Antinuclear

This is the vision that European industrial giant Siemens is asking us to conjure up for our transport future. Well, not that far into the future, really. It seems clear to all the major industrial groups around the globe that the world’s energy and transport markets are about to undergo as profound a transformation as the communications industry has experienced over the last two decades, and they are gearing up and retooling their businesses to take advantage. Siemens’ “Picture the Future” series, and its latest focus on mobility, is its attempt to show not just what is possible, but also what might be necessary.

Australia has major issues in overland transportation. It got off to a bad start and never quite recovered. Manufacturers in Melbourne in the 1850s complained that it was cheaper to send goods overseas than to Sydney, and it’s still the case. The lack of investment in road infrastructure means that many of the cities are facing gridlock; emissions from transport are growing rapidly and are the highest per capita in the OECD; passenger vehicles will contribute half of those emissions by 2030 on a business-as-usual profile; and worse, on current projections Australia will have to import more than 90 per cent of its transport fuel needs by 2030, leaving it incredibly exposed to the same vagaries of supply security.

Given this, says Matt Rait, the head of the Picture the Future Mobility research at Siemens, Australia needs to begin a deliberate and widespread push into electrifying its transport network, which means a big push for electric vehicles, but also a much higher ambition for renewable energy deployment. Siemens, Europe’s biggest supplier of energy equipment, which recently dumped nuclear from its portfolio after Germany’s withdrawal, suggests 40 per cent of Australia’s power generation should come from renewables – particularly solar and wind – by 2030.

“We have to remove ourselves away from fossil energy,” Rait tells Climate Spectator in an interview ahead of the official release of the report today. He says EVs and renewable energy would each complement the weaknesses of the other. EVs needed renewables to validate their lower emission profile over internal combustion engines, and renewable energy needed EVs to act as mobile energy storage devices. That, says Rait, will avoid a lot of unnecessary generation investment – particularly in peaking plants. “It will change the whole mix,” he says……