Another major issue will be addressing the sustainability of city buildings, with the report calling for new policies to replace gas appliances by 2045, electrification of commercial and government buildings, and requiring disclosure of energy efficiency in homes.
Charging
Director of the Resilience Program at the Sydney Committee, Sam Kernaghan, said doing both comes with big social, logistical and political challenges, but it will be worth it in the long run.
“Many Australians are deeply concerned about rising costs of living right now: this research shows that by 2030 household energy costs are modeled to fall significantly with the electrification of cars and homes,” he said.
The report notes that Sydney households in the bottom fifth income bracket spend around 20 per cent of their disposable income on energy costs. This could drop to 5 percent if technologies such as rooftop solar, electric vehicles and batteries are implemented.
By comparison, households in the top quintile spend 3 percent of their disposable income on electricity costs, which could drop to 1 percent if the same technologies were adopted.
“New South Wales climate policies lead the nation, but this research is a wake-up call that Sydney is not headed for net zero; we have a lot of work to do,” Kernaghan said.
He added that industry and government needed to lead by example to speed up the transition and introduce regulatory reform.
“Sydney households in the bottom fifth income bracket are spending around 20 per cent of their disposable income on energy costs.”
The NSW government announced Monday that new homes and renovations costing more than $50,000 will have to meet a 7-star energy efficiency rating from October next year in NSW under improved rules that will force developers to play their part in reducing the state’s emissions.
Large commercial developments, as well as large state projects, will also need to submit a “net zero declaration” showing their buildings are all-electric or can be fully converted to renewable energy by 2035 if they want approval to proceed.
The third solution is to increase the capture of distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, batteries and storage.
The report suggests:
- larger financing packages needed for low-income housing
- offer incentives for property managers to invest in solar energy
- order more sustainable energy resources after 2050
Ausgrid’s chief customer officer, Rob Amphlett Lewis, said the network would play an important role in decarbonizing the economy, and the company would focus on how it could do it quickly while ensuring affordability.
“We know [that] what we do today will have a huge impact on our tomorrow, and it is imperative as an industry that we work together with customers and governments to get it right,” said Lewis.
Federal Deputy Minister for Energy and Climate Change Jenny McAllister said the previous government had done too little to tackle decarbonisation.
“[There have been] long periods where it has been difficult to talk about these issues at the federal level,” he said. “We are 100 days away from the new Labor government, but we are a long way behind where we would like to be, nationally. the [previous] The government had a hard time even pronouncing the word.”
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