Energy Minister Hon. Chris Bowen addresses Smart Energy Conference, Sydney, 6 May 2026

Well friends, a lot has happened since we gathered here last year. Last time I spoke at this conference it was a couple of days after we just announced our 2025 election commitment of a cheaper home battery policy for Australia. In fact, I wore my Cheaper Home Battery T-shirt for the occasion. A few weeks later, that election, which Peter Dutton had described as a referendum on climate and energy, was decided. Since then, our policy has been smoothly implemented and taken up with gusto by the Australian people. As of today, 380,712 cheaper home batteries have been installed, representing 10.7 gigawatt hours worth of storage.

And since then we’ve achieved our first quarter of renewable energy supplying more than half of our electricity in the last quarter of 2025. So today I want to give you a progress report. A progress report on our sensible, common-sense policies to build more of the fastest to deploy, the cheapest form of energy, which is also more sovereign, more reliable and happens to be the lowest emissions as well.

Now of course there are those who are trying to valiantly jump in the way of this common-sense transition, using any excuse to mount an ideological culture wall against all evidence of the benefits of renewable energy. My friends, they’re losing the argument. They’re losing the argument domestically, with the Australian people embracing this transition. They’re losing the argument in the outer suburbs and regions, with regional Australians and suburban Australians taking up this transition with huge energy, with greater speed than anyone else. And they’re losing the argument in the rest of the world as well, which I’ll touch on in a moment.

But first, the other thing that’s happened since we last gathered was the biggest energy crisis in world history. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has described the impact of this crisis as being as big as the 1970s crisis and the 2022 crisis combined. And of course this has taken a lot of my attention over the last two months. The Foreign Minister of Singapore, Vivian Balakrishnan, has described the war in Iran as, and I quote, an Asian crisis because of the dependence on the straits and foremost of Asian supply chains and of course we are part of that supply chain. But industry and government working together has seen us as well placed as we could be with all expected deliveries of fuel having arrived and an additional 400 million litres of diesel and 100 million litres of jet fuel being procured through government intervention and partnership with industry.

One of the most important things we did on coming to office was create the minimum stockholding obligation so our fuel reserves work better in the Australian interest. It was all press release and no delivery from the former government. Angus Taylor announced he was going to do it, but never got around to doing it. That meant our reserves were still held in Texas. It would have taken 30 days to get here if our stocks were still held there. In contrast, we now have 43 days worth of petrol, 33 days worth of diesel, 28 days of jet fuel right here in Australia. And the Prime Minister and I just an hour or so announced the next stage, which is the development of Australian government-owned fuel reserves for the first time, in addition to our requirements of the private sector. So we now have more fuel in Australia than we did when the Iran crisis began.

Now, of course, there remains uncertainty and risk, and our job is to ensure that Australia is as well placed to navigate those risks as we can be. But there are some who perversely argue that this international crisis is somehow a reminder, in their view, of the need to double down on fossil fuel reliance. To argue it is somehow a sign of the failure of renewables because we had to work hard to keep up the supply of oil, diesel and petroleum in recent weeks. This is a simplistic view, a prejudiced view and completely out of touch with reality. A serious government works hard to ensure the supply of the things we do need right now, like diesel and petrol, in the short term, while working to reduce reliance on them in the longer term. But the behaviour and approach in recent months of the opposition has shown they would not be a serious forward government. They’ve had no constructive suggestions to make since February 28 and they are using, and other commentators as well, every opportunity to argue against renewable energy. No development, domestic or international, that can’t be twisted by dint of warped logic as an excuse to slow the rollout of renewable energy and prolonged reliance on older forms of energy.

But as I said, enough about them, they’re losing the argument. Governments around the world have a different view. The Australian people have a different view. The Australian people voted with their ballots last year, but they’re voting with their decisions each and every day. As part of my progress report, I have good news on electric vehicles. Four years ago, 1 in 50 new cars sold in Australia was an EV. Today we can say that figure is 1 in 4. 27.5%. 27.5% of light vehicle sales in April in 2026 were EVs or plug-in hybrids, up from 1.9% in April 2022. Nearly half of all new light vehicles sold in Australia in April 2026 were electric or plug-in hybrid, up from 1 in 10 in April 2022. 515 Australians bought an EV each and every day in April. The equivalent figure in April 2022 was 29 . Australians went from buying roughly one EV every 50 minutes just four years ago to buying one EV every 3 min in April 2026.

This shift is a combination of good government policy but also of an enthusiastic public. You can have all the incentives you like, but if the public don’t want to take up an offer, they won’t take it up. And in next week’s budget, we are continuing our support for Australians to make the choices they want to make. The EV tax discount will continue this year, unchanged. And from 2027, the full discount will continue to apply to all EVs under $75,000, which will actually encourage companies to send even more affordable vehicles to Australia, below that threshold.

The reason we can do this is the new vehicle efficiency standards, which has required companies to send more affordable models to Australia, increasing choice and lowering running costs. Choice that is important to us. It’s only because of the success in encouraging more affordable models into Australia that we can focus the EV tax discount on those more affordable models. There were no models available for under $40,000 of EVs when we came to office. Now there’s around 10. And measures like the electric car discount have reduced upfront costs for households and businesses with middle-income Australians benefiting the most. Benefits that have been opposed by others.

This is a story of the outer suburbs and middle incomes. The highest take-up of our EV discount in New South Wales is in Kellyville and Rouse Hill. Paramatta is Polestar Parade. Blacktown is BYD Boulevard. I live in Smithfield in Western Sydney. There are EVs all around me. The Australians in the suburbs are taking it up. But I do have to admit one thing. The take-up of EVs pales in comparison to the alacrity with which Australians have taken up Cheaper Home Batteries.

There was a lot of excitement here in this room last year when we announced our Cheaper Home Battery program. We all thought it would work. 12 months later, even the most optimistic and upbeat of us, and I would include myself in that category, must say the Australian people have taken it up with perhaps enthusiasm at the upper end of our expectations. 380,712 home batteries installed, more than 10 gigawatt hours of storage added in less than a year. And of course, this accompanies good progress with the rollout of grid-scale batteries and community batteries as well. The world is adopting batteries in a big way, something I talk to my international colleagues about a lot. But Australia is leading the way in that transition. Battery capacity is expanding rapidly around the world as we speak, but 10%, fully 10% of that increased capacity globally has happened here in Australia. That’s a big deal. We’re not 10% of the world’s economy, not 10% of the world’s population, we are 10% of the world’s new battery activity.

And batteries playing a bigger role in our grid helps reduce bills for everyone, not just those with batteries. I was pleased to see Australia’s progress in batteries called out recently in the respected EMBER Global Electricity Review 2026. Ember wrote, and I’m quoting now, “Australia shows how batteries can quickly reshape power markets once deployed at scale. In quarter 4, 2025, during high-value peak times, 6pm to 8pm, in the NEM, batteries set the price 30% for the time, doubling from 18% in quarter 4, 2024, displacing gas and hydro as prices”. That’s what Ember said. And they also note that we added enough battery capacity in 2025 alone to shift 53% of new solar power added in that year from the middle of the day to the end, the 2nd best result in the world after only Chile.

This success in batteries and EVs is of course part of a broader story of progress. Steady progress. I’ve mentioned already that we passed 50% of electricity coming from renewables in quarter 4, 2025. No small achievement, thanks to everyone in this room and the Australian people. But this also tells another, arguably even more important story. Because the last quarter of last year also saw the highest electricity use in Australian history. It was very hot, you might recall. But this hot summer, which in times past might have seen me and my state colleagues taking the airwaves to ask people to cut their energy use at night, saw no reliability issues whatsoever. Renewable energy saw us cruise through the quarter reliability-wise, all while delivering the lowest emissions intensity for electricity in Australian history.

And of course, it’s no coincidence that this high renewable penetration comes at the same time as the Australian Energy Regulator flags material reductions in energy bills this year through their draft full-market offer. We’re going to see the final in a couple of weeks. This triple result of more reliability, lower emissions, and lower prices is why the rest of the world is also on the same journey as us.

Just last week, AEMO reiterated this in their quarterly report on Q1 this year, reporting that wholesale prices across the NEM were down 12% a year, pushed down by factories and solar. And again, despite a hot summer, fossil fuel use in the NEM hit another new low this quarter just gone. Total coal-fired power generation fell by 4% year on year, driven by a significant drop in the use of black coal. And gas recorded its lowest quarterly use in twenty-five years, down 24% on the same high last year. Less gas used this quarter than any 1st quarter since 1999.

Now, my friends, these are not marginal incremental changes. This is a structural shift in the way Australia generates its power. We’ve got the best sun and wind in the world and we’re using our sovereign renewables to shield our grid from the global energy volatility and to bring down energy bills at the same time. Now again, our opponents might complain these policies and objectives as being somehow ideologically driven and out of touch with the rest of the world. They could not be more wrong. It is them that are out of touch with the rest of the world. They ignore the facts about the cost, speed and rollout and reliability, let alone the climate science. They want to leave Australian bill payers exposed to global shocks and left to pick up the bill for fossil fuel fanaticism. Let’s take the EMBER report again. I’ll quote them again. They say, the era of clean power growth is here. They go on to say, with renewables overtaking coal in 2025 and record growth in solar, means that renewable energy met the vast majority of new demand growth in 2025. Or to put it another way, EMBER says, global solar growth in 2025 alone exceeded the electricity that could be generated from all LNG exports through the Straits of Hormuz that year. Now China and India both reduced fossil fuel use as a share of electricity generation in 2025 as well, telling the lie to the argument that Australia shouldn’t act on climate change because China and India are not. They are. And by the way, the nuclear renaissance isn’t happening either. EMBER tells us nuclear share of global electricity generation, and I’m quoting, continued its steady decline, reaching a new low of 8.9% in 2025 as its growth was outpaced by rising demand. So those who argue that Australia needs to slow down are the ones hopelessly out of touch. Out of touch with the world, out of touch with Australians, out of touch with economic reality.

My friends, I want to finish today with two messages. We’ve come a long way these last four years, but we have a long way to go. Now in marking the fact that we’ve come a long way, I do want to pause my remarks and say this, because one person in particular has been very important to the progress we’ve made this time. No one has been more important in the progress we’ve made than John Grimes. I thought about opening my speech with this observation, but decided that it was better as a conclusion. As it turns out, it would have been a mutual admiration society, and that wouldn’t have been a good look. So I’m finishing with these remarks because John has been an outstanding leader for this sector. In difficult times, in thin times, he led the resistance and argued for common sense against the recalcitrant government. In the good times, he’s been a vital sounding board for me and the government, a wise counsel and an indispensable guide to the sector. I know he’ll remain a mentor and inspiration to many in this room. David McElrea is a great replacement, but Dave will be the first to agree. He’s got very big shoes to fit. He’ll do it well, but it’s a tough gig. Even the indispensable move on. And I’m glad John’s staying in the sector and indeed expanding his horizons because there’s so much more to do in our region. So thank you, and all the best.

Friends, the progress we’ve made so far has not been easy. The next few 4 / 5 years will not be cruising either. But it can be done. We’ve moved from 33% renewable energy in 2022 to 50% in 2025. I believe we can make it 82% in 2030. But only if we keep our collective feet on the accelerator. Only if we move even faster. I know the Australian people are with us in this endeavour, because the Australian people know common sense when they see it. Now our friends, we can’t do this without you. The renewable energy sector. You are the people who actually get it done. So let’s keep going. Let’s go faster still. Let’s get this job done for Australia and for future generations. Thank you very much.”

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