{"id":99228,"date":"2026-05-07T06:55:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=99228"},"modified":"2026-05-07T06:55:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:25:40","slug":"smart-energy-2026-day-1-a-billionaire-a-group-hug-and-an-illegal-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/smart-energy-2026-day-1-a-billionaire-a-group-hug-and-an-illegal-battery\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Energy 2026 Day 1: A Billionaire, a Group Hug, and an Illegal Battery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That Smart Energy 2026 Conference & Expo: Australia’s leading show that isn’t All Energy.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m filling in for our editor, Max, who has taken himself on holiday like someone who doesn’t understand the gravity of the Smart Energy Conference. Someone had to go. So I went to Sydney. Here’s what happened.<\/em><\/p>\n

Andrew Forrest Opens With a Manifesto<\/h2>\n

Twiggy Forrest kicked off the day with the kind of keynote that makes you wonder whether you’re at an industry conference or a revivalist meeting. The man runs the world’s fourth-biggest iron ore miner and appears to be one of the world’s biggest advocates of solar, wind, batteries and smart grids.<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

He opened by calling for the end of the diesel rebate – a subsidy that benefits, among others, Fortescue itself. The rebate is about a thirtieth of Australia’s 18 biggest miners’ operating profits, so they’ll be fine. \u00a0The world’s most fossil-fuel-soaked industry, represented by its most famous executive, saying: “cut us off”.<\/p>\n

His argument is simple and he makes it with genuine fiery passion. Net zero is a fiction built on offsets and creative accounting. Real<\/em> zero means actually stopping the burning of fossil fuels and naming the date you’ll do it. He’s betting Fortescue’s future on it, he’s put a date on it: 2030, and he seems to enjoy the fact that this unnerves people.<\/p>\n

The evidence he brought: Fortescue has built a giant green grid in the Pilbara with 1.2GW of solar capacity, more than 600MW of wind generation, and 5GWh of battery energy storage. The diesel burning mobile equipment is all going battery electric including electrified their 240-tonne dumper trucks<\/a>. If you can run the biggest machines on earth on solar, wind, and batteries – the argument that heavy industry can’t go real zero collapses. These are a working machines in working mines.<\/p>\n

He also said he expects the Strait of Hormuz to stay closed for the foreseeable future thanks to an unlimited supply of Iranian DIY drones making the whole exercise even more urgent. The miners relying on billions \u00a0of litres of diesel to run operations over the coming years are screwed.<\/p>\n

He was full of energy and slightly terrifying and the typically anti-billionaire crowd was very happy to have him.<\/p>\n

Chris Bowen: Victory Lap, Earned<\/h2>\n

The Energy Minister gave a speech that was notable for what it didn’t contain. No persuasion. No case being made for renewables. He walked in and read out a scoreboard to a room that already knew the score – and the crowd loved every number.<\/p>\n

The shift he described seems structural:<\/p>\n