A rocky road to net-zero for energy

By CEO of Accurassi, Colin Fraser 

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There’s an under-appreciated but crucial component of the consumer energy ecosystem that needs attention before it can progress to a net-zero future.  

How do we scale the consumer products needed for our net-zero future when the digital infrastructure was built for the past?

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In 2009, prior to the inception of Uber, there was no incentive for Taxis to change their business model and for more than 15 years, there has been no incentive for Energy Retailers to change, either.

Change would mean a disruption to business but just as we saw with Taxis and Uber, the lack of diversification to the Taxi business model led to a severe decline in services.

Now in 2022, we have macro pressure in the consumer energy sector which is resulting in forced change which will continue to happen one way or another.

Progress has been made in many other areas to complement these changes with real-time hardware, local storage, the retirement of coal power stations, and improved regulations but that’s not enough. We can no longer take software for granted as it will not simply ‘catch up’. The coordinating layer that is the digital infrastructure providing products and billing services to energy consumers is not fit for today or tomorrow’s purpose.

Fortunately, there are emerging digital solutions that are designed for the net-zero future that will allow energy retailers to create products more efficiently, test, iterate, and deploy at scale; meeting consumer and climate needs but they require immediate attention.

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What are the key learnings?

There is an increasing problem with the fundamental digital infrastructure that services the consumer energy market. This problem will stall Australia’s net-zero aspirations and must be given the attention it deserves before it completely limits all efforts.

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See Colin pitch his Climate Tech company, Accurassi at the Melbourne Climate Tech Showcase on April 6.

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