ANC is a delivery business that in 2019 unveiled its first commercial SEA Electric truck, dedicated to its client IKEA's last mile home delivery services in New South Wales. Photo by Keith Saunders
If you read Michael Read in The Australian Financial Review this week, you might be forgiven for thinking that the sky is falling.
Read is concerned that Australia has only 28 days of fuel reserves on shore, a worry that was triggered by former senator and submariner Rex Patrick. Running out of liquid fuel will lead to empty shelves and starving householders. Furthermore, we are no longer in compliance with our international obligations to hold 90 days’ worth of fuel in case of disruption.
However, the sky is not falling; our salvation quite literally falls from the sky in the form of the practically limitless strategic sunlight reserve.
While some may view this article as a jab at a rigid and dying media landscape, there is a serious point to be made. Australia is now on a serious and inevitable decarbonisation trajectory. Our national determined contribution has been set, and we need to start working towards achieving it.
The best way to address the strategic concerns about not having sufficient liquid fuel reserves is to electrify everything, particularly our domestic and overseas supply chains.
Australia has an unrivalled advantage when it comes to electrifying our truck industry: our vast geography means that, once you get beyond the cities, it is easy to locate truck charging or battery swapping stations alongside renewable energy generation and battery storage facilities.
Large areas of marginal land next to our highways and the verges themselves could be used for solar power. We have room for electric truck stops that other countries would envy, yet Australia’s electrified logistics are not yet operational.
Trucks, prime movers and vans of all shapes and sizes are available; we have the charging technology and the potential to generate the cheapest energy on the planet. So what is holding us back?
It’s really just a matter of getting started. Taking on a big task starts with the first step, and the first step is one segment of one route: a short-haul journey from a regional manufacturing centre to a capital city, transporting one type of goods, and we are up and running.
In last-mile logistics, we have seen how the demands of one customer, IKEA, can shape an entire industry and force change. They are now starting to enforce that change on longer-haul stages. Which Australian logistics customer is going to consider their ESG goals and decarbonisation obligations and force change? All the tools are there.
Let’s not forget that every truck we electrify and every ICE car we replace with a bicycle reduces our demand for fossil fuels and stretches out our fuel reserves without adding to them. So, if there is a genuine strategic priority to electrify, let’s make the most of our most abundant and limitless resource: the sunshine of this lucky country.
Ed Lynch-Bell is Principal at Second Mouse, dedicated to building more sustainable energy tech and mobility products, services and businesses. Ed is also a co-host of the Melbourne and Sydney EV Meet-ups, bringing the e-mobility industry together.
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While it is old news that Australian transport would largely grind to a halt 28 days after a disruption, it is good to see the issue being brought back into the light as both the LNP and Labor have preferred to ignore it. It is particularly ironic in the case of the LNP, who love to bleat about other "national security" issues, but don't want to touch this one!
Setting up solar farms next to charging stations spaced along highways makes too much sense! Seriously have to question why this isn’t the norm here in Australia.
Just need to start redirecting some of the yearly $14 billion++ in Australian fossil fuel subsidies.
Agree it should be done, but sensitively. Road verges are often the last refuge for much of our native ecology.
your solution is widely known by EV advocates :-). electrify all transport!
but even if we decided tomorrow to issue the purchase orders for all the trucks required etc, we still need to build the commercial charging infrastructure, change logistical processes etc. So it's a 2-4 year process - minimum. Meanwhile we have geopolitical risk regarding liquid fuel for all of that time.
Its a crazy thing in Australia that tankers are driven all over the country just trying to ship fuel to far flung service stations, when solar can be generated onsite. So often there is a panic due to storms and flooding when trucks cannot get the fuel delivered. Electric would solve so many things in Australia.
'Every ICE car we replace with a bicycle reduces our demand for fossil fuels'? Pie in the sky thinking, we are not in Holland with flat roads and short distances to travel. Great, I'll tell my family we are riding 25km to dinner tonight and 28km to their sports on the weekend in the rain, I'm sure they'll be impressed. A just looking forward to tying 2 shopping trolleys to the back of my bicycle to tow it 18km home from the supermarket.
Sounds like you are doing the right thing!
Some facts we should not ignore are that we spend nearly $6 billion every year importing petroleum products, including from Russia, though indirectly, it is in defiance of the embargo. $6b buys a lot of health care, education, etc.
Next, our national security is threatened by any adversary that wants to bring down or even blackmail Australia by aggression against fuel carriers.
Solar capture to eliminate emissions is only part of the story, our welfare is the primary one.
Beg to differ. Eliminate emissions to enhance welfare. Global warming predictions are very conservative. Based on present trends, 60 degree days are not out of the question within 20 years.
Hot water systems are set to 60 degrees to kill pathogens.
"these events are desifgne to bring"... "and acerbate the electrification"...
Um... ????
I agree, but one cannot ignore the size of the task of transitioning Australia's legacy ICEV fleet to something else that would substantially improve our energy security.
Per BITRE report Road Vehicles, Australia January 2024, from page 1:
* 21.74 M registered motorised road vehicles on 31 Jan 2024.
* A further 4.7 M caravans, trailers & plant/equipment (e.g. construction equipment, tractors & other agricultural equipment, all-terrain vehicles, forklifts, golf buggies, etc.) not included in the estimate of total registered motorised road vehicles.
* ~167,850 registered BEVs & FCEVs on 31 Jan 2024, an increase of 112% on Jan 2023. Figures include ~159,460 passenger BEVs & FCEVs, representing ~1.0% of all registered passenger vehicles in 2024.
* ~481,400 registered hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) on 31 Jan 2024. Figures include 479,290 registered passenger HEVs, representing ~3.0% of all registered passenger vehicles in 2024.
My point is that ICEVs continue to dominate Australia’s legacy vehicle fleet, and I'd suggest it would likely take decades to retire all of them.
Currently, without diesel fuels there are no deliveries of petrol, jet, & LPG fuels via ships & trucks. Diesel fuels are essential for heavy transport, agriculture, construction, mining (including coal & gas extraction), keeping factories producing & keeping people fed & healthy.
Disrupt Australia’s diesel fuel imports (ranging between 1,847.2 ML minimum in Feb to 2,894.3 ML maximum in Jul so far in 2025, per Australian Petroleum Statistics) and our two operating refineries (with a combined diesel production capacity of circa 500 ML/month) and Australia stops functioning in about a month.
If China attacks Taiwan, expect long fuel queues, fuel rationing, fuel hording and perhaps no fuel at all available, here in Australia, like what’s currently happening in Russia now (where Ukraine has reportedly knocked out 38% of Russia's refinery capacity recently with drone attacks).
Anything that discourages the rapid phaseout of Australia’s fleet of operating ICEVs threatens Australia’s longer-term energy security and is ultimately ‘civilisation suicide’.
We have thousands of kilometers of dual-carriageway freeways with empty land between them. Fill all this dead space with solar panels - a mix of traditional fixed horizontal panels, and bifacial vertical panels (horizontal for roads running east-west, and vertical for roads running north-south).
Maybe mount them on frangible mountings so that cars that run off the road can still hit them and break them instead of the car.
Then this could add a lot to the country's generation capacity - provided that transmission of this power to the nearest power grid can be done easily.