Elon Musk gets emotional over Australia’s energy emergency (Part Two) — 60 Minutes Australia

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Who hasn't been shocked by a recent electricity or gas bill? And who isn't infuriated that power prices have risen so sharply? In a country as abundant with resources as ours, it defies logic that now some Australians can't even pay for the energy to cook a simple meal. While our fast-talking but divided politicians scramble to act, tonight, Elon Musk, the American billionaire with the brilliant mind, wants to explain how he can help fix Australia's energy crisis. And to prove his point, he's prepared to put his money where his mouth is. It's peak hour in Australia. [00:00:48] Speaker 2: I need a NOS bookie. I can't. They want a record of it. And we'll find out what's happening there. [00:00:55] Speaker 1: Towns and cities are lighting up. Public transport is on the move. And family homes are coming to life. Inside a control room in Sydney's west, staff from Transgrid, the company charged with ensuring the lights stay on work the phones. [00:01:18] Speaker 3: Number two tie and number three tie, 135. [00:01:21] Speaker 1: Calling in power from generators all over the state. [00:01:24] Speaker 2: Half the population has dinner at six o'clock, irrespective, so they do it. The other half have it dinner when it gets dark. [00:01:32] Speaker 1: But keeping Australia's massive east coast power grid functioning has never been so hard. [00:01:39] Speaker 4: It's a lot like spinning plates and we move from one to the other solving problems on the power system in real time to keep the lights on. [00:01:49] Speaker 1: And for so many Australians, power has never cost so much. People are living on yesterday's food. [00:02:01] Speaker 5: Oh yeah. Well, when I have lunch later, it won't be yesterday's, it'll be Monday's and it's Thursday today. [00:02:12] Speaker 1: Australia is in the grip of a power crisis, crippling costs and unreliable supply. But there's one man who can't understand why. [00:02:26] Speaker 6: Australia is really perfect for solar power because it's not too far north or too far south. You could have the entire country be solar powered or some combination of wind, solar, geothermal, hydro. [00:02:39] Speaker 7: The electric car maker Tesla Motors are up. [00:02:43] Speaker 1: Elon Musk is the Tesla man. An American billionaire whose developments of electric cars and space rockets is seeing technology push the boundaries like never before. And it's all driven by his belief that if we are to survive climate change, we need to develop renewable energy. [00:03:06] Speaker 6: Australia could actually export power to Asia. There's so much land there that, that, that you could actually power a significant chunk of Asia. [00:03:18] Speaker 1: And to prove his point, Musk is building a massive lithium-ion battery powered by wind turbines in Jamestown, South Australia. The battery is designed to help stabilise the grid, but Musk is also hoping it will be a lightbulb moment for the world. [00:03:39] Speaker 6: You have to do these things that really get the world's attention, otherwise they just don't believe you. They don't think it's possible. What do you want the rest of the world to see? I really want the rest of the world to see that you can do a very large scale, 100 megawatt system is, is really quite enormous. This is three times more than the next biggest battery in the world. That's just a giant, giant jump forward. [00:04:08] Speaker 1: His interest in our energy crisis started last year. When South Australia, a state already heavily invested in wind and solar power, was plunged into darkness. The result of a massive storm that saw the state lose power. Elon Musk tweeted headfirst into a national political brawl when fellow billionaire Australian IT whiz Mike Cannon Brooks questioned Tesla's boast that it could help solve South Australia's energy problems by building the world's biggest battery. Why did you do that? [00:04:55] Speaker 8: There was no idea of what would happen afterwards. Just more if people make big claims like that, I'd like to check if they're real. [00:05:03] Speaker 6: You thought I was joking. Of course, I had to check with my team. I hope I didn't really say something super crazy. [00:05:11] Speaker 1: When you get a return tweet from Elon saying, "Yeah. What did you think?" [00:05:18] Speaker 8: Um, sweet. Just checking he's kosher. You know, he says it's going to happen. Let's make it happen, right? So... [00:05:25] Speaker 1: These are public tweets. [00:05:27] Speaker 8: Uh, yeah. But in a way, that's part of what locks in the guarantee, right? He's putting his reputation online in a public forum there that, you know, enough noise was then created around enough people saw that, that it was like, "All right. That, that, you know, he better get that done." [00:05:43] Speaker 1: Cannon Brooks did a crash course in renewable energy and he quickly realised there were plenty of Australians who backed the idea. [00:05:53] Speaker 8: I got multiple unsolicited offers for tens of millions. I think we added it up to more than a hundred million dollars in offers that came in. It was, it was amazing. It was inspiring, um, as an Australian, to see people wanting to solve this problem in a real and meaningful way. And I think they're just sick of the politics on all sides and the, you know, the ridiculous nature of our energy situation at the moment. [00:06:18] Speaker 1: But Elon Musk's battery plan was mocked by the federal government. [00:06:23] Speaker 7: 30,000 South Australian households could not get through watching one episode of Australia's Ninja Warrior with this big battery. [00:06:30] Speaker 1: Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison was particularly dismissive. [00:06:35] Speaker 7: By all means, have the world's biggest battery, have the world's biggest banana, have the world's biggest prawn. [00:06:40] Speaker 6: I didn't realise there was this big battle going on. I didn't know. [00:06:44] Speaker 1: It was like Mr. Hollywood's walked into town. [00:06:47] Speaker 6: Okay. [00:06:48] Speaker 1: And it was like, well, you know. [00:06:49] Speaker 6: Do I see Mollywood? Maybe. [00:06:53] Speaker 1: Okay. But, but our treasurer, Scott Morrison, declared that this was just a shiny, you know, distraction. And that, and that it was akin to... Well, it's shiny. [00:07:04] Speaker 6: It is shiny. [00:07:05] Speaker 1: And it was, it's, it's akin to the big pineapple or the big banana. It's just one of those kitsch. [00:07:11] Speaker 6: I don't know what, wait, is that a real thing? [00:07:15] Speaker 1: They're a tourist attraction, actually. [00:07:17] Speaker 6: Okay. Oh, look at my, is it like the world's biggest banana or something? [00:07:21] Speaker 1: Something like that. Okay. Well, are you disappointed by that? [00:07:24] Speaker 6: Oh, I think, you know, that we get that all the time. It can be a little disheartening sometimes. [00:07:32] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:07:33] Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. [00:07:37] Speaker 1: Why did the government mock Elon Musk? [00:07:41] Speaker 3: Well, Elon Musk's battery was a fraction of the size of the Snowy Hydro scheme. It was sold to the people of South Australia as an answer to their woes by Jay Wetherill. Whereas in reality, it is just a fraction of what that state needs. [00:07:58] Speaker 1: Everyone is fair game in what is now a high-stakes political power play. Electricity, the supply, but particularly the cost, is constantly gnawing away at the federal government and its energy minister, Josh Frydenberg. The fact is that politics has failed Australians, hasn't it? We have failed to deliver to Australians for years now an essential service. [00:08:27] Speaker 3: Well, the argy-bargy in Canberra over the last decade has not helped lower power bills. In fact, it's created the uncertainty in the market, which now industry is demanding be fixed. That's why the National Energy Guarantee offers us that opportunity for the first time in more than a decade. [00:08:49] Speaker 1: The National Energy Guarantee aims to make the system more reliable and ultimately ease the nation's financial pain. But the savings for households are predicted to be minuscule. We have what's called power poverty. I'm seeing people who are saying, "How can it be that, you know, I'm going to get a miserable 50 cents a week, perhaps, and I'm supposed to applaud that?" [00:09:17] Speaker 3: Well, that's just a Labor Party distraction and distortion. Is that not true? [00:09:21] Speaker 1: That is not true. [00:09:22] Speaker 3: So what will they get? They will get up to $115 a year saving. [00:09:27] Speaker 1: And when they say a couple of hundred dollars truly, you're out of touch, you'd say? [00:09:35] Speaker 3: A couple of hundred dollars reduction in your power bill means a lot to a lot of people. And it's just the start of what we are seeking to do. Under the Labor Party, your bills will go up by hundreds of dollars. That's what the modelling shows. No longer are we allowing the Labor Party to pursue an ideological approach. [00:09:56] Speaker 1: You see, they'll hate that politicking. They'll hate you saying that because that's just more politics. [00:10:01] Speaker 3: Well, the reality is that politics is a battle of ideas. Our idea is a national energy guarantee put forward by the experts. It allows for a greater role for renewables. It keeps coal and gas in the system. It makes up for the mistakes of the past. And importantly, it lowers power bills. [00:10:25] Speaker 1: For pensioners like Brian and Faye Willett, all this talk doesn't mean much. They still have to tailor their lives around the electricity bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [00:10:40] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:10:40] Speaker 1: Thank you. [00:10:41] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:10:41] Speaker 1: Thank you. [00:10:42] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:10:42] Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [00:10:46] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:10:46] Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. [00:10:48] Speaker 9: Thank you. One thing we need to do is make sure we keep the curtains shut. Yeah. Keep the heat out. Keep the heat out. [00:10:56] Speaker 5: Keep the heat out. [00:10:57] Speaker 9: Yeah. [00:10:58] Speaker 1: I've never really thought of it like that. But yes, that'd be pretty right. What do you do? [00:11:01] Speaker ?: Through winter. [00:11:02] Speaker 5: We did not use the heater once. We tend to use blankets, put on two pairs of socks instead of one or wear the UGG boots. [00:11:16] Speaker 1: It's stuff, I presume, that before you took for granted. [00:11:21] Speaker 5: In some ways, it feels like survival rather than living. It seems strange that life is becoming much harder as we get older. [00:11:39] Speaker 1: More than ever, Australians are struggling to pay for their power. A record number of families are on hardship plans or deferred payments. And the rate of disconnections in most states has risen sharply. For Elon Musk, learning of this growing power poverty is overwhelming. Cost of power is making it almost a luxury item. [00:12:08] Speaker 6: Wow. Really? [00:12:10] Speaker 1: Really. [00:12:11] Speaker 6: I didn't realise it was that expensive. Australia has so many natural resources. I mean, even if you go the fossil fuel route, the electricity should be very cheap. [00:12:21] Speaker 1: There are Australians today wondering if they can even turn on their lights. There are Australians today wondering, well, should we go without some food? Sure. That's just not something you would ever expect? [00:12:38] Speaker 6: I did not expect that. Hmm. We'll work harder. [00:12:48] Speaker 1: For Musk, it's frustrating because for him the solution is so simple and in abundance in Australia. The whole point of renewable energy is to make for a cleaner environment and, frankly, save the planet. The majority of scientists are emphatic that we're witnessing dramatic climate change. And not to fully embrace renewable energy is suicide. [00:13:19] Speaker 6: It's necessarily true that we will live on renewables. It's just a question of when. In fact, it's in the definition that if it's not renewable, that means it's going to run out at some point. And we'll have the choice of collapse of civilisation and into the dark ages we go, or find something that is renewable. [00:13:38] Speaker 1: So all of this is about saving ourselves? [00:13:42] Speaker 6: Yeah. [00:13:44] Speaker 1: Coming up. Now? Yep. Boring now. The billion dollar energy business in our own backyards. It's like hidden gold, isn't it? They call it the new oil. And how to slash your electricity bill. [00:13:58] Speaker 4: This is it. [00:13:59] Speaker 6: This is the battery. It will serve as an inspiration, really, to the whole world. This is possible. [00:14:04] Speaker 1: That's next on 60 Minutes.