Electrification is the new consumer frontier of Australia’s energy transition.
We know that reaching net-zero means cleaning up how we generate power. But the other half of the equation (or the other side of the meter if you look from industry’s perspective) means exercising our choice in which power we use - and deciding to get off gas.
For Victoria – a state traditionally reliant on gas to survive our bitter winters – it represents a fundamental shift in the infrastructure of our homes.
It means replacing fossil-fuelled machines with efficient, electric alternatives. Swapping the gas ducted heater for a reverse-cycle air conditioner. Ditching the gas cooktop for induction.
When we power these electric machines with our increasingly renewable energy, household emissions plummet.
But asking consumers to change the fundamental machinery of their homes is a behavioural leap, as well as a financial one.
As communicators and policymakers, we have a challenge. How do we support people motivated to make this shift, to take the next step?
We nailed solar. We stumble on efficiency.
If we want to understand how to promote electrification, and the market conditions that could foster it, there are lessons we can take from the rise and rise of residential solar.
When it comes to rooftop solar, Australians are world champions. We have more solar, per capita than any country in the world, with panels now on more than 4 million homes, and counting.
We embraced it, slowly to start and then in ever increasing numbers because of a coalescing of motivating circumstances.
After years of rising electricity bills, and for some, a growing desire to avoid coal emission, people used solar to take back control of energy for their homes.
Sourcing energy from the sun made a real difference to lowering people’s energy bills, and we incentivised it with a trifecta of rebates, certificate schemes and high feed-in-tariffs. The pay back period dropped from 15 years to less than 7, the magic number to encourage action. And the price of solar tumbled as demand rose, and the industry matured.
The considerable climate benefits also make solar virtuous. That was the icing for some and the cake itself for others.
Energy efficiency, on the other hand, has been, and continues to be, a tougher sell.
For decades, the message around energy efficiency felt more like a punishment. It was about deprivation. Turn off the heater. Put on a jumper. Take a shorter shower. It asked consumers to sacrifice their comfort for the greater good (and a slightly lower bill). It didn't empower; it restricted.
Despite this, energy efficiency continues to provide some of the lowest cost actions, and highest returns on investment for those looking to cut emissions and bills. But the absence of a thing is far less shiny, and less gratifying pumping clean solar power into your home.
Electrification sits at a fascinating intersection. It’s an upgrade, like solar. So it shifts the energy efficiency dialogue away from stopping something and towards doing something.
But it’s less all-encompassing, the benefits are more marginal and often harder to quantify. Yet it pushes consumers to navigate an equally complex, perhaps more fragmented market than solar.
Reluctance meets market confusion.
If you work in sustainability or energy policy, you might already know what a heat pump is. And you probably understand the long-term return on investment of an electrified home, for the individual and as a contribution to our energy transition.
These are likely much more opaque for the average Victorian energy consumer.
Right now, the market is profoundly confusing. If your gas hot water system dies on a freezing Tuesday morning, you don’t have the time or the cognitive bandwidth to research the coefficient of performance of an electric heat pump. You just want a hot shower. So, you call a plumber, and the default bias kicks in: they replace it with what they know – another gas system.
Consumers are faced with a barrage of jargon, conflicting advice, and the cognitive overload of having to become an overnight expert in one system or another..
Is the EV revolution our electrification gateway?
If there is a bright spot in consumer electrification right now, it’s sitting in the driveway.
The major barriers to buying a new EV are finally falling: range anxiety is easing, charging infrastructure is expanding, and prices are moving closer to parity. At the same time, conflict in the middle east has caused petrol prices to sharply rise.
As a result, Australia has seen a phenomenal increase in electric vehicle uptake across the country in 2026. By the end of June, battery-powered EVs made up more than 23 per cent of all new car purchases, reaching their highest sales on record, rising from 8 per cent in January. That’s an almost threefold increase in just six months.
But the true power of the EV may be more than just getting us from A to B without tailpipe emissions.
Might EVs also be the gateway to a fully electrified home?
Having an EV, like purchasing solar, can spark a change in a consumer's relationship to energy.
It’s another reason to care about when your solar panels are generating peak power. It gives you a battery on wheels, and another way to flex and beat the pressures of the energy market.
An electric car can serve to make more of the invisible energy system visible.
Maybe then, taking the next step to electrify the rest of the house makes perfect sense?
A nudge to electrify, not a push.
So perhaps policy makers, industry and energy communicators have a gentler role to play in supporting us to electrify everything?
If we look at it from a behavioural perspective, to promote electrification is about enhancing ease, leveraging desire and capitalising on opportunity.
By intersecting with people at the right time – when the old gas appliance fails, through the tradesperson, or the EV point of purchase – can we provide the added simplicity for going electric that collides with motivation? A nudge, when opportunity makes behaviour change most likely.
Can we speak more directly to consumer motivations, selling the upgrade, rather than the compromise? Induction cooking isn’t just greener; it boils water faster, is safer for kids, and is easier to clean. Heat pumps aren't just efficient; they provide cooling in summer.
If we lead with the lifestyle benefits, can electrification acquire more of the luster that helped precipitate our solar rise?
And what other work can be done within the ecosystem in which consumers are making their appliance (or electrification) choices, so that the electric option becomes the default recommendation – in store, from trades, in the places where people already find themselves, confronted by a sea of choices? What can we do to make the choice a simpler one?
To that end Victoria’s SEC has taken some substantial steps. Consumers, particularly those with an urgent need, might be helped by point-of-sale simplicity, products and suppliers they can trust, backed by a vetting from the Victorian Government. Instead of feeling like they are fighting the system to make a sustainable choice, this service helps to flip that on its head, albeit at a premium price point.
The power at the kitchen table.
In 20 years working towards the energy transition, I’ve seen how much we can effectively change – on both sides of the meters.
Back in 2006, 98 per cent of Victoria’s electricity was fueled by brown coal, supported by a smattering of gas and a tiny trickle of renewable power from the snowy-mountain hydro scheme. We had zero wind, solar or batteries. We were operating one of the highest-emitting electricity grids in the developed world.
Now, renewables in Victoria routinely deliver 40-50 per cent of our total demand annually, occasionally spiking to over 90 per cent when it's windy and the sun is shining.
It’s a stunning shift. Which has enabled us to meet our state’s growing need for power, all while reducing the pollution in our air, and the prices we would have otherwise paid.
A lot of this change happened in the big generators that send the power down the poles and wires to us. Large scale stuff.
But a similar revolution simultaneously happened on our rooftops, born of decisions at our kitchen tables. Or occasionally our office-desks. See aforementioned solar success.
So we know, deep down, this is a change we’ve successfully made before.
If we can make electrification the ultimate lifestyle upgrade, the easiest, most liberating choice (even when that choice comes unexpectedly on a freezing Tuesday morning), and build on the booming EV market as a natural gateway – then we will be ready to cross the next frontier in the quest for power affordability and our transition to net zero energy.
