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Amid the ominous warnings about overwhelming heat and overshot targets at this week’s climate change summit in Turkey, the growing focus on electrification is a rare bright spot.
Australia is playing a leading role in pushing forward the so-called “35 by 35″ pledge , which aims to massively boost the use of electricity from renewable sources.
Under the plan, countries would more than triple the rate at which they are transforming energy infrastructure and batteries, and raise the electrification rate for energy use from around 20 per cent to 35 per cent over the next nine years.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has staked his diplomatic reputation on getting the proposal adopted widely at the summit.
The reform is seen as an essential part of the global push to cut emissions by bringing more wind and solar power online in the next decade.
As well as cutting the use of combustible fuels, it is seen as a catalyst for potential investment in innovation and new industries.
A key sticking point is whether the pledge will seek to mandate that new electrification infrastructure like poles, wires and batteries will use only renewable energy, or whether they will, in some cases, be used to prolong the use of fossil fuels.
This feature will likely be up for debate as the talks enter their final week.
It comes days after the United Nations warned that hopes of holding global temperatures below 1.5 degrees – considered a threshold to increasingly dangerous climate change and sea level rise – was sliding out of reach.
The world is moving too slowly, and continued use of fossil fuels remains the elephant in the room in Turkey as it does in every “conference of the parties” that seeks to tackle global warming.
In his final COP address, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on governments to tax fossil fuel profits to fund climate repair, and criticised the “fossil fuel addiction” of developed nations like Australia.
“Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs,” he declared. “The dinosaurs did not have a lobby. Fossil fuels do.”
Critics of the fossil fuel sector are right and, as a major exporter of coal and gas, Australia must take such criticisms on the chin.
We have contributed more than our fair share to global emissions and have benefited as mining wealth has been ploughed back into many of our communities.
This is why it is crucial that we play a constructive role in fixing the issues we contributed to creating.
Electrification is an essential component of our future economy. It will help to free the nation from dependence on finite resources.
As this year’s events in the Middle East show, oil prices are inherently volatile and when petrol prices go up, the ripples travel right across the economy.
Critics will say there is no “middle way” on climate policy: we either fix the problem or we don’t.
The planet’s atmosphere will respond to how much heat-trapping gas is pumped into it, not how much more we might have added.
Yet as Bowen told the Herald this week , building consensus among parties with wildly differing agendas – there are an incredible 92,000 people at the conference and 196 countries are represented – is the only way forward.
It is a thankless task and no one will emerge completely happy with the outcome.
But Australia deserves credit for leading the push and tying its diplomatic reputation to making progress on electrification.
Jordan Baker sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive her Note from the Editor .
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