The Green Energy Transition: Opportunities and Challenges for Australia and China – Speech by Shreejan Pandey

The Green Energy Transition Forum convened by Prof Cherrie Jiuhua Zhu, co-hosted by Monash University and JITRI (Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute), brought together experts, policymakers and industry leaders from both Australia and China for an important conversation on navigating the global shift to sustainable energy.

Monash Energy Institute Director Shreejan Pandey's address reflected on the bottlenecks facing Australia’s clean energy transition.

The Energy Transition’s Big Short Circuit

I begin by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, on whose land we meet. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to any First Nations colleagues here with us today.

It’s a pleasure to join distinguished guests from Monash, JITRI, peer universities, and governments from Australia and China, especially at a time when global collaboration to tackle climate and energy challenges is so important. Professor Zhu and Dr Bao, thank you for having me here.

Today, around two-thirds of our global energy consumption still depends on fossil fuels. Clean energy-driven electrification of economies is a powerful lever for hope, and we’ve seen electricity demand grow at double the pace of overall energy use in the past decade. As optimistic as that sounds, the transition is not happening fast enough.

Take Australia for example. Our electricity market is still shaped by 19th-century thinking. In the late 1800s, Samuel Insull – Thomas Edison’s protégé – pioneered the idea of regulated monopolies, time-of-use pricing, and highly leveraged financing to scale investments in centralised bulk supply systems. It’s incredible that much of the structure from that era remains today despite the architecture of our grid going through a fundamental change at speed.

Over the past decade, Australia’s electricity grid has gone from 15% renewable to 40%, and there is a national goal to exceed 80% by 2030 (less than 5 years away). Last year, clean energy deployment saw $12.7 billion in investment and a sharp 500% rise in renewable generation projects from the previous year. Political stability following recent elections will likely build continued investor confidence, offering some hope in the face of daunting targets.

But it’s not all good news.

Momentum in deployment is revealing new bottlenecks in transmission, system stability, market design, and community trust.

Australia’s National Electricity Market hasn’t needed significant investment in transmission infrastructure for decades. Energy efficiency gains and solar systems installed in one in three Australian homes have deferred the urgency for some time. But we’re now reaching the limits of what can be achieved without substantial upgrades to how electricity moves across the country.

$20 billion rewiring the nation initiative by Federal government and Renewable Energy Zones in States have emerged in response. The Renewable Energy Zones are geographically strategic areas designed to concentrate new large-scale wind and solar projects. These zones promise to bring efficiency, reduce costs, and help accelerate infrastructure investment and decarbonisation.

But they also expose deep social sentiments. Communities located near proposed transmission routes are pushing back, raising concerns about property values, land use, visual impacts, and health. They are demanding not just information, but genuine dialogue, transparency, and fair compensation.

What we’re seeing is a broader shift: people want to be part of the energy transition, not just subjects of it. That social engagement, often referred to as social license by the industry, is now a key determinant of success. Without it, even the most technically sound projects risk delay or derailment. Engaging communities meaningfully – early, consistently, and respectfully – must be central to our transition strategy.

Beyond the social dimension, there are deep technical challenges at play.

As we replace our aging fleet of large synchronous coal plants with distributed, inverter-based renewables, we lose critical system services including inertia, frequency control, and fault ride-through capability.

These aren’t just engineering jargon or curiosities. They are essential to keeping the lights on.

Solar, batteries, and wind generators behave very differently from traditional generators. They require fast control systems and entirely new system planning and operation models. Their integration into the grid is not a simple case of plug-and-play as it may appear; it’s a complex optimisation challenge with high stakes (ultimately turning the lights off).

At the same time, we’re seeing enormous growth in consumer-owned generation and storage. Australia now has over 25 GW of rooftop solar installed – one of the highest per capita rates in the world. But we have not worked out how to harness this capacity as a coordinated asset. Our market design and rules have not kept up to incentivise consumers and there are some hard questions to address concerning issues like grid visibility, control, and cybersecurity.

Our system was less complex and closer to the Edison era when the rules were written last century.

We need to reimagine our energy future at a fundamental level to unlock the full potential of clean energy with strong consumer participation.

This is where research plays a critical role.

The Monash Energy Institute is our university’s strategic response to this challenge. We bring together a dynamic community of energy researchers and practitioners from across Monash to address these issues through coordinated research and training initiatives.

We are proud to have co-led the establishment of the Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre. This $300 million national program brings together researchers, industry and government to address complex questions related to maximising renewable and consumer energy uptake at the distribution level while keeping our networks safe, stable and reliable. As an example, Monash research under this program, played a key role in enabling the removal of fringe benefit tax for electric vehicles. It’s now cost-effective for employees to purchase electric cars through workplace lease arrangements. And yes, there is some correlation between this policy change and BYD sales taking off in Australia!

At the bulk supply and transmission level, our Grid Innovation Hub program is focused on addressing grid stability challenges and market design dynamics with new technologies such as grid-forming inverters and battery storage on our grid. Results from this work are translated into short courses and white papers to inform industry design decisions and government policy. It’s also true that we simply cannot hold onto our postdoctoral staff from this program, with our industry partners ever so keen to employ them!

Strategic partnerships are a key function of the Institute.

We’ve partnered with the Australian Energy Market Operator to establish the Zema Energy postgraduate scholarships – an endowment supported by state and federal energy ministers in memory of AEMO’s founding CEO. The program invests in highly talented young scholars and offers strong engagement with industry leaders. I have no doubt these scholars will end up in senior leadership roles and with deep expertise and capability to think, act and lead differently.

We are also the first and only university to date to sign an MoU with the energy market rulemaker, the Australian Energy Market Commission. This partnership includes joint research and staff secondment opportunities, enabling Monash to play a key role in informing market design policy.

Our industry collaborations extend internationally, including a partnership with Indonesia’s state-owned utility PLN to support their energy transition through structured education, training, and research programs. We currently have around 60 highly talented senior PLN staff on the leadership track studying Business Innovation and Renewable Energy Engineering with us at the Masters level.

And beyond the Institute’s leadership, more broadly, energy research leaders at Monash are working on exciting solutions. To highlight a few, they include;

• developing technologies that transform carbon dioxide emissions into valuable products,
• rapidly deployable solar technologies,
• creating new types of high energy density batteries, and
• research led industry products and services that enable stronger engagement with energy consumers.

But there is much more work to do, and our research community has much to offer with deep expertise based on leading research that does not exist in the industry.

But the landscape to exercise that capacity in itself is a challenge and a paradox.

Globally, there is insufficient public investment in energy R&D given our climate urgency.

In Australia’s case, despite record investments available for clean energy deployment and energy being a key election issue over the past decade, public investment in energy research has halved from a near 10% share of public investment in R&D to less than 5% over the past decade. There is less than $700 million for all energy-related research, development and innovation. In response, the Monash Energy Institute is taking action, advocating for more public resources and investment through trusted voices and forums.

In the meantime, strong and trusted partnerships remain critical to building our collective research capacity and making a difference in our world. That’s why forums like today are so important. They allow us to learn from each other and build relationships across disciplines and borders. Dr Ning Chen, if you are still online then we welcome your doll model – lets talk!

Professor Zhu, thanks again for the opportunity to speak today. I look forward to the conversations that follow.