Imagine if Australian cities became major producers of clean energy, rather than relying on far-flung solar and wind farms. Far fetched? Hardly. Our cities and towns are full of warehouses, commercial areas, shopping centres and factories.
These types of buildings have one very important underutilised resource – large expanses of unoccupied rooftops, perfect for solar and battery power stations. If our commercial and industrial areas took up solar and storage, it would be revolutionary. Electricity could be produced in cities and used in cities, reducing transmission losses.
Commercial businesses could generate solar power during the day, store it in batteries on site and sell it back to the grid during the evening peak. Our calculations show Australia has enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space to supply at least 25% of our annual electricity use – five times as much as currently supplied by gas-fired generators. Australia is already the world’s top rooftop solar nation, per capita.
But our solar is largely on our houses. We have four times as much residential solar as we do on commercial buildings. In Europe, it’s the opposite – there’s 1.
5 times as much solar on businesses as on houses. The EU’s new Solar Energy Standard is expected to double rooftop solar capacity in four years . In our new discussion paper , we make the case for a massive expansion of battery-backed solar photovoltaic power on Australian business premises.
Call it “business .