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Everything Electric Podcast
Australia's Renewable Revolution & the EV Boom — with Giles Parkinson
01:00:19
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- [00:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast coming to you exclusively from Australia. So, okay, quite a long way apart we are. I'm in Melbourne at the moment and my guest is up in a place called Byron Bay which is in northern New South Wales. It's considerably warmer where he is than where I am. It's been a bit brr, chilly down here. We've just finished the Everything Electric show in Melbourne and Giles, I did meet Giles there briefly.
- [00:42]
So my guest today is Giles Parkinson. He is the founder and big contributing editor to amazing website called the Driven. Really worth checking out. Put links in the show notes and renew economy which is fascinating, which is really about the economics of research, renewable energy all around the world, but obviously quite heavily focused in Australia because there's a lot going on here as you will discover. So I'm not going to waffle on now. All I'm going to say is we are doing another show in Australia in March and then numerous new events and shows around the UK in 2026. But more on that later. First of all, let's just get right into the nitty gritty because this is very data dense episode. So please welcome to the Everything Electric podcast, giles Parkinson.
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Giles Parkinson
Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by.
- [01:38]
Robert Llewellyn
Our fun packed test drivetastic events in.
- [01:41]
Giles Parkinson
The north west and Greater London and our events down under. Next up, Everything Electric Sydney 2026. Plus check out EverythingElectric store for merch and much more.
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Robert Llewellyn
Giles, thank you so much for joining. It's kind of weird because normally I to you and I haven't seen you for like a year and you're around the other side of the world and I saw you last week and you're just up the road.
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Giles Parkinson
Yes, exactly. Well up the road in Australian terms That might be 2,000 kilometers.
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Robert Llewellyn
It's probably about two, two and a half thousand kilometers. Okay. Quite a long way up the road. Yeah. Well, it's very nice to see you and very. And very good to see you today.
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Giles Parkinson
Yes. I'm feeling embarrassed about having bigger earphones than you though.
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Robert Llewellyn
You do have proper big earphones. No, I. No, I feel emasculated actually. No, because my earphones aren't bigger, they're too tiddly. I want big butch earphones. I will get.
- [02:30]
Giles Parkinson
Maybe if I put mine in a jaunty angle or something like that it might make you feel better.
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Robert Llewellyn
No, there's nothing you can do about my, my fragile masculinity. It is just in tatters. Has been for decades.
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But what. I'm having a fantastic time in Australia though I want to add the caveat for, for listeners in northern Europe, it's not been hot. Today is the first day I've experienced some warmth that. So I've been in Tasmania as well. So. Tasmania in here. Bloody cold. Oh my God.
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Giles Parkinson
You should come up the road because I'm actually sitting in a pool of sweat here. So.
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Robert Llewellyn
I am, I'm heading north as soon as I can.
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Giles Parkinson
Yes, you'll get hot and sweaty in no time at all. So.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. But it's. Yeah, no, it has been a bit of a shock because I've never been here this time of year and so I've never experienced anything other than extreme heat in the whole of Australia. So it's been a bit of a shock.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, well it can be a surprise in Tasmania. Yes. It can just get cold so quickly but beautiful state.
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Robert Llewellyn
Oh stunning. And very. It was very windy as well. But no, it was absolutely stunning. No, I had a lovely time then. Big, big walks in near really, really big trees. Goodness me.
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Giles Parkinson
Really big trees actually.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yes. Unnecessarily large trees. They were just ridiculous. They were showing off.
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Giles Parkinson
They're necessarily large. I have to correct you there, Rob.
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They're the tallest towering gums in the world.
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Robert Llewellyn
Oh, are they? Oh, because they were ridiculously huge. Yeah. Oh, that's a Tasmanian thing.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, they're called Regnan Tre.
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And there's some bastards still want to chop them down. They've been growing. Those big ones are 600, a thousand years old and it's such a shame chopping them down for wood chips of all thing. Wood chips.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, wood chips. Well, I've got a wood chip story. Oh my God. We can both have a rant about that.
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But the thing I wanted to say, which is just, you know, which was what we heard about a lot at the live event was about the battery, the home battery grant application take up. Yeah, the Colosseum. Just the colossal numbers involved, it's is mind boggling for someone outside of Australia. It's kind of almost normal here, but it's just so such huge numbers of batteries have been installed in this country in the last, what is it, six months?
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, look, this, this actual rebate program has been going about almost five months now. There's been 130, 000 batteries installed already. So they're basically running out of a thousand a day, which is about as much as the industry can actually process. I mean it doesn't actually surely. Yeah, I mean it be going much faster. I know people who are trying to sort of sign up and they've been told they can't get there until January and February. There's a shortage of batteries, there's a shortage of people able to do the paperwork and the installations. But right, look it, it's a good news story. Australia, as people would suspect is, has probably the biggest uptake of rooftop solar in the world. Although for some strange reason the statistics always keep on talking about Belgium. I go Belgium, you've got to be kidding me.
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Robert Llewellyn
But anyway, goodness me, what's going on?
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Giles Parkinson
I don't know, I don't anyway, but look, Australia has a huge amount. I mean some states it's one and two houses that's created something called the solar duck curve. So basically all the rooftop solar, this happened last week, all the rooftop solar goes out into the grid or some of it's used at home, goes out into the grid and sometimes it puts grid demand down below zero and which means what you've got to do to try and sort of flatten out this duck curve and sort of goes down like this is have lots of batteries and they've been putting in large scale batteries. They've been trying to encourage people to shift loads to the middle of the day. That could be hot water, that could be charging electric vehicles, that could be washing machines, pool pumps. And this latest one is basically get everyone to put in a battery and that will soak up that solar power. Store it in a box and then you can use it in the evening and hey presto, that will certainly deliver reduced home bills, electricity bills for the people who have those things, but hopefully it'll also flow on to the rest of the customer base. And the federal government is now using this as a platform to try and get the retailers and encourage them to offer what they're calling three hours of free solar in the middle of the day. They're really trying to get people to use power in the middle of the day when it is abundant and low cost and basically shift everything into, you know, shift that excess energy and put it back into the grid in the evening.
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Robert Llewellyn
I mean that was a really interesting idea, you know, because it's kind of, it sort of doesn't work in the UK and to the same extent, you know, there are certainly peak solar periods and there is a, there is now, you know, a non embarrassing amount of solar on rooftops in the uk but it's not, nothing like it doesn't come anywhere near here. But Also, you know, just simply, it's just a simple matter of physics and light. You know, we don't have as much as you do and as intense. Yeah, you know, you can really sense the, the difference here. But the fact that it's had such an impact already that the, that that sort of legislation is even plausible that it, that it makes any economic sense at all to make electricity free for three hours. But what it does I suppose is it, it uses up what would otherwise go to waste and would mean you've got to dump power. I don't know what you even do with it. You can't export it from your house if there's too much in the grid already I guess. Well that's right.
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Giles Parkinson
People getting ridiculous prices. Look, it sends a couple of really key messages. One is that it actually sort of makes this appearance of having like low cost power, you know, when you can access it. And that's really important in a time when prices are going up. Mostly because we're still using enough gas to make it expensive because it's horribly expensive and, and basically we're still using gas. And the other one is that's encouraging people to think completely different about the grid. So if you just think about the old baseload paradigm, well, rooftop solar is coming in, come in and basically eaten the lunch of all the coal fired power generators.
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Robert Llewellyn
Right.
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Giles Parkinson
And then by storing it in the battery and putting into the evening now it's going to start eating the dinner of the coal of the coal fired power stations. Yeah, and that's a good thing because this is a way of finding a way to sort of move on from the fossil fuel. This old paradigm about, you know, must have fossil fuels, we must have baseload. No, we just have a whole bunch of wind and solar and we fill in the gaps with batteries storage and other storage and if we need at times peaking gas capacity. And that's a great thing.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, well I mean also because the amount of times the amount of kind of reports I've seen about South Australia being over well over 100% renewably powered, that is they're exporting power to I think to Victoria, presumably to other states.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, well they've got a new link to New South Wales which is partially complete. So they're actually starting to export there in small amounts. They're putting, they've got a lot of, they've got about eight big batteries now and they've got a whole bunch of household batteries. So last week they got to, I think it was Sunday, they got to 157% renewables, which is, which means they generated 50% more than they needed and they stored the rest. And look, some of it may have been curtailed even because they still couldn't find a way to market. So it's just extraordinary. And South Australia, it averages 75% wind and solar over the year. That's average over the year almost every day it reaches 100% renewables at some point in the day and it has a target of reaching an average 100% net renewables, meaning it's exporting and importing when needed by 2027, just two years away.
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Robert Llewellyn
Right. Wow. But I mean, because I occasionally have to remind myself and it's kind of a stupid thing to think about, but I guess let's go back 20 years. South Australia would have been 100% powered by coal and gas, I'm guessing, and maybe by 20 years ago, maybe a few wind turbines somewhere, but it would have been a tiny percentage and some solar. But I, you know, if you go back 40 years, it would have been 100%. So we have displaced. In that state, you've displaced fossil fuel use to a vast extent.
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Legislation. It's just happened.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, well, they just sort of said look, we like wind and solar, come and build it here. They actually just sent a positive message to there's no state based schemes. There was a federal based scheme and they said woohoo, come over here if you want to build a wind farm. And they just, they just were open to it. So it's actually 16 years, 16 years ago it was still 1% because there've been a few wind farms built about 20, 25 years ago. And so still 16 years ago it was 1% and now it's at 75%. So you often hear people saying, oh well, you can't actually change a grid from sort of, you know, fossil fuels to renewables in a short period of time. Yes you can.
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Robert Llewellyn
But I mean that the sort of, the big picture storage thing is fascinating because I mean one of the things, the home batteries and this is hearsay from someone who works in the national grid in the uk. I'm not, not hearsay, he told me this, but the, the difficulty they would have with, with it's, you know, the struggle that all grids are going through that were built with centralized big power plants, big transmission systems, substations. Power goes to city, town, village, whatever. And when that changes and the power is coming from the cities, the towns and the villages and it's going all over the place and it, you know, makes their job harder. But one of the things he said years ago this was the more we can spread the load of things like batteries and chargers and all that stuff, the easier it is for us to manage without completely rebuilding the whole system. So that is, you know, massively distributed storage, you know, those hundreds of thousands of home batteries is by definition distributed, which is clearly advantageous from as I can understand it.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, that's exactly right. And if you go back to see what the local networks here and Australia's got a very, very long and stringy network because all the people live on the coast. So it just goes basically sort of single line down the country and there's a few people living inland but basically it's a long stringy grid. And the network said, oh this will be the death of us. We can't manage this two way flows on such a network. And they've gone, oh well yes we can. And actually the more we do it the better because it builds up resilience and things like that. So they're all for it now and they're trying to get their hands into the kitty as it were, to host more and put more in there. So it's just a. Yes. Just the whole change in thinking, at least amongst the energy industry, industry and the engineers and the economists, it hasn't quite reached all our political people yet, but we're working on that.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. But then one of the. I love this story about the, the, the disused gold mine in Queensland that's being used as a pump storage facility. It's such, I mean it's such a bonkers story. But it's also one of those. Well, it's because it's. Is it actually operating now? Because I'm always hesitant to talk about these things that could happen. I've done it a lot in, in the last 15 years. It does sound like it's.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, the gold mine's not, otherwise they'll all have to be wearing snorkels and.
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Don'T get sucked into that pipe.
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Robert Llewellyn
It could be.
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The poor gold miners have all been flooded.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, look, it's on the verge of operating. So basically they've got two big pumps and generators in there. They've got a pit sort of next to the gold mine which is the upper pit. And then they've used the open pit gold mine which is about 400, 500 meters deep and it's really quite deep.
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Robert Llewellyn
Oh, so it's big, it's big, it's big.
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Giles Parkinson
And so they've got water in there and basically if I pump tight hydro you just need two ponds, one much higher than the other. So they pump it up and then they let it flow down and that spins the turbines and everyone's happy. So what's interesting about this is one that's location in our gold mine is a pretty good use of already, you know, damaged, damaged goods as far as the earth is concerned. But two is the first pumped hydro facility to be built in Australia in 40 years and I think the first ever at scale by, by a private, by a private company. There's this massive project being built by the federal government and company Snowy Hydro up in the snowy mountains. But it's just a bit of a disaster. It's run over budget, it's in the national park, it's delayed, but this one is a little bit delayed, a little bit over budget. But it's a pretty exciting development because batteries are great but we probably need other things as well to fill the gap once all the coal is gone.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah. I mean that's because I've been to the only we've actually made a show about. There's a place in called Dinorwig in Wales which is a big pump storage facility that they basically hollowed out a mountain in the 1970s and built it. So it's all inside a mountain. The whole thing is the most extraordinary kind of James Bond villain lair type massive facility and that has a lake at the top of a mountain and a massive lake at the bottom. And it's next to an existing nuclear power plant that they use. They store the power that generates at night when nobody wants it. You know, that was what it was originally built for and but I mean what they, what it's become useful for, which is what I'm sure this one will do is if you've got a drop in, in supply and high demand you. It turns on incredibly fast. I mean it's within seconds it's generating megawatts. You know, it's really very, very quick response which is what makes them popular I guess.
- [15:37]
Giles Parkinson
And there's some other ideas too. Over in Broken Hill, which is a famous mining town out west of New South Wales, there's a project being built there. It's compressed, it's by a Hydrogen Canadian company called Hydro Store and it's basically compressed air into a cavern in an underground zinc mine. And basically they store that in there and then they somehow release it and heat it and it spins the turbine and does that.
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Robert Llewellyn
Right.
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Giles Parkinson
And there's other ideas about gravity storage which is Basically the same idea as pumped hydro, but instead of water, you're using a big granite block or, or something. Something heavy.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
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Giles Parkinson
And dropping down a coal mine shaft, which often is still quite straight and deep, and then sort of, you know, winding it back up and then letting it go down again to.
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Robert Llewellyn
Right. Because there was talk of doing that in the uk. But is this in Australia though?
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Giles Parkinson
That's in Australia, yeah. Look, I've got to say the jury's still out about whether that's economic and feasible, but these are ideas which are being pursued. And so.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I do remember the one in the one I was a lovely guy that was trying to do gravitricity was the company in the uk and, and that was the. You know, we've got a lot of old coal mines, old coal mine shafts that. And actually the way they're being used at the moment is. Or as heat pumps. So you have, you know, they are slowly flooding and filling up, but they're really, really warm. So they're just running pipes down that do district heating. I mean, that's already happening. But the other one was the, the, the problem that they faced was there was this perfect coal mine that was really deep and really put in a good position with a good grid, you know, grid connection. But the, the ground around the top of the mine was not built to, to hold a 500 tons weight. It was, you know, and the amount of reinforcement and building work they'd have to do around the kind of mouth of the mine, as it were on the ground was just, you know, made it economically unviable in that location. But I mean, it depends where. It obviously depends what the ground's like where you, where your mine shaft is. Yeah, but those, I think what I love about the weird stuff that we're interested in is those essentially daft ideas have come about because the whole energy system has shifted. I mean, you might, there might have been 40 years ago a new way of injecting coal dust into a burner to get more productivity out of it or something, but it was not like I wouldn't have wanted to write a blog about it or go and make a video about it. Whereas these mad things, I mean, I think most of them will fail, but the fact that people are trying them, I think is. And one or two of them will catch on, or pump storage being a good example. I mean, that's a very, very tried and tested method of storing and generating electricity.
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Giles Parkinson
I mean, that's been around for decades. I mean, it was basically Built to support the coal fired power stations and the nuclear power stations built in the 60s and 70s. You know, it's not something that's suddenly been invented just to help out renewables. It was there to support baseload because. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah.
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Robert Llewellyn
But then, okay, the other thing that I get too excited about is very, very large electric vehicles. And we're talking like multi, multi ton things. I've got to go there one day. But Pilbara, so I hear more, you know, all about pil. I just want to. Because I do hear about it a lot and it's just, which is, correct me if I'm right, is it an iron ore mine? Is that what they're digging up?
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, look, there's the. Pilbara is the center of Australia's iron ore industry. So you've got Fortescue, you got bhp, you've got Rio Tinto, you've got Gina Reinhardt, who's Australia's richest woman, all mining iron ore out there. And they're making, I mean it's probably one of Australia's most valuable economic zones. The sheer scale of what they mine there, there with these massive trucks and they put it all in the trains down to the Port Hedland and export it mostly to China and Japan and other places. And they make squillions and squillions of dollars. But one of them, Fortescue, which is owned by Andrew Forrest, who's become a bit of a green energy evangelist and he set this target of real zero by 2030. By 2030, that's just five years away. And so real zero for his terrestrial operations means basically at the Moment, moment it's 1% renewables for everything. Okay, 1%. It's the, probably the most polluting part of Australia. And he's saying no, in my mind he's got about four, four or five really big mines. He wants to go to 100 renewable for the power and everything. Electric for transport, for the, all the machinery, the excavators, the bulldozers and these massive 274 ton trucks which have these 18 megawatt hour batteries. I mean the batteries weigh 44 tons.
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Robert Llewellyn
Are they 18. They're 18 megawatt hour batteries.
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Giles Parkinson
Yeah, that's right, yeah. And these. And I think because they bought out the old Williams, not the racing team, but the sort of the, the research organization behind the old Williams racing team. And they've been developing these fast chargers, you know, which 6 megawatt charges I think they're working on at one stage. So just really just sort of thumping this, you know, the amount of power into these batteries and they're still playing around with how all this looks and how it works. And when they charge and, and where you put the charging stations, do they do it when they're loading or unloading, things like that? But they're rolling out the first ones now. And these just massive machines, I mean, God, you know, you know, they're. It's extraordinary and it's just really fascinating to see his ambition to arrive at real0 by 2030 and compare it to his peers BHP and Rio Tinto who like to make nice noises about emissions and things like that, but going, oh no, no, no, the technology is not quite ready, we've got to go too slow. Or you get someone like Gina Reinhardt who says, well, climate change is a hoax and burning coal is good and things like that. They're all grouped together in the same place and they've all got completely different views on it. It's like a little microcosm, but it's actually really important. And if he can get to real zero or even get close to it by 2030, that I think is going to be a bit of a game changer for the discussion about what's possible and what's not.
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Robert Llewellyn
I mean, it's also, I mean that stuff is also, you know, it's going to be the economics as well that will start to shift the argument even for the Reinhardt's of the world, is that, you know, if you can produce effectively, which is what he will do, I'm assuming, produce your own fuel, which is, you know, you'll have a massive solar farm and batteries, that's what you use to charge your vehicles. Because at the moment you've got to ship that diesel in, you know, they're not like in a suburb where there's a diesel filling station on the corner that's already there, you know, 9 billion.
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Giles Parkinson
Liters of diesel a year, they ship in. Wow, you can imagine that.
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Robert Llewellyn
So that's by train then presumably, but.
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Giles Parkinson
On big train truck and yeah, whatever.
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Robert Llewellyn
Just people with buckets.
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Giles Parkinson
People with buckets.
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Robert Llewellyn
It's just a bucket chain from the, from the coast.
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Giles Parkinson
It's only a couple hundred kilometers, it'll get there.
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Robert Llewellyn
Nine billion, nine billion liters. I mean it just is insane.
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Giles Parkinson
So he's going, I think we can save money on this or something like that. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
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Robert Llewellyn
So I mean obviously the investment.
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Giles Parkinson
Hang on, 9 billion. I'm going to correct myself. It's 900 million. I got excited 900. Almost a billion liters. But that's just Fortescue itself. So with all those ones. Yeah, that's just one of them. So it'll be several billion.
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Robert Llewellyn
Sorry, I must correct myself. Yeah, no, well done, well done.
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Giles Parkinson
That's.
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Robert Llewellyn
I just want to point out to the ladies and gentlemen listening and watching, that's called journalism.
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Giles Parkinson
Absolutely.
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Robert Llewellyn
It's not what I do. I'd say 900 billion and just wait.
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Giles Parkinson
For the official check.
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Robert Llewellyn
It's right.
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Good to have a real journalist. J. It does help. I try. But that is. But that is quite an ambition to do that, you know, in five years. I mean, because it's an easy thing to say but I mean it's a colossal. A colossal undertaking because he'll have a lot of trucks basically. There's a lot of diggers, a lot of bulldozers, a lot of earth mover.
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Giles Parkinson
Well, there's 400 of these 274 ton trucks.
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Robert Llewellyn
Wow. Yeah, wow.
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Giles Parkinson
And they've already done the excavators and they're already doing some of the lighter vehicles and they're starting to roll out some of the other technology in there. They've built two solar farms, building another one. Got plans for a really, really big one. Got plans for a really big wind farm.
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They've bought out this Spanish company with these. These sort of. It's bizarre. It's got these, you know like cranes in. In buildings. You see, they sort of lift themselves up to the top of the building. And this is.
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Robert Llewellyn
Oh yeah.
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Giles Parkinson
Of actually having this using the same technology to lift turbines up further. Ah.
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Robert Llewellyn
So you don't need a massive crane to lift it. It kind of lifts itself.
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Giles Parkinson
It lifts itself and that means it gets to. You mean you. You need less concrete, you need less steel and you get up higher to where the wind resources better and because you're in the middle of nowhere, like you know, a couple hundred kilometers from the nearest home apart from the mining camps then.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
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Giles Parkinson
You in principle not bothering.
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Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. I've got to do a quick anecdote of how a British ignorant person dealt with his first night sleeping out in the desert. Which was on my first visit with two amazing friends, one of whom I'm seeing this evening actually. But.
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And I was sort of lying down on. I don't. On my. What's it called? The bed that you roll out the gun. Whatever that was. It was. It was amazing in the middle. This is about 250km out of Alice Springs. So it was proper. Proper desert. It was weird. And I've never been anywhere like.
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Giles Parkinson
It's called a swag in Australia. A swag.
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Robert Llewellyn
I was lying in my swag.
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Giles Parkinson
You don't say that often in England.
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Robert Llewellyn
No, I was lying in the swag. But I was terrified because I've never seen that many stars. I didn't know there were that many stars. You know, that, that talk about no light pollution. But I did say, what if the mad axman walks past and they just looked at me like you said. They said the nearest mad axman is probably 150 to 200 kilometers away. There's no one living.
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Giles Parkinson
Yes.
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Robert Llewellyn
And, you know, within like 500 kilometers of where we are, you know, so don't worry about Mad X Men. But, you know, there's a whole other lot of stories about not knocking my boots out in the morning in case there was, you know, scorpion in it or whatever. But, yeah, it was, it was an adventure that was. Was very memorable anyway. But that's. Yeah, that's the. There's quite the thing. I think the point I was trying to make very badly is there's quite a lot of Australia with not a lot of people in it that would complain about wind turbines.
- [25:43]
Giles Parkinson
Yes, yes.
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Robert Llewellyn
In those places.
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Giles Parkinson
Never, never underestimate the ability of a complete person to complain about wind turbines. We're constantly getting reports in New South Wales. If you have 50 opponents to a wind turbine application, it's got to go to this independent panel. And almost every time, 90% of them come from more than 100 kilometers away. Way.
- [26:03]
Robert Llewellyn
Right. Where they can't possibly see them or have.
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Giles Parkinson
Well, no, but it doesn't stop me complaining about the views.
- [26:08]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:09]
Giles Parkinson
Just in case one day they might drive past.
- [26:18]
Robert Llewellyn
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- [26:51]
I'm just going through my list of favorite Australian topics. Pickup trucks, Utes. So I've really noticed this. I mean, that has happened since. It just seems to have happened this year. The. The BYD shark, you know, which I'd seen. I think we had one at the show in Sydney. So I'd seen them and I knew they existed. I'd never seen one out in the wild. Everywhere I look, I look down a side street and there's two parked There, there's one just gone past me. I mean, they, they must have shifted some sharks.
- [27:18]
Giles Parkinson
They've shifted some sharks. Yeah, several thousand of them actually.
- [27:21]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [27:22]
Giles Parkinson
This is the big untapped market in Australia and will really be the tipping EV market in Australia. So, you know, we've kind of, we kind of got to 10% and we got slightly over it. We've fallen back behind and there's lots of different reasons for that which we could possibly go into. But the big, the big part of the new car market in Australia is everyone seems to want to drive a ute. I don't quite understand why, but everyone says they do or people like to go camping. Two, you can pretend they're your trade vehicles so you can get a tax deduction of them, you know, a lease and stuff like that, and people just seem to like them. So. But there's not much, much out there in full electric utes. There's a couple of Chinese models. There's a new one coming in called the Musso, which is done by, I think. Yes, gac. There's been another one which didn't go down well because it just wasn't strong enough for. Right. And the Shark is a plug in.
- [28:10]
Robert Llewellyn
Hybrid, but it's got a fairly decent battery and sort of not embarrassing electric range.
- [28:16]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah, look, it does 100 kilometers, I think, you know, fully electric or maybe a bit less if it's loaded up. But, but that's still. That's not a lot better. I mean, that's most people's daily Trav. Yeah, so that's good. And look, and it's proved really popular. I know someone who's just recently driven one around Australia as much as he could. Fully electric.
- [28:37]
So, so they gained out. Look, and Australians, look, they have been, unfortunately, because of the media here, they have been taught to like hybrids and to fear battery electrics because, you know, range anxiety, which is more like charger anxiety. Well, you know, will I get to this next town and will the, will the, will the charger work?
- [28:54]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, you know. Yeah.
- [28:55]
Giles Parkinson
So, yeah, that's kind of what, that's what's in their head at the moment is I have a hybrid because I'll run out of power and I'll be isolated in the middle of nowhere and that's no good.
- [29:04]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, the topic I wanted to bring up there is the. I mean, I just can't quite believe they'll do it. But the, to that Toyota are talking about introducing a fully electric Hilux because that's, you know, that was certainly One of the things I noticed, particularly in Queensland, I mean, the, you know, Utes are popular, but the most popular seems to be the Hilux. That's the most common one you see, you know, around the streets. It's out in the bush or whatever.
- [29:28]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah, well, thank goodness for that because, I mean, yeah, Toyota have been a destructive or resistance force around the world and in Australia, they've pushed this hydrogen stuff for a long time. I think they're finally admitting now that that's actually not going to be a thing. So let's finally get out the battery electrics and, you know, they're going to. Yeah, we've had one full electric vehicle From Toyota, the BX4X or whatever it's called, which is, you know, hasn't been a star, but it's got a few sales. I think the next one's coming in two years time.
- [29:59]
Rushing them out. But look, it's good that they're actually talking about the highlights going electric. Yes, that would be good. Yeah.
- [30:05]
Robert Llewellyn
But actually, I did a quick check just before we started talking about public charging, because I have. Do you. I've used charges here. I've driven up and down that. The kind of eastern coastal strip a few times now. And I mean, I've charged. I've never not been able to charge and I mean, my frustration has been having a British phone with apps that don't work on it. You know, there's a. There's. There's been some grit in the gears, there's no question. And when you have to rely on an app. But the ones that I have been able to access have always worked and they've always been fine, you know, so it's not that. But what. There is a bit of a stark difference. So the UK has 86,798 public charts charge points. These are all rapid charges at 44,142 locations. That is. I didn't know that. That sounds like. Well, it sort of sounds like quite a lot. I mean, there are a lot of them around. Australia has 4,000 public charge points across 1,200 locations. So that can kind of puts it in a bit of a stark contrast that, you know, because it's so much bigger here.
- [31:03]
Giles Parkinson
But.
- [31:03]
Robert Llewellyn
But you. I mean, you also don't need them as much.
- [31:08]
I mean, eight. I can't believe that. Number 80. This is from ZapMap, who are very reliable, who are the kind of one, the best app to use to find a charger in the uk when they're very. Yeah, they update all the time, like every minute they're updating.
- [31:22]
Giles Parkinson
But. Well, we just had a story published today in China. They've got 4 million million public charging stations, right? Yeah, I think 18 million in total. But I think 4 million is fast charge DC, fast charging or something which is just such an extraordinary number. But you know, they're a big country, huge population, a heck of a lot of EVs. I mean you've probably been there more recently.
- [31:44]
Robert Llewellyn
Amazing. Yeah.
- [31:45]
Giles Parkinson
Yes.
- [31:45]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [31:45]
Giles Parkinson
Yes. Well, I was last there in 1982 and there weren't many EVs then but anyway.
- [31:54]
Robert Llewellyn
But no, I've. Okay. So I've just come back from Tasmania. I just stayed with a mate in Tasmania which was lovely, very beautiful. But I just saw the story about the eco ferry and you just go what? The who What? Well also because I was in Tasmania early this year with the giant electric ferry that's been built for. For South America which is just like breathtaking. Pushing the boundaries of technology. Technology. It does work. It's doing sea trials now. It goes along, it can carry. I don't know what it is, two and a half thousand passengers, a thousand cars or something and 800 cars, you know, I mean it's a big, it's not a little practice boat. It's huge. It's a ship. But what's this bloody ferry with? It's using wood chip. I don't even know. I don't even know how to talk about it. I don't even know. Where do you start?
- [32:41]
Giles Parkinson
I don't where to start. Well, it's Tasmania for a start. So I'm. Tasmania is a bit of a sort of left hand and right hand thing. They recently there's a very well known ferry that goes from Melbourne to Tasmania. I can't remember what it's called now but it's, it's. And they upgraded it and they ordered a much bigger ferry but someone forgot to increase the size of the dock so it can't actually go there because it's too big.
- [33:06]
Yeah, seriously.
- [33:07]
Robert Llewellyn
But they spent that much money making the boat, building the ship presumably built.
- [33:11]
Giles Parkinson
In, in Scandinavia and just behind before it left they said where's it going to dock and going. Oh, I hadn't thought about that one. Anyway, so.
- [33:19]
Robert Llewellyn
So look.
- [33:20]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah, as you say in Cat, which is a Tasmanian company on the Derwent rivers making these fantastic electric ferries. They've made a couple now. They're making the world's biggest. And there's this lovely. We've actually been on this boat to Mariah island, which is just.
- [33:34]
Robert Llewellyn
So this is the ferry we're talking about? Yeah, absolutely.
- [33:36]
Giles Parkinson
From Australia. Nice little ferry, lovely country company. But for some reason they've looked at this and gone, oh, no, electric propulsion doesn't work. We're going to go with replacing our fuel with a me. A. A methanol fuel. The problem with this methanol is that it's going to come from a new plant which is only going to be built in the next couple of years. But this plant, it's. Mrs. Collins, you know, this whole thing about biomass and I struggle with biomass and stuff like that.
- [34:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, God, it's hard to work, hard to love.
- [34:04]
Giles Parkinson
And. And this one in particular, it's, you know, they're proposing using wood waste, which in Tasmania, essential wood chips from native forests. So those huge trees that you saw biggest in the world of their type, which are being chopped down despite many protests, chopped up for wood chips and then fit into a stove to power. It's just ridiculous.
- [34:27]
Robert Llewellyn
It's just heartbreaking because, I mean, if you chop down a tree and you build a house with it or furniture or something, you could. At least you've got a vague excuse that it's being used for a long time. But to ship it and burn it, I mean, that's what's happening in the uk. It is finally stopping. We've got Drax B is big power station in north of England that uses. That's gone eco and green by not importing coal from Poland, but importing wood chips from Canada, Western Canada. So the transportation alone is just bonkers.
- [34:57]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah. Fuel miles, it's just ridiculous.
- [34:59]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that. So is. So the ferry itself will have like a diesel engine there.
- [35:06]
Giles Parkinson
We were on it a couple of years ago and it's a beautiful island.
- [35:09]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [35:10]
Giles Parkinson
And I recommend anyone to. To go there if they're ever in the Tasmanian area. Tragic story about the first settlers and. And the indigenous nations, but look stunningly beautiful, you know, landscape wise. But yeah. Now they've obviously just decided that the easiest things to do is just put in sort of cleaner fuels, which is kind of what a lot in the shipping industry and the aviation industry are doing. They go, let's have renewable or sustainable fuel, which sounds like a really good idea, unless you plod down to it and you discover it's wood chips rather than something else. Yeah, you know, so, yeah, yeah.
- [35:43]
Robert Llewellyn
Here'S a good one because this is a great story. These are all stories for me. So sorry, because you're just. But they're new to us, but 160,000 fines have been imposed for people parking combustion cars in. In EV charging bays.
- [35:58]
Giles Parkinson
That's actually in the uk. That's actually your. That's actually your town territory. You've done that?
- [36:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes, yes, we've fined people. There we go. That shows that. Well researched. I did that. So that's why I'm not a journalist.
- [36:10]
Giles Parkinson
No, look, what it doesn't say is that160,000 people have been fined for. I guess you call it icing. We call it icing over.
- [36:17]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, we call it iced. Was a Twitter for a long time.
- [36:21]
Giles Parkinson
And how many times do you turn up somewhere and there's a great big. You what? In Australia you usually see a big.
- [36:26]
Robert Llewellyn
Ute or four wheel drive somewhere.
- [36:29]
Giles Parkinson
How many of those fines are being paid? I don't know. So.
- [36:31]
Robert Llewellyn
Right, right.
- [36:32]
Giles Parkinson
But look, they had to do it because it was just getting out of.
- [36:35]
Robert Llewellyn
You know, it did get out of control. I mean, and it is something I've noticed a distinct reduction in the amount of times I've stopped at a charger and had to stretch the cable over the bonnet of. It's always a black BMW, but it's parked at an odd angle. Don't know why. Maybe it's the same one, just follows me around. But I mean I haven't had that experience in a long time.
- [36:54]
Giles Parkinson
I mean the fine to having an impact.
- [36:56]
Robert Llewellyn
So maybe the finds having an impact. There we go. There's me with my collection of Australian stories. But this one's about the uk.
- [37:03]
Giles Parkinson
That's right. We didn't want to tell anyone in the headline, otherwise they might not click on it.
- [37:06]
Robert Llewellyn
So. Yeah.
- [37:10]
Now here's a story that has intrigued me only because I actually interviewed Chris Bowen at the Sydney show earlier this year who was. I have to say I was very impressed with him. I mean, I don't know anything about his broader politics or Australian politics is still a bit of a mystery to me. But he was, he seemed to walk the walk. I mean he was, you know, he drives electric cars, he has solar panels, he's got batteries. You know, he does the thing and he definitely knew what he was talking about. But there's this. So there's some move to. To bring COP31 to Australia in. COP31 will be next year. Has COP just finished or it's just finishing.
- [37:48]
Giles Parkinson
Brazil has just about to wrap up. I think it's got another two days as we're recording this. Look, breaking news on Robert. Australia. Australia has missed out.
- [37:56]
Robert Llewellyn
All right. Okay.
- [37:57]
Giles Parkinson
Yes, it's off to Turkey. Bowen has dealt himself into the equation. He will be. He'll play a key role in sort of this new title called President of Negotiations. So basically, Turkey will host it. They refused to budge.
- [38:11]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [38:11]
Giles Parkinson
And Australia just said, well, look, this is getting. You know, the default thing was going to Germany, and the Germans made it very clear they didn't want to host it. So Australia just said, okay, if Turkey really wants it, we'll go there, but we'll cut it. Deal. So they're going to do a big meeting in the Pacific, which is really important for this region. One that's focused on finance and adaptation, things like that.
- [38:29]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [38:29]
Giles Parkinson
They still push for some sort of trade fair, which these things are often linked to in Australia. Whether that happens or not, I do not know. But essentially the whole thing will be in Turkey. But Bowen and presumably other Australian diplomats and. And public servants will be playing a key role in just trying to sort of get together. So some. Some sort of consensus at the conference. And I'm not really too sure what's going to be on the agenda next year, but it's been that hard just to agree on where it's going to be held. You can imagine what it's like to actually agree on something.
- [39:00]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, it is a. It is. I think it's sort of. Yeah, definitely coming. Well, just simply the fact that every year, the story every year is how many more fossil fuel lobbyists are attending than anyone else. I mean, it's basically a big fossil fuel conference with some environmentalists that are sitting on the edge. I mean, it's just incredible how blatant that is and how completely. It doesn't matter. You know, it's fine. Yeah, of course there'd be fossil fuel lobbyists. And the problem.
- [39:23]
Giles Parkinson
And the problem with that is that, you know, under the UN sort of regime, everything has to be done by consensus. So you get 193 countries agreeing and you get one saying, I don't agree. And, you know, it kind of holds the whole thing to. To hostage or to ransom, however you want to call it. But yeah, it's. I went to eight of these things up Paris and I swore I'd never go to another one. Oh, my God.
- [39:49]
Robert Llewellyn
I don't know how you did it. I mean, Paris was kind of historic. I mean, it's a good one to end on.
- [39:53]
Giles Parkinson
Oh, yeah. No, and they're fantastic. They were sort of vibrant, they were uplifting, they were fascinating. At the same time, they were exhausting, frustrating and. And, you know, once you've been to a Couple of them, you just go, that's it. Let's just take more than two weeks out of my life. And it's just, you know, but such an important thing at times, really uplifting a fascinating mixture when as you said, the fossil fuel lobbyists, the governments, the people really trying to do something and, and, and, and, and, and the public, you know, the, they're allowed inside and it's just this extraordinary mixture of. Yeah, it's, it's, it's.
- [40:32]
Robert Llewellyn
The only one I've ever been to was the Glasgow one a few years ago, which was unbelievable. I, I was really, you know, I didn't, I didn't really have any preconceptions but it was very, very impressive and I met the most amazing people, people there from all around the world. I mean they were, that was very noticeable, you know, that little. We weren't staying in a flash hotel which is but a central hotel. And then you go down in the lobby and you go oh blimey. You know, I've seen him on a podcast. Oh my God, that's her, that's that bloke.
- [41:01]
And none of them have been on a reality TV show. They've all actually done something quite useful.
- [41:09]
Yeah, but yeah, well that was great. Amazing because I was going to mention, mentioned Paris because you know, I sort of shrugged and given. I remember a lot of people I knew went to Copenhagen which was meant to be the big thing and it was an absolute flop, it was an absolute disaster and everyone came back really.
- [41:24]
Giles Parkinson
Depressed and miserable and yes, I was in Copenhagen where. You're right, yes, yes. And that was fascinating too. And basically, I mean it's fascinating one because they had a conference center which could hold 15000 people but 25000 people, 10 turned up. So every morning and it was Copenhagen and it was late November and every morning it was freezing. There was snow and ice on the ground and there's be these cues snaking out of the convention center first thing in the morning as people walk in and you walk down that queue and you saw the head of such and such investment bank. You saw the head of some department, you saw the head of this company, you saw all of this and then there was all these Moonies and other people just trying to sort of get, hand them out sort of croissants and, and, and other.
- [42:07]
Was quite, it was quite, it was, it was fascinating but just a complete melting point. Yeah, the melting pot, it was. Yeah, yeah, it was.
- [42:18]
Robert Llewellyn
Let's, we've got to talk about this Fella from Queensland. Because every now and then there was a wonderful politician. I can't remember his name now.
- [42:27]
Giles Parkinson
Peterson.
- [42:28]
Robert Llewellyn
No, no, because I do, I do know a bit about him. No, this is post BJ Peterson. But.
- [42:34]
What it was was someone had said, said there's, there's gay. You know, of course there's gay people in every profession in Australia including Australian rules or whatever the, the footy, Australian footy. And this guy said if there's a. If there's a. Of course used slightly different language. If there's a gay player in this football team, I'll walk backwards to book. And this was a quote that my mother in law had to explain to me where, where Burke was. You know, it's a long way.
- [43:04]
Giles Parkinson
It's a long way. The back of Burke. Yes. Back.
- [43:08]
Robert Llewellyn
A book. Yeah. I walked backwards, you know, whatever the hell. And I went. There's Queensland, you know, in a nutshell. But it is, there's lots of amazing, lovely, very progressive people in Queensland. But this guy possibly. I say can you do Jared, what's his name? Jared Blake.
- [43:22]
Giles Parkinson
Jared Blair. It's a, it's a sort of a Dutch spelling. Yes, yes, right.
- [43:27]
Robert Llewellyn
Of course it is.
- [43:28]
Giles Parkinson
Yes. He's the, he's the new planning man, Minister. And.
- [43:33]
Let me put this in the sort of the, the, the politest way I could possibly say it and the most advised way I can possibly say it. He's an Elvis impersonator.
- [43:46]
Robert Llewellyn
We're gonna have to bleep this.
- [43:49]
Giles Parkinson
If you, if you see a picture of him and you see his little sort of thing.
- [43:55]
He keeps the. Whatever it's called at the front of his thing. But.
- [44:00]
He really doesn't like wind and solar farms and he has rejected some, you know, monster wind projects, you know, more than 1 gigawatt, you know, quite big ones that had been approved by the previous government. And he's taken such a delight and a pride of you know, canceling these projects and basically this is what happens when you get an Ellen. Well, it's a conservative government. The labor government had been there for six or seven years. Australia is the country's most coal dependent state. It was slow. Queensland.
- [44:29]
Robert Llewellyn
Queensland.
- [44:29]
Giles Parkinson
Queensland. Yeah. Sorry, yeah. What did I say?
- [44:31]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [44:32]
Giles Parkinson
Anyway.
- [44:34]
Queensland was. Yeah. And, and had finally got this plan to accelerate and just a whole bunch of projects up there to really sort of, you know, accelerate that transition. It had locked in targets for renewables. 85%, 80% by 2035. And the LMP, the Conservative governments come in and just will basically torn everything up and, and.
- [44:54]
It'S frustrating to see and this is despite the biggest company in Queensland and the biggest energy user and the biggest employer is Rio Tinto. It's got these massive aluminum smelters and aluminium refineries in a city called Gladstone, which is kind of like the hub of coal and gas exports. But it's got these, you know, aluminium and alumina export facilities and refineries. It's now powered by one of the biggest coal fired power station in the state. But it has said, said these assets have no future if we can't transfer all of this from coal power to renewables by the end of the decade. Wow.
- [45:29]
Robert Llewellyn
And so the companies, this is the companies that make this.
- [45:32]
Giles Parkinson
So this is the biggest company, this is the biggest employer, the biggest LNG users in the state, uses 10% of the thing and it's saying we've got to go to renewables and we've locked in all these contracts and you know, with wind farms, solar farms, solar and battery hybrids. And yet you've got this new government saying, no, we can't do that, we must go back to coal. Right. You know, right. And these companies and saying, you're saying, are you serious? You know, can't be.
- [45:55]
Robert Llewellyn
Because I mean, also I'm assuming that the coal asset, the actual assets, the coal burning power plants are not new. I mean they're probably in their latter years now or are they relatively new in Queensland?
- [46:07]
Giles Parkinson
They're the, they've got the youngest fleet. So they're 30 years old as opposed to say more than 40 years old.
- [46:14]
For the rest of the country. And the ones in the rest of the country in Victoria, New South Wales are really clapped and Western Australia, they're clapped out. They've got to be closed in the next five to 10 years in Queensland argues now we can probably go another 10 or 15 years.
- [46:27]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [46:27]
Giles Parkinson
But look, you know, I mean, you know, this climate change, this rising emissions, we've actually got to do something about it. So. Yes, and Rio Tinto has decided that it's most economic option in the same way that Fortescue, you know, Andrew Forrest with Fortescue up in the Pilbar, as we discussed at the start, his most economic option is to go electric, to go renewables.
- [46:50]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [46:50]
Giles Parkinson
But. So it's just this sort of fascinating clash. But this man, J. Blay, he, yeah, he's, he's been very, he's been very frustrating just simply because of the absolute sheer pleasure he's taken from canceling these things and.
- [47:03]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, well, it's Also, I mean, what's so tragic about it? It is a kind of. It's a purely political decision, as opposed to even a political and economic one.
- [47:13]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah.
- [47:14]
Robert Llewellyn
You know, you could maybe make an argument. There might be an economic argument you. You could try and make. But what is becoming blatantly apparent is that the economics of extracting coal, transporting it, burning it, dealing with coal ash, forget CO2, forget all the other issues. That's expensive. And then you put in a solar farm and you've got electricity. Yeah. You know that all the cost is up front and then you've got electricity and you've. And the cost of, you know, if the cost of batteries had gone up in the last 15 years, there's really good economic arguments to keep on digging up coal and burning it, but the cost of batteries has dropped through the floor. I mean, it's just.
- [47:52]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah.
- [47:52]
Robert Llewellyn
You know, they've become an economic. They are an economic viable system to have solar, wind and batteries is now economically viable and increasingly so. So that's. So you can stand up and rant all you like about, you know, the beautiful, beautiful clean coal and you can.
- [48:10]
Giles Parkinson
Hold it up in Parliament as they do.
- [48:14]
Robert Llewellyn
But, you know, I don't know, there's got to be a sporting analogy. You're batting at a soggy wicket. That's as good as I can get. That shows you the depth of my sport understanding of sport.
- [48:27]
That man standing on a soggy bit. Anyway. Yeah, no, it's very depressing. I mean, it's kind of funny because he's a kind of weird character and, you know. But it isn't funny.
- [48:36]
Giles Parkinson
No, it's not funny. We're talking about billions of dollars of investment that may not happen now, and we're talking about a transition that won't happen. And we're talking about probably higher prices because of it and possibly less reliable supply because one of the, you know, a couple of their coal, their generators. I mean, they're supposed to be one of the youngest fleets, but, you know, two of them just exploded. Literally. Literally, you know.
- [48:56]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, they break down.
- [48:57]
Giles Parkinson
They broke down and quite spectacularly. I mean, they just go boom. I mean, they've had problems. They spent hundreds of millions repairing them and then they went boom again.
- [49:07]
So it's. Look, it's nuts and it's just frustrating.
- [49:10]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, yeah. Let's just quickly. I mean, running out of time, but just quickly about electric vehicle sales. I mean, what if one thing we could see in our little microcosm of the. The event spent in Melbourne was an Enormous amount of interest from the general public, particularly on the Sunday. It was a really fascinating change in sort of audience makeup but you know, big interest in electric vehicles. The P. Everyone who came there knew that's what was there. You know they came along to test drive them and the Tesla, you know, FSD test drives were extraordinary and they did. They actually ended up doing more than they expected and they're, they're target was fairly high but you know that it was a. So. But that. But on the whole though, sales have, have dropped or have plateaued.
- [49:59]
Giles Parkinson
They've kind of been going up and down and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is the poor performance of Tesla. So Tesla basically historically was the first one to the market and dominated the market like it only happened basically in the United States. Australia's got no manufacturing industry anymore so Tesla accounted for about 60% of sales. Sales right now it's fallen. And Tesla's look, I suppose at best you could say they've been static. Yeah, they've been falling. One, they haven't really introduced any new models. We don't have the.
- [50:31]
Robert Llewellyn
Cybertruck, they've had.
- [50:34]
Giles Parkinson
The refresh of the three and the, and the Y but they haven't grown sales. I think there's been a bit of a pushback to Elon Musk's politicking as you've seen in the UK and Germany on the other hand hand there's no other market in the world, well, Western market in the world that has as much off as many offerings from the Chinese manufacturers. So if you think about Europe and particularly North America, Chinese car makers are blocked by tariffs and things like that. Not in Australia. So we're getting an extraordinary number of Chinese brands, some of which you've never heard of and some of them, some of which would sound like they made up the names yesterday at, you know, over lunch. Yeah, and, and they're actually really quite interesting. And then, and look it's hard for these brands who you've never heard of before to come in and get a stake in the market. But, but people are warming to them and, and that's where the growth in the market is coming. It's coming from these new players. So it's the, it's the byds of the world, it's the Gillies X paying all those. Yeah. Z, they're probably the least leading ones but also you're starting now to see. And because we've got these new vehicle emission standards, you're now starting to see the legacy players like Toyota but probably more interestingly, Nissan and Taiwan die and Kia rolling out more electric vehicles. VW is actually starting to do quite well in Australia. Was very slow to come here but is now doing better. So they're, you know, we just, you know, we've gone from having like about, well just Teslas and Nissan Leafs and to, you know, about 20 vehicles to now well over 100 and probably heading was 150. Just the sheer number of options, different models. Yeah, and, and lower price ones too. So you know, we're now starting to see our first cars down around $25,000 or even less, which is incredible. Yeah, well that's right.
- [52:25]
Robert Llewellyn
You know, I mean that was one of the things where Jack and I walked around the show, you know, when it was just, I think it had just opened on the Friday and it wasn't, it was just filling up and we, and we. He had all the prices, prices of the cars on display in Australia but he also had looked up what, you know, I mean many of them aren't available in the UK but all the ones that are at least 10 to 15 thousand dollars more equivalent than they are here, they're much more expensive for the same car. Right hand drive. Yes. Just like why is that, why is that one so much cheaper here? So you're definitely blessed in that way that, that you know, you've got these incredible vehicles about available. I mean I think that's, I mean I've said it before many times but I mean I think the thing that is now accepted globally, but particularly in the Automotive industry is 15, 20 years ago if you saw a Chinese built car, it was, it's the same story again and again. It's like 30 years before that when you saw a Korean one or 50 years when you saw a Japanese one, they were a bit, oh, they're rubbish, they're not well made. Those cars are beautifully made. Now the Chinese ones, the, the level of sophistication, the quality of the build, the bodywork, the ride, handling, the chassis, all that stuff is, you know.
- [53:42]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah.
- [53:42]
Robert Llewellyn
State of the art really, isn't it? I mean it's amazing.
- [53:44]
Giles Parkinson
Absolutely, absolutely. That's, that's, that's absolutely true. Yeah, it's, it's really, I mean all people really got to get their mind over is these, these new brand names that they haven't come across before. So.
- [53:53]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. Yes. And also remembering them, which is the thing where I struggled because I've been, I've been in a lot of them, I can't remember which one's which not good.
- [54:04]
Giles Parkinson
I think that's a senior moment there, Robert.
- [54:06]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I think I'm afraid it is. I'm very shameful because I've been in the. Whatever the one is. It is amazing in China with Elliot. I wish Elliot was here to tell me what it was. He'd be so ashamed of me. So. But that was the one where it was a bit. It's a luxury saloon. It's not a kind of, you know, it's a high end car. But he said I'll see that there's a pothole up ahead of us. I'm really pleased about this. You watch it. And he drove like absolutely. So we went over it and you heard it just about but you did not feel it. So the car can see the bloody pothole and it adjusts the suspension. So as you go over it the wheel goes down and up and the body stays and it was. So what I heard as we were driving along was.
- [54:43]
Those are the two wheels going through. Just unbelievable. I mean really extraordinary. So. And that's Chinese technology. It's not a Deepal. It's one of those ones that's.
- [54:53]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:55]
Robert Llewellyn
It's probably made by Geely but it's a different brand, you know, because there's so many sub brands of each big brand which is hard to.
- [55:03]
Giles Parkinson
Well that's true, yes. It turns out everything's owned by Geely. So.
- [55:06]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I don't even see. I don't even know how to say no, you.
- [55:10]
Giles Parkinson
But you might be right. You might be right. Let's just, let's leave that one out there. I'm not too sure.
- [55:17]
Robert Llewellyn
That's great. So just before we finally stop. So what is there a thing, an event, a car, a development.
- [55:28]
A renewable thing that you're kind of intrigued by, looking forward to wondering what's going to happen that you know, that's not happened quite yet.
- [55:35]
Giles Parkinson
Yeah. Look, there's probably two things. One's vehicle to grid.
- [55:39]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes. And the arrival of that.
- [55:40]
Giles Parkinson
So you know there's a few people. We talked about home batteries at the start of this show. You're starting to see these batteries or you know, these stackable batteries that people are not putting small batteries into the house, they're putting these really big batteries in the house and. And of them have. With EV charges and bi directional charging and things like that. So you know we're starting to see the retailers trying to get their mind around. Well how do we, you know, how do we process there? How much do we pay these people for exporting Power back to the grid. Some of them are really innovative and, and you know, offering a lot of money back. You know, you can charge, you know, you can get paid to charge in the middle of the day and you can get paid to put the, the, the power back into the grid. This is from your car. So.
- [56:19]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [56:20]
Giles Parkinson
So how that works and how that works out, I mean it's, it's easy to do that on pilot basis and trials. How that does works out when it's spread out.
- [56:28]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [56:29]
Giles Parkinson
Then that's a different sort of thing. So that's really exciting. Look, for me, I just think what we're starting to see the emergence of these, what's called, these solar battery hybrids because those two technologies, their costs have come down and still coming down. We've got so much sun here. We're starting to see the first of these big batteries, these big solar farms with their own batteries behind the meter and they're basically not necessarily, necessarily sort of part of that duck curve in the middle of the day. They're just putting it in the box and then they're sending it back to the grid in the evening after dinner.
- [56:57]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [56:57]
Giles Parkinson
And sometimes through the night. And this is really interesting for those big companies like Rio Tinto, some of them, they might have factories and manufacturing shifts which go from the daytime and in the evening. These things are perfect for that. So I think we're going to see a big shift in, in that. And we've seen the first of these rolling out in the next year or so, but there's about 20 being built, so that's really interesting. And the other one is, we talked about South Australia. 157 renewables, 100% renewable target, you know, net renewables by 2027 in Western Australia, which is, which is a huge state where the pillar is at the top of the state. But it's got this isolated grid. It's not connected to any other grid. It's the biggest isolated grid in the world.
- [57:38]
Robert Llewellyn
Wow.
- [57:38]
Giles Parkinson
And it's already reaching 89% renewables at times. So. Wow.
- [57:43]
Robert Llewellyn
Because that's something I don't mention that. Right. That's in.
- [57:47]
Giles Parkinson
Well, if you think about, you know, you probably go back 10 years and you'd probably find, you know, you struggle to find many people who say we could support more than 10 or 20% penetration of solar.
- [57:56]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, God, always. It's always.
- [57:58]
Giles Parkinson
And you can still find that, you know.
- [58:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [58:01]
Giles Parkinson
But this is here, this is the biggest isolated grid in the world, 89% renewables at times. You know, it's average over the years, just over 40. But it's going to change pretty soon because it's. It's last coal fired power stations are going to retire in the next few years. So it's building these really big batteries and it's now, you know, a lot of been rooftop solar. It's going to roll out much more. It's just fascinating to see what they can do in an isolated grid. We've, we've written stories about these big mines, not the big iron or mines like a gold mine which is not connected to the grid in any way. And it's been putting in. They might put in four turbines, about 20 minute megawatts of solar and they're running at an average of 90% renewables.
- [58:44]
Robert Llewellyn
Wow.
- [58:44]
Giles Parkinson
Off grid with a battery, you know, the used diesel is back up, you know, every now and again they're run four or five days at a time with no fossil fuels. Right. And look, if you can do it with a small grid like that, you can do it with a bigger grid.
- [58:58]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [58:58]
Giles Parkinson
A few more. A few more contingencies to manage, of course, but the principle's the same.
- [59:04]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. That's a very optimistic, positive note to end on.
- [59:09]
Giles Parkinson
Yes, let's do it.
- [59:12]
Robert Llewellyn
Let's not end on a really sad. No, that's fantastic. Giles, thank you so much. It's been been, it's as always an absolute pleasure talking to you and it's really interesting to learn all the things that are going on here. So it's been great. I've even learned some things about that going on in the uk. Well, there you go. That's right.
- [59:29]
Giles Parkinson
That's why you can find a parking spot at the charging station now, so. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, I look forward to you driving up the road and popping in for a cup of tea or something, so.
- [59:37]
Robert Llewellyn
Absolutely, we'll definitely do that. All right.
- [59:41]
Giles Parkinson
Okay.
- [59:41]
Robert Llewellyn
Take care of.
- [59:42]
Giles Parkinson
Bye bye.
- [59:49]
Guys.
- [59:49]
Robert Llewellyn
Thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe.
- [59:51]
Giles Parkinson
This thing weighs a ton. Drew Ski, live with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges.
- [59:57]
Robert Llewellyn
I'm not. Of course he did. Right.
- [60:00]
Giles Parkinson
Santa, you know my elf, Drew Ski here, he handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus.
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Robert Llewellyn
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Giles Parkinson
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Robert Llewellyn
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Giles Parkinson
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Robert Llewellyn
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Giles Parkinson
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Robert Llewellyn
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Giles Parkinson
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Robert Llewellyn
Visit t mobile.com really hope you enjoyed that. Really hope that it was informative and interesting even if you're not in Australia. Obviously it will be if you are. And please do tell your friends and neighbors, neighbors and relatives about the Everything Electric podcast and also do subscribe if you haven't done your done so already. It doesn't cost you anything. Helps us makes the podcast more readily available to more people. Always a good thing, never a bad thing. That's it. As always, if you have been thank you for watching.
- [61:18]
Giles Parkinson
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