Unintended consequences?

This morning I read a very sad article about Dr Tom Beer’s pioneering 1980s research into bushfires and climate change. Which, to his dismay, has proved all too accurate. In the article he laments the powerful success of the coal lobbyists in protecting their businesses for short term success but to the detriment of the environment (and future prosperity for the country). This same morning I was fishing oily black gumtree leaves from my pool, they have blown in daily from a monstrous fire north of Sydney which grows each day. The government chooses to continue ignoring the rather large elephant in the room.

However this is the same government that has empowered the consumer through the Consumer Data Right act. One of the first cabs off the rank is Open Energy, which will allow a consumer to easily share their energy data with third parties to help make better and more informed decisions - effectively finding and swithcing to a better suited energy plan will become much easier.

It is with great irony that in the past few weeks, the word ‘Virtual Power Plant’ has made its way into the mainstream press.  In this new paradigm, the household becomes a power plant with solar generation and energy storage with batteries. The long term economics for this type of plant make lots of sense and is why the likes of Shell and Hanwha have recently set up as energy retailers in Australia.

Interestingly, I came across a statistic the other day that only 5% of Australians actually believe climate change is not real. So the other 95% clearly do believe and this fact gives me hope. I wonder what impact this large majority could have, if offered the opportunity to actively do something about it. If my energy retailer said to me I could reduce my daily electricity charges and actively reduce my carbon impact by installing a virtual power plant at my home, I’d bite their arm off. It would allow me to vote with real action against the deaf government’s inaction on climate change. Well dear consumer, you, I and the other 95% will very soon be able to do this. 

Could this be an unintended consequence of empowering the consumer?