. No, we went on last week to download the new 4777. The other webinar that you gave not too long ago was an update on the New South Wales battery scheme that's coming up, which is awesome. I really enjoyed that podcast or that webinar. How important is energy storage going to be for us, hitting these targets? Energy storage is everything, right? So we already see that energy is. So solar is just carving out the middle of the day. So the value of energy in the middle of the day is falling rapidly because we've got so much rooftop solar, solar farms piling in.

Right. That's great. But it doesn't solve the problem. 06:

00 p.m.

until 09:

00 p.m. which is the evening peak. Exactly. And that really hard. So it's like the duck, right. Well, with energy

storage, your time shift from two in the afternoon to 08:

00 at night. And what you do is you take the cheapest electricity and you replace the most expensive electricity. And in doing that together, we cut the head off the duck and it brings down electricity prices, not just for someone who has a battery, but for everybody, for the whole community. That's why we need a national battery booster rebate scheme. And you took the words right out of my mouth, John. And I can tell you that we've been talking in detail with the federal government so people wouldn't know the role that we played in the lead up to the last federal budget. Remember, there was $23 billion for renewables, for critical minerals. Now, when we talk about critical minerals, what we're actually talking about is the world's biggest solar and wind farms you've ever seen. The one in the Pilbara will be 1600 wind turbines and 73 square kilometres of solar panels, because that's the energy that's going to be needed to process iron ore. So we don't send dirt overseas, but we send green iron pellets. Right. We actually process it here and we got close with the federal government. We were talking about green iron, about battery booster. I think we're pushing on an open door. I'm very hopeful of having something nationally and that'll really be the work of the smart Energy Council to deliver that. Well, thank you. We appreciate that. It's so needed. Hey, like, because the STCs are slowly dwindling down as well as the LG C's, there needs to be incentive and the batteries are just so important. Like the solar scheme has, or the SDCs have done what it needed to do. It brought right to the. Brought it to scale. It's cheap, it's affordable now we need to do the same thing with batteries. I think better education is needed. So just circling back to our talk about electrifying the home and offering a smart solution. If you go onto social media and you look at any posts relating to renewable energy or solar, there's a lot of negativity from mums and dads who don't understand Solar, who think solar's a scam. I don't get paid money for the solar, I send back to the grid and talking to a lot of electricians. A lot of electricians don't understand the current state of affairs with the cost of electricity at different times of the day. So if we can educate them, explain why it is, how it is, if they can educate the mums and dads and then start offering solutions, solve this, then hopefully we can overcome a lot of that negativity and objections at the end user level. So the next programme we're going to have is really our solar heroes programme. And so we're going to focus on the industry, but we also want to focus on customers telling their story. What was the reality before they got solar and batteries, and what's the reality afterwards? Because it's that real world story that kind of convinced people it's not a company trying to sell something, it's kind of a neighbour telling them about how that went. Yeah. The other thing, I think, you know, Wade and Andrew, that just strikes me, I've spent a bit of time in China this year, particularly looking at electric vehicle infrastructure. Oh, wow. And China today owns the vehicle industry globally. It's just the rest of the world don't know about it yet. Yeah. When I went to snack, I came back at a tele dendro. I was like one out of every two cars was electric. It was crazy. Unbelievable. Right on the streets of Stanley. So 50% of all new vehicle sales in China today. EV's, these are brands, they're nice looking and they are really nice, right. And really well priced. Well, think of the scale of like, we're in Shanghai. There's more people in Shanghai than all of Australia and half the cars on the road were EV's. So that's insane proof point right there. And so, and so what's going to happen in the next year? In Australia, 30 new models are coming to market. A whole bunch of brands that people have never heard of. And my prediction. But by 2028 29, the incumbent, particularly the Japanese, who didn't shift like the Europeans shifted. Right? The Japanese did not. Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, they're going to be in real strife. There's a new wave now that means people can have EV's in their home. They're also going to have an EV at work. And so an employer who can put on solar and EV charging, what a great perk for employees. They can basically provide the energy free of charge. Take it home. You power your house at night time with the energy you got from work. It's a thing of beauty. Right. And even play on the wholesale market. Oh, absolutely. To be an accountant's nightmare, trying to calculate the fringe benefits off that system. Yeah, yeah. But I think talking to a lot of installers as well who come through, we've seen a lot of solar sales companies just deck out their sales team fleets with Teslas or Byds. But talking to a lot of people, I'm like, are you going to switch to Ev? And they said, we're holding off on the YouTube and there's a lot of ute's that are going to be entering the market in the next twelve months. So that'll shift things as well. Well, yeah. Gone are the days of the only Ev's we see are Tesla's, now we see byds and, you know, some other polar ones around. But it's going to just be littered. I tell you. The one that blew my mind, and that's a company called Nio, company people might not have heard of in China. It's a startup company. They just do Ev's and I. Unbelievable. So these are probably the best EV's available in the world. We went to their production facility and it's basically robots as far as the eye can see. I'm talking about kilometres of these robots right now. Those robots they look like giant crabs working on a car at one time. They're fed by middle sized robots that are in turn fed by little baby robots. Right. It was like. I mean, I was a child in 1977 watching Star wars come to life. There's a human being about every 200 square metres, and the job of the human being is to make sure that no one touches the robots. I saw the exact same thing at a pv manufacturing facility. I was like, where are all the humans? Where the people are gone. That's right. Little pallet jacks with lasers on it, riding around it. It's just mind blowing. It is mind blowing. It totally is. Yeah. It's so cool. X Peng. Did you see one of those? X Peng. X Peng. Really? The Zika. You know, there's a whole bunch. And these are cars I would hop into every day of the week. Like, I'd be just super pleased to hop into some of those cars. And how quiet are the streets? It was minor. Well, I don't know if you saw a little video online of a driverless taxi in Wuhan. I called it on an app. Hop in the back. There is nobody in the front row. Right. So there's no driver at all. There are 400 of them going around commercially. You just get it. Anyone can get it. Right. Wow. And it took me to my restaurant, and it did it fully

automated. And you can imagine chinese traffic at 05:

00 p.m. right. There are no lane rules. Yeah. And so you could see the car kind of making it. Oh, I reckon there's a gap over there. And then someone would cut it off and like, oh, crap, that's gone. You'd actually. You could feel it thinking, yeah. You feel it's getting scary. I just hope it didn't ask for a tip at the end. In fact, something I noted is that they actually make a little noise because there's no driver. It has to warn people that actually, I'm a vehicle. Right. Because otherwise you could. But the only thing I found was people were really, really rude, because cutting off a robot, who cares, right? Cutting off a human being. Oh, I kind of feel a bit bad about that. They're sitting there sticking their finger out the window, and it's like, I'm a robot. That don't worry about. There's no road rage here until someone hacks it. I think the only thing that's going to save my Tesla stock is this autonomous driving and the auto taxis or whatever that they're creating. Right. And you can imagine a future where the vehicles are talking to each other, knows that this vehicle is going there. So they'll link up, they can go on the express line because they know what the destination of every other vehicle. They know their future movements. I remember the movie demolition man. Yeah, Stovester, Stallone and how all the vehicles just did that. I always wanted to be alive when that happened. And it's going to happen, I know it. It's so cool to be a member of this industry. Like, renewable energy is just so awesome. And, you know, considering my number one job in this world, being a father and I, you know, my kids were constantly having conversations with them of what jobs are still going to be around in 20 years for you. And I saw billboards of renewable energy on the way into work today and I was just like, this is an industry where you can actually forecast, you can see 30, 40, 50 years down the road where it's going to be here. It's going to be something that we all need for generations to come. So it's awesome and it's an honour to do business in this industry. How are you feeling about employment opportunities right now within this industry? Well, really worried, right. So in the short term, we've actually had the biggest dip in the solar industry that we've seen. Actually the lowest point since 2017. I had a look at the figures over the weekend. Right. So the latest figures from the clean energy regulator on the creation of STC, you know, shows that, you know, that we've taken a dip. So first I'm worried about people for their immediate jobs, right, and their immediate, you know, to keep the company going and so forth. But longer term, I'm also worried because we're gonna need everybody, because we need everything everywhere, all at once, again and again and again. Right. And that means we've got to attract young people into our industry, we've got to do better in terms of inclusion and diversity. We're gonna get more women into our industry. 2% of electricians are female in this country. Right. That's not good enough, you know, and so we've got, we've got to get all people involved. And then, of course, there's a huge opportunity for Australia because we're at that. We're ahead of the curve in home electrification. We're going to get skills and knowledge that are going to have a global application. So thinking about australian companies actually going and colonising other parts of the world to bring that expertise, I think it's an absolutely awesome future. Well, there is no business certainty without political certainty. How do you feel and do you have any fear about if there's a shift in government? How do you feel that they're doing right now? And if there is a shift, I'm really scared. And the thing that we need in Australia is this. We need all politicians, all political parties to agree that this is a massive business opportunity, a huge employment opportunity. You put solar and batteries in, you're going to slash your cost of living. You worry about cost of living. Gas. Get ready to gas. Build your petrol bill and your electricity bill. We can give people back $5,000 a year into the household budget. Right now. What could be more valuable than that? But to have people who are still controlled by the fossil fuel industry, the vested interests, is a travesty for Australia's future and for our young people. And so the critical thing we need, we need all politicians in the UK. There is no left and right on this stuff. They all agree that this is the future and the opportunity, that's what we need desperately in Australia, because we play this game, it's a bit like Trumpism, right? You know, Trump comes back and go, crikey, we go backwards for another four years, right? Well, we can't have that. We've got to actually have, no matter who's in power. But at the moment, that's not the case. It really worries me and the nuclear debate worries me. And it's because the debate goes like this. Nuclear is awesome. In 2040, it's going to ride over the hill and save us. All, right? It is a thing of beauty. So therefore we can keep burning as much coal and gas as humanly possible between now and then. We don't have to worry about renewables. Right? We don't have to worry about batteries. Right. We could just solve it, right? Frog shit. Frog shit. Right? And so, and so that, that is a, that's, that's a danger. And so there are vested interests that want to shut us down. We know it, we've lived it for more than a decade. They are still there. They still want to shut us down. It's a big problem. Yeah. So what is the current government that, you know, of doing to, I guess, protect some of the measures that they've put in place now, should there be a change in government? Well, you know, a bunch of things are being legislated. And the way that you craft the laws mean that it can be really difficult for them to be undone. But nothing is impossible to be undone. Do you remember Tony Abbott? He tried to actually abolish the renewable energy target that would have meant all support for rooftop Sol. The SRE is gone. LGCs, the large scale scheme, gone. Right. That was their agenda. That has not changed. And so I'm really worried, and I despair because our industry is probably naturally conservative, it's probably naturally rightward leaning, right? Because we are small businesses, we're contractors. And so the fact that they can't see that actually this is a huge business opportunity, it just, it drives me to despair. I do remember that time really well because I'd been in solar for maybe six or seven years, and then all of that was in the media and it actually caused me to, I guess, exit the solar industry because I was so nervous about my employment, riding upon what decisions the government were making. So I exited, I went and worked for a building material supplier for about six months and then thought, hey, this is super boring. Plywood hasn't changed in the last 100 years. And I very quickly came back to solar. Yeah, yeah. But nothing is inevitable, you know, and so you gotta put your shoulder to the wheel if you want to. John, there's a buzzword going around called social licencing. Can you touch on that? Yeah, I totally can. So this is actually a campaign that's really being weaponized by the national party in particular, and they're focusing on regional, on farmers and regional communities to weaponise renewable energy objections. So this is about getting local communities to say, we say no to new transmission lines, we say no to solar farms, we say no to wind farms. Cause if you don't have the social licence, the support of those local communities, then you are gonna really run into problems and objections. So I'm not saying that every wind farm or solar farm has been a model of community engagement. It has not. And we collectively must do much better. We've also gotta do better in terms of benefit sharing, right? So wouldn't it be great if we let the local communities either take an investment stake or give them a discount on their power, right? So we're all tied together, right? The incentives are aligned. The problem is that there are not good faith actors. So I'll give you an example. In New South Wales, if you get 50 objections to your solar farm in New South Wales, it automatically goes through to this planning review. Year long couple of year long process, right? Now, recently there was an objection, there were 35 objections made, right? 30 of them were from people were negative and were for people who didn't live in the area. So anybody could. So Peter Pumpkin writes in and goes, I hate this solar farm, right? And Peter's only got 29 other mates. Right. They do it every time. And then the five other ones were basically supportive of the project, so they're gaming the rules. They're actually weaponizing this. You see the anti renewables rally in Parliament House, you know, about six months ago. This is going to be a big thing in the election. And so they're trying to. It's the new frontier. How do you keep selling gas and coal? You carve the heart out of the renewable transition. Yeah. I think your solar heroes programme should assist with this as well, because if you're only engaging with the community at the time of proposing one of these projects, people are going to say, you're only just telling us what we want to hear. But if you can educate Australia as a whole before these projects come to be, then we can assist with that. Perfect example, a neighbour complaining about a new solar panel system. Oh, the reflection. This is terrible. Get it off your roof. Like I'm going to complain. Do you know that the reflectivity of a solar panel is much less than the reflectivity of a colour bond roof? Yeah. Like just little things like that. If we can get the education out there, it'll only help. I can agree more. Designed to suck in sunlight, right? Yeah. Not to reflect the bad. Worst designed solar panel ever. If you're not exactly. You've also been and quite vocal about adding more value to our resources before we ship them away. Right. Like, how's that been going? Well, going extremely well. But I fear that the story still is not being told to the general public. And the theory is pretty simple. Right? It's super simple. Our economy relies on gas exports, coal exports and iron ore exports. Right? That's where. That's where the budget gets funded from. Right? And, you know, in terms of iron ore and other things, now the whole world is transitioning. In the future, they're not going to be buying our coal, they're not going to be buying our gas, and they're going to be buying iron ore, but only iron ore that can be processed with zero carbon inputs. And so structurally, if Australia does not shift now in 15 or 20 years time, we're done. Remember, the economy of Argentina, right, in the 1950s was a big deal. They were like, oh, Argentina is like Australia. And they really were like big advanced economies today, you know, they're completely left behind. These things can change. They are not inevitable. And so if you don't plan for the change, so that means let's not dig up dirt and send it overseas where 98% of it is waste and somebody else uses coal to turn it into iron and then steel. Let's use the world's cheapest and cleanest electricity, renewable energy from Queensland, from Western Australia, from South Australia to process so that we're actually sending embedded sunshine and wind. That's the energy we're going to use. Right. These are the countries that don't have the renewable resources we have. Right. They can actually buy a zero carbon input. So you think about the automotive sector in China or in Europe, right. Or United States, they might be paying an extra dollar 200 for green steel as opposed to carbon intensive skill. And that's a cut. That's about 11% of world emissions, steel production. Right. Dollar, 200 more. Well, I pay an extra $200 on a car that was completely carbon free. That's the opportunity for Australia. And so we want heavy industry, we want blue collar jobs, we want mining done in the right way, we want that and we can have it. And we just got to pivot to. A new future that's actually probably a great place to finish off. Hey, that was perfect. Well said. John, thank you so much for being here. And let me just shout out, Wade, Andrew, you guys, this type of engagement, talking to people and bringing these issues is at the front line of what we do. Thank you. Thank you. To supply partners, investing in this is really important. And thank you to all your listeners and everyone else who's involved in the industry as well. Thank you for coming. Thank you. And for those of you listening, thank you. We hope you got some value out of this and we'll talk to you next time.