Saul Griffith’s wonderful contribution not only spells out a clear vision of a cleaner energy future but also describes a viable pathway to get there. This is a very significant step forward.

Nearly twenty years ago, I wrote a small book for Black Inc., the publishers of Quarterly Essay. In A Big Fix, I said we needed “radical solutions” to the environmental crisis unfolding around us. I argued that significant change required four things. First, there needs to be discontent, without which there is no motivation for change. Second, there needs to be a vision of a better way; unless there is a clear vision, change could make things worse rather than improving the situation. Third, there needs to be a viable path from where we are now to the place we would like to reach. Finally, there needs to be commitment to follow that path, despite predictable opposition from vested interests wanting to continue outdated practices.

Discontent, an awareness that we need to change the way we produce and use energy, has been around for decades. The CSIRO and the Commission for the Future worked together thirty-five years ago on Greenhouse ’88, a program to communicate what science was saying about climate change. At the time, there was broad agreement among our elected governments of the need for change. Then the fossil-fuel industries began a systematic campaign of misinformation, adopting the approach used successfully by the tobacco industry to dissuade timid politicians from action. As Griffith points out, the more subtle misinformation continues to this day, with dishonest claims about “renewable gas,” the ultimate oxymoron, and the spurious need for “baseload power.”

Despite these efforts, discontent has continued to expand. Six independent reports on the state of our environment, at five-year intervals, have called with increasing urgency for action to slow climate change. The election a year ago of Teal independents and Greens members in what had been seen as safe major-party seats demonstrated the level of public concern. The vision of a better way, replacing fossil-fuel electricity with renewable energy such as solar and wind, was clear thirty years ago, but there did not appear to be a viable pathway. At the time, coal-fired electricity was much cheaper than power from solar farms and large wind turbines. The technology has improved rapidly and produced amazing cost reductions. Ten years ago, world average prices were about 8 cents per kWh for gas-fired power, about 11 cents for coal-fired, 14 for wind and 35 for solar. Last year, world average prices for fossil-fuel power were about the same as ten years ago, but the average cost for wind power was 4.1 cents per kWh and for solar farms was 3.7 cents. Remarkably, the Coalition is still holding the telescope to its blind eye, now even calling for a national debate about nuclear power. The cold hard truth is that nuclear power would make no economic sense, even if we were prepared to overlook all its other problems. The world average price of power from nuclear reactors is 16 cents, four times that of wind and solar, with the only three construction projects in western Europe, all years behind schedule and billions over budget.

It now makes economic sense to phase out fossil fuels in favour of renewables with storage. That is the easy part. Griffith correctly recognises that the electricity system only accounts for about a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. To play a responsible role in the global campaign to slow climate change, we also need to tackle the emissions from transport, cooking, manufacturing, space heating and agriculture. While the last sector is the most difficult, The Wires That Bind develops a coherent and credible plan for using renewable electricity to meet all our other energy needs. It builds on the solid technical work in Alan Finkel’s Quarterly Essay, Getting to Zero. Griffith is, like Finkel, an engineer, but the real strength of this new essay is its emphasis on the social factors which will determine whether a transition is possible. The failure of prohibition in the United States and the “war on drugs” everywhere should have taught us that social acceptance is essential to achieve fundamental change. It is futile to try to stop practices that the community wants to continue.

If we are going to achieve the urgently needed transition to clean energy systems, it must be based solidly on widespread understanding of the need to change and the practicality of doing so. As Figure 2 in the essay shows, while the approach by the Albanese government is light years ahead of the decade of inaction under the Coalition, it is still too timid to give us a fighting chance of keeping the increase in average global temperature below 2°C. Our leaders need to be encouraged – literally, given courage – by the community to do what is needed. As I was writing this response, the government released its policy statement about electric vehicles. It is again a significant step forward, but still well behind what most European countries are doing to accelerate the end of petroleum-fuelled vehicles.

Griffith is right to draw attention to the dishonest claims being made by fossil-fuel interests to try to prolong their businesses. Despite decades of funding, schemes for carbon capture and storage have almost all just captured public money. While it is a good thing that small amounts of gas have been replaced by hydrogen produced from solar energy, it would be better if energy were used directly, rather than being wastefully converted, and there is absolutely no prospect of hydrogen replacing more than a small fraction of the gas. We should accept the advice of the International Energy Agency: keeping the increase in average global temperature below 2°C means no new fossil-fuel projects, anywhere, ever, and the accelerated closure of existing activities.

I only noticed one small technical slip in the section on transport, where Griffith says that road damage is proportional to the square of the weight of a vehicle. The landmark study of this question concluded that the damage is more like the fourth power of the axle load, so doubling the weight increases the damage to the surface by a factor of sixteen. That means the entire road maintenance bill is essentially a huge subsidy of road freight. Cleaning up freight transport vehicles is desirable, but it would make more sense to phase out the subsidies that have effectively moved freight from rail and coastal shipping to the roads, increasing both emissions and the numbers killed in transport accidents.

I would like to have seen more emphasis on improving the efficiency of using energy. Griffith notes the inefficiency of our cars, typically weighing more than a tonne to carry a payload less than 100 kilograms. But his section on home-energy needs implicitly accepts inadequate appliance efficiency standards that allow the dumping in Australia of goods that could not legally be sold in Europe. The report on energy efficiency presented to the Howard government twenty years ago showed our emissions could be reduced by 30 per cent, just by changing to cost-effective existing technology. We should be very angry that little has been done to introduce those changes that would put more money in our pockets as well as helping to slow climate change.

Perhaps the most interesting observation in the essay is the comment about the leadership of women. Strikingly, in the 2022 election the Teal independents elected to the House of Representatives were all women, and television crosses to election-night celebrations showed that the great majority of their supporters were also women. Surveys show that women are much more likely to support strong action on climate change than men. Older men are the group most likely to think climate change is not a problem at all. Perhaps it is time for those of us who are male, pale and stale to get out of the way and let women take over the response.

Ian Lowe