Antinuclear

Cheaper, greener power is on the way.

Cheaper, greener power is on the way. As long as anti-net zero populists
don’t throttle it in the cradle. Not that long ago, Mark Purcell, a retired
rear admiral in the Australian navy, was paying about A$250 a month for
electricity in his roomy family home on the Queensland coast.

Today, he says he makes as much as A$300 a month, or nearly $200, from the
electricity he makes, stores and sells with his solar panels and batteries.
“This is the future,” he told me. “This is what the energy transition
could look like for a lot of folks.” Purcell is one of the 58,000-plus
customers of Amber Electric, an eight-year-old Melbourne business that
gives householders access to real-time wholesale power prices so they can
use power when it’s cheap and sell what is stored in their batteries when
it’s expensive.

The company is adding 5,000 customers a month, putting it
among a new generation of fast-growing energy tech start-ups aiming to make
electricity cheaper and greener, and not just in Australia. Amber’s dynamic
pricing technology is due to launch soon in the UK, where the company has
done licensing deals with the energy suppliers Ecotricity and E.On.

Norway’s Tibber offers similar services to the 1mn customers it has gained
since launching in 2016 and expanding to Germany, Sweden and the
Netherlands. In Germany, the market share of companies including Tibber,
Octopus Energy and Rabot Charge has grown from 0.1 per cent in 2023 to 2.4
per cent in 2025, says the Kreutzer Consulting group. Between them they
have more than 1mn customers, 77 per cent of whom are particularly or very
happy with their provider, far more than the industry-wide figure of 57 per
cent.

Remember those figures the next time you hear a rightwing populist
condemn allegedly unaffordable net zero policies. In fact, this new class
of energy tech entrepreneurs is showing how electricity can become more
affordable precisely because of the renewables, batteries and electric cars
that net zero efforts drive.

It is no accident Amber Electric began in
Australia, long a world leader in rooftop solar systems that sit atop more
than 4mn of its homes and small businesses. Its population of 28mn is now
undergoing a home battery boom, following the July launch of a A$2.3bn
government subsidy scheme. Industry estimates show rooftop solar can save
households up to A$1,500 a year on energy bills, a figure that nearly
doubles if you add a battery, and rises further with dynamic pricing. Is
there a catch?

Right now, the upfront costs of green tech can be
considerable. Queensland’s Purcell is a superuser who has spent tens of
thousands of dollars on solar panels, batteries and a home energy
management system that makes everything from his pool heater to his air
conditioners price-responsive. His family also has two Teslas with even
bigger batteries.

This is clearly unaffordable for many, but maybe not for
long. Big home hardware retailers have begun to launch financing plans that
let people pay monthly fees of less than A$150 for solar and battery
packages rather than a big initial outlay.

FT 29th Oct 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/8bf14af2-8c22-4731-ad06-4a36277dff74

November 3, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business, energy