Clean economy, expanding green exports
Superpower 2026 with Simon Holmes à Court and Reuben Finighan
Energy analyst and renewables expert Simon Holmes à Court outlined Australia’s progress in transitioning to renewable energy and green exports.
Dr Reuben Finighan, Research Lead, Economic Pathways at the Superpower Institute, outlined the huge economic and climate benefits of ramping up our transition to clean manufacturing and green exports.
- Watch key points in the Simon Holmes à Court Highlights Video here
- For a fast explanation of the New Energy Trade Report check our our highlights video with Reuben Finighan here
- Download Simon Holmes à Court slideset here
- Download Reuben Finighan’s slideset here
- Watch Superpower 2026 on YouTube Live here. Chapter points: Simon Holmes à Court, Reuben Finighan, Questions
- Download Superpower Institute’s New Energy Trade report here
- You are welcome to download the Agenda here and check out our event thread here
Simon Holmes à Court
Watch the Simon Holmes à Court Highlights Video here for a clear summary of clean energy progress
For a quick update watch the highlights video on YouTube.
Simon Holmes à Court charts the milestones in the clean energy transition, updating progress on renewables globally and in Australia, with a look at nuclear, critical minerals, EVs, batteries and storage and the need to accelerate new generation.
Why are we here?
Burning fossil fuels is driving accelerated global heating, and moving to clean energy is fundamental to our survival
“Last year was the, second hottest year on record.The second hottest year in my lifetime. But, for a baby born today, it’s probably going to be the second coolest year in their lifetime.”
Simon Holmes à Court
China is leading clean energy generation
China is massively growing it’s energy demand, Simon Holmes à Court said, “about 40% more than the US and European Union combined.”
Although China’s emissions are very high, the huge rise in clean energy generation is making a major contribution to decoupling emissions growth from it’s continuing rise in energy demand
As well as this huge growth in renewables, China’s emissions intensity is reducing, resulting in China’s emissions flatlining.
China’s investment in clean energy is half of global and is starting to flatline or reduce China’s emissions
“When you put the growth and the intensity together, we see a leveling off for now, about, two years coming up to two and a half years, China has been flat with its emissions.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Australia’s emissions are the highest of developed countries, but they are coming down.
“We are the highest per capita emissions intensive economy. But we are coming down. We’ve got a long way to go before we get to the rest of the world.”
Simon Holmes à Court
First showing of some slides commissioned by Boundless, an organisation associated with Mike Cannon Brooke
Lithium ion batteries are still going down in price
A slight price jump in 2022 resulted in a lot of negative coverage for lithium ion batteries, but they are still going down in price: “We had a tiny uptick and there were pages written in the media about how it’s the end of the battery honeymoon.”
Lithium ion battery prices continue to fall, data centre electricity use up by 80% and just two months of home batteries is greater than Waratah Super Battery
Households added more to the grid than the Waratah super battery in just two months!
Simon Holmes à Court compared the size of the Waratah super battery, “one of the largest lithium ion batteries in the world” with just the first two months of the Federal battery rebate program: “all of us together in two months put as much into the grid or more than the Waratahs super battery, which is Australia’s biggest battery at the time”.
Data centres have added 80% more consumption in just five years
All the data centers in the world were about one Australia’s worth of electricity generation in 2020, “and we’re on track for in the year just finished almost double”, with another doubling likely by 2030.
“So it’s not China size electricity, which is some 40 times bigger. But it is Australia size electricity being added to the grid every five years. So let’s hope it’s clean.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Australia leads the world in household solar
Australia is ahead of every other country in the world on household solar, and this is likely to continue. Solar is now also beating gas on the grid.
Together small and large scale solar are zooming past gas on the grid, and Australia retains its title as the gold medalist for household solar electricity per capita
Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Sustainable aviation fuel is starting to grow quickly, but still off a very low base – important for one of the most difficult to abate sectors.
“We are starting to see the early stages of a sustainable aviation fuel industry where 3 or 4 years ago, it was a joke. One and now we’re heading for 1% this year. Remember, solar, a decade ago was about 1% too.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Sustainable aviation fuel is finally getting started, and Australia is making more progress on value adding a critical mineral – lithium
Adding value to our lithium
Data from the Chief Economist suggests very strong growth in processing lithium, but there may be some bumps: “I just heard that they mothballed the plant that’s going to do most of this two weeks ago. So who knows if that’s positioning to try to get the government to bail them out”?
“I don’t think enough people know or appreciate the fact that about half of the world’s lithium is coming from Australia. And a very large percentage of that, maybe more than half of that, is coming from one mine just behind Margaret River in WA.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Nuclear – wildly unpopular, can’t compete and far too expensive
Simon Holmes à Court, despite his deep interest in nuclear including a comprehensive itinerary as a nuclear tourist, has concluded that nuclear is not suitable for Australia – it is far too expensive, and can’t compete with our abundant solar and wind resources. Nuclear’s “record breaking year” was that it was finally 2% higher than in 2006!
Nuclear is hardly growing despite all the hype while renewables continue to surge ahead
Renewables projects can be got up in a few years instead of decades.
Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy was a strong contributor to the LNP’s electoral loss last year. Australians are not keen on nuclear power.
Australia has added eight nucs worth of wind and solar in just eight years, pushing out fossil fuels on both main grids
“One point I wanted to make in this whole, the whole discussion, we had last year, around around nuclear is the amount of energy we’ve added to Australia’s grid. That’s that. The amount we’ve added in just the last eight years is equivalent to eight nuclear power stations.
And the coalition was talking about building seven nuclear power stations by 2050 without a plan to do so. We just did that.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Electrifying vehicles and the grid
Electric Vehicles
Despite negative press and little government support EV sales continue to rise in Australia, now reaching 14%.
“I’m sure there are lots of readers of the Australian in this room. And you would be reading all the time that EVs are dead, no one’s going to drive an EV. And, you know, people still believe it’ll ruin the weekend. Meanwhile, the rest of the rest of the world continues to transition towards electric vehicles.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Although global EV sales are nearing 30%, Australia lags at 14%, making us more vulnerable to current oil price spikes
Electrifying transport is an important key in increasing our independence and geopolitical resilience, especially given the conflict in the Middle East.
Electrifying the grid
Australia’s grids are moving away from fossil fuels. South Australia has reduced its electricity emissions by three quarters over the last 16 years, Victoria has met it’s 2025 40% Renewable Energy Target, and our electricity emissions continue to fall, even if there are lumps and bumps on the way.
Even though Victoria has the dirtiest grid (top blue line) our emissions are still falling, and renewables continue to displace coal
“In Victoria, we think of ourselves as a very environmentally conscious state. We shouldn’t forget that we have the dirtiest grid in Australia, and it’s because of the brown coal we burn. So with the significant efforts to build out renewables in Victoria, we should see that reduce.”
Simon Holmes à Court
Crossover days are accelerating
In 2023 there was one crossover day where renewables contributed more to the grid than coal, then eight days the next year, then 29 days and 109 days last year.
Legislated ederal support is required to avoid renewables falling off a cliff, plus crossover days are increasing
We need to escalate renewables projects getting to financial close
To meet our targets, and push coal out, we need to really ramp up new build renewables. 2024 had much less growth, even though new projects were added.
“So we’re not saying there was less in 2024. Just saying that the growth was less than the previous year. And I just want to show you that this peak to think about the growth, not only do we have to win this climate, climate challenge, we have to build more renewables every year for a while to push that coal out.”
Simon Holmes à Court
For us to meet our 82% renewables energy target by 2030, we will need to triple renewables projects, adding 23TWh pa
The transition is unstoppable – but we need to move faster
As our grid transitions, and households continue to electrify, particularly with batteries in addition to solar PV, AEMO modelled a drop in electricity prices.
AEMO’s conservative Residential Electricity Price Trends projected lower prices, in part due to lower cost renewables on the grid
Simon Holmes à Court concluded his talk with the powerful words of Bill McKibben – winning slowly is the same as losing. This is because continuing to burn fossil fuels causes irreversible, escalating changes in Earth Systems – in our biosphere, in the atmosphere and oceans.
Dr Reuben Finighan
For a fast explanation watch The New Energy Trade Rueben Finighan highlights video here
Watch New Energy Trade with Reuben Finighan highlights video here to understand the massive potential for six to eight time exports growth in a clean energy future, while being able to reduce global emissions by up to 9.6%. Instead of trying to export clean energy directly, which is very expensive, it is much better to export clean energy embedded in, say, green steel or aluminium, given Australia’s massive renewables resources and low clean energy prices.
New Energy Trade Report
Understanding basic principles of the green export thesis
Reuben Finighan began by outlining the green export thesis, which is based on a few simple propositions.
The first is that the world will mainly trade embedded, energy – clean energy that’s been embodied in energy intensive goods “such as green iron, aluminum, silicon, polysilicon, ammonia and urea, methanol and other green fuels. We can also add, data centers, so long as that bubble doesn’t pop.”
Second, most major economies will lack enough cheap, clean energy to meet their own, domestic needs. And the resulting cost differences between countries “will drive this trade in embedded energy.”
And third, countries that have a large comparative advantage in clean energy production, including Australia, can take a large share of the trade. This will contribute significantly to global climate mitigation, and improve the standard of living in important and exporter countries alike.”
The thesis of Reuben’s New Energy Trade report rests on three theses, which are tested
Why a trade in embedded energy in the net zero age?
So why will this be a trade in embedded energy? So extensive trade depends on, the low costs of transporting goods from one place to another.
“Transport in fossil fuels happens to be cheap. And this fact underpins some remarkable patterns in international development. During the fossil age, economies such as Japan, or Taiwan, Korea have almost no fossil fuel resources of their own, and yet they’ve been able to compete in some of the world’s most energy intensive industries.
Then the net zero age, this would change. Transporting clean energy is prohibitively expensive to ship.”
Dr Reuben Finighan
Global trade moves to embedded energy
Previously it was relatively easy and profitable to export energy directly, for example LNG to Japan, but in a Net Zero mid term future transporting energy will be much more expensive with losses of up to 80% for instance as ammonia, or methanol. Instead it makes sense to use cheap, abundant renewables in the country of origin and export products made where green energy is embedded such as green steel, aluminium, silicon or polysilicon directly.
“That means that energy transported from Australia will, at minimum cost, 3 to 5 times as much in these countries as it does here. So you can’t transport it. Looking at some, countries energy plans, it’s clear that this economics hasn’t really been properly absorbed yet. We have countries such as Japan, talking about importing hydrogen and ammonia, for example, at scale. And the cost is simply too high.
On the other hand, transporting embedded energy in the form of iron, aluminum and other growing commodities that will remain cheap. So this is how the post fossil energy trade will proceed.”
Dr Reuben Finighan
More profitable to transport embedded energy – green steel, aluminium – than green energy directly especially via intermediaries (huge losses)
Supply Curves
The CSIRO analysis ignores supply curves – simply having the cheapest clean energy around ignores both the amount and seasonality of that supply, and also ignores the amount of demand which will rise in the future.
Although we don’t have the cheapest energy we have vast amounts of cheap energy which countries like India (case A) and Japan (case B) will buy with rising demand
“So say first that, imagine that countries A and B, this dotted line here, have, very low levels of demand. So not much of the world’s energy is needed to satisfy the demand. Well, then, country A is going to have the cheapest energy, cheapest marginal price. That’ll be about the price of energy. And it may send energy and may trade energy with the other two.
But if demand in countries A and B is very high, then this changes. Country C now has the comparative advantage. If countries A and B want to supply, the demand goes up to here. If they want to supply that much energy but only using their bars, they’ve got to go way off the graph into very high prices. The cheapest marginal source of energy is going to be country C.”
Dr Reuben Finighan
Transition turning points
When asked about the timing and shape of transition turning points, Simon Holmes à Court mentioned the ground shaking conversation between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Elon Musk that resulted in the first Big Battery in South Australia, after the system black.
Simon and Rueben at first answered questions on turning points in the transition and on about improving the Safeguard Mechanism -we need more lighthouse moments, and the mechanism should distribute financial benefits
More information
Australia has the resources and capacity to become a global leader in the post carbon economy.
How can Australia accelerate a clean energy economy, powering good quality jobs, green exports and lower energy costs?
How will Australia seize the opportunities of the post-carbon world?
The global transition to net zero is Australia’s opportunity
Superpower Institute: “Endowed with rich mineral wealth, vast land areas and unmatched solar and wind resources, Australia is uniquely positioned to be the major producer of energy-intensive products for the world.”
“By harnessing our comparative advantages, we can not only significantly reduce global emissions but also spark a new era of economic growth that will create new industries and jobs, securing our prosperity for generations to come.”
The Superpower Institute
Clean energy: increased resilience, lowered costs, lowered emissions
The energy transition is accelerating and increasing resilience, not just nationally but also for households
- Battery storage costs are dropping rapidly. Firmed clean energy has been the most affordable option for the last seven years according to CSIRO.
- Clean energy is nearly emissions free Ember: “Wind and solar are the cheapest, the quickest to deploy and among the cleanest, least carbon-intensive power sources.”
- The Cheaper Home Batteries Program has been very successful offering homeowners an opportunity to increase energy self sufficiency and resilience as well as slashing power bills.
- Investing and solar panels and a household battery and shifting to efficient electric appliances helps lock in today’s prices – your household will be protected against increasing gas and electricity prices – see Rewiring Australia report p3.
The change is happening
Renewables surpassed fossil fuels on the grid for the first time in the last quarter of 2025.
ABC: Renewables pass the 50% milestone on the grid “for the first time in the last quarter of 2025”, where renewables supplied more power than fossil fuels.
The community is sold on solar, and supports shifting to a grid powered by clean energy. Clean Energy Council: “The sheer scale and pace of rooftop solar is unparalleled anywhere in the world”
Renewables are now the most affordable and fastest forms of energy
Solar and wind with storage are the cheapest forms of energy, putting downwards pressure on electricity prices. Construction is fast, taking a few years rather than multiple decades eg: Snowy 2.0 or nuclear plants.
Australia’s definitive GenCost 24/25 report “found renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technology, while nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) are the most costly.”
Green economy, manufacturing and transport
Green, energy intensive exports can strengthen our economy and create future-facing jobs
Superpower Institute: “Australia stands at a pivotal moment in the global transition to a net zero future”. By levering our world-beating renewable resources we can drive economic growth for decades, as a central player in the global energy trade.
Countries like Japan, Korea and India will be facing a shortage of cheap clean electricity by mid century, giving Australia an opportunity to make a major contribution to climate mitigation and massively expand export revenue. We can ramp up clean manufacturing and export our abundant green electrons in the form of green steel, aluminium and silicon/polysilicon and decarbonised transport fuels, in otherwords the superpower trade.
Household electrification, solar and batteries
The home battery program has been extended by an extra $5bn – with solar, with significant reductions in energy bills.
Michelle Grattan: “The saving would be up to $2,300 annually – up to 90% of a typical power bill.”
Transport: going electric and strengthening public infrastructure
Electrifying transport reduces our reliance on vulnerable global supply chains, and substantially lowers household transport costs.
Accelerating superpower industries in the post-carbon world could boost export revenues by 6-8 times
Rod Sims: it’s time to become a green energy export superpower
Rod Sims, Chair, Superpower Institute: “One really big idea is to take the steps necessary to see Australia become a renewable energy superpower by exporting green energy-intensive products such as green iron, green aluminium, green transport fuels and green fertilisers.” Australia’s renewable resources are blessed with “world-best availability factors” and low domestic demand, that can be used to make energy-intensive exports.
“The key point to understand is that in the fossil fuel world it is low cost to transport, for example, our iron ore, coking coal, gas and thermal coal to north-east Asia where they are used to make iron and steel.
In the net zero world, however, it is extremely expensive to export the renewable energy and the hydrogen to replace coking coal, which are needed to make green iron. So green iron should be made where the renewable resources are.”
Rod Sims, Chair, The Superpower Institute
More about our speakers
Simon Holmes à Court
Director, Superpower Institute: “Simon Holmes à Court is an Australian businessman, energy analyst, and clean tech investor. He is Director of the Smart Energy Council, the Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network and founder of Climate 200.”
Reuben Finighan
Research Lead, Economic Pathways, Superpower Institute: “Reuben holds a PhD in Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a Masters of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, as a Fulbright, Frank Knox, John Monash, and Leverhulme scholar. He has co-authored papers with Harvard Professor Robert Putnam, Ross Garnaut AC, and Lord Nicholas Stern, and previously worked at the University of Melbourne in applied economics and as Chief Economist for the Universal Commons.”
Recent Superpower Institute Reports
Check out Dr Finighan’s work in new reports:
- Case for pricing carbon: reducing emissions, funds for health, education, defence and households
- New Energy Trade: increases export revenue 6-8 times while reducing global emissions by 6.7 – 9.6% (green iron/steel, aluminium, silicon/polysilicon etc)
Further Information
Lighter Footprints information
Simon Holmes à Court
- Got 5 minutes? Read Powering 2025 event summary blog for highlights of Simon Holmes à Court’s annual update
- Australia’s Race to Zero – Simon’s 2024 video highlights
Going electric and energy efficiency
- Entertaining short video on electrification with home energy expert Tim Forcey
- Insulation and draught proofing – informative video highlights
- Health benefits of getting off gas – Dr Genevieve Cowie video highlights
Energy
- Clean energy transition info page here
- We can do this! Richard Denniss, The Australia Institute, gives us a rousing call to move faster towards clean energy.
- Nuclear would delay renewables and increase emissions – more details on nuclear and CCS here.