What’s Holding Back Clean Energy Investment in Australia with Belinda Cogswell (EY)

Hello and welcome to transmission. I'm Wendell and this week I'm joined by Blinda Cogswell. He's a partner at Parthenon. The energy transition is booming in Australia.

Billions in private capital are ready to invest but policy uncertainty, grid constraints, and deal complexity are slowing things down. Belinda's role means that she's working at the forefront of energy infrastructure finance. And in this episode, we dig into what's working, what's stalling, and how better alignment between public and private capital could unlock some real momentum. This week, we've also had the announcement that the first three hundred fifty megawatts of the Waratah Super Battery have gone live.

Belinda played a significant role in the project, and we took the opportunity to dive into some of her experiences. Don't forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you would like to receive the latest in our industry insights, you can subscribe to the Motor Energy weekly dispatch newsletter. Link in the show notes.

Let's jump in.

Morning, Belinda. Welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Wendell. Thanks so much for having me.

We were just discussing our respective mornings, which have interesting, but maybe we don't need to repeat that for the for the podcast, save the listeners some some trauma. But I guess first off, it'd be great if you just give me a brief introduction to who you are. Like, what's your what's your career and what are you doing now?

Sure. So I'm a partner at in energy lead advisory. I'm I'm a pretty recent joiner to although it's my second time around. And we have a really, really big energy lead advisory practice, which I think speaks to the the size of the challenge and the activity that's going on in this market now, which is very, very exciting. I spent a lot of my career in investment banking. I've worked at Goldman Sachs and some of the Australian lenders and a lot of boutique firms. And I also spent a little bit of time in New South Wales government, which I think has been incredibly useful as we navigate this transition, which obviously involves a lot of public sector policy settings, some interesting financial support settings, and of course, a huge swell of private capital.

Yeah. And that's something I'd, like, really love to probe you on maybe a bit later. I guess for now, yeah, in your current role, so within the team that you're you're leading, what is that team kinda trying to achieve really?

What are doing?

What is their yeah. What is their role within the energy transition in Australia?

So we are financial advisers. There's there's about thirty people in in our direct team who are entirely focused on energy transition transactions. So that means buying and selling projects, capital raising across debt and equity, working through some of the government sector interface contracts as well that might be big res renewable energy zone tenders, thinking through different avenues of support like the capacity investment scheme, is still reasonably new, but I think proven to be quite the success in Australia. And we see within an ecosystem across the business that has probably a hundred professionals in there who advise on everything from regulatory settings, market design, operating models, net zero, and ESG reporting and assurance, as well as transformation and technology professionals. So it's a pretty awesome offering.

And we're just so excited because we think the the m and a lead advisory piece is very, very important piece to that puzzle. But being able to speak the language of government and speak the language of financiers and investors and developers is really fundamental to success as well.

I mean, yeah, within that kind of bracket of things which you you cover, like, why are you why are interested in battery energy storage?

So I led the Waratah Super Battery Project for New South Wales government a couple of years ago. So that's kind of my my personal passion project. But I think what we've seen in Australia is this emerging gap, and we've got this fascinating market where we have negative prices and an incredible amount of generation that's being built out. And so storage is an essential part of that equation. But we're at the very beginning of that journey still, I would say. Although we've seen really rapid evolution in the last couple of years, We're still at the beginning of that journey of of market evolution. It's really a wholesale and energy only market, and I think we're going to see some interesting conversations about capacity as we move through the next phase of of understanding how coal fired power can exit the system in the smoothest possible way.

And, yeah, I guess from your perspective now, kind of looking at a lot of the companies, yeah, who are looking to invest in this space. I mean, if you were to sort of think across the industry, you know, how mature would you say the investment, like, kind of sector is for battery energy storage currently in Australia if we compare it to maybe some other asset classes like renewables or maybe even, like, kind of more traditional generation?

So I think we're still at fairly early stages, although we've seen quite an explosion in in development projects and and a quite rapid increase in sophistication of the way parties are contracting their assets, and that's all an essential part of the evolution. I think what we're yet to see is is kind of that extra layer of financialization of what batteries can provide as incredibly flexible solutions to a very dynamic electricity system that we have in Australia.

I think that we're we're we're such early adopters in terms of the solar build out in Australia, but we're not done yet. We're going through this next big transformative leap, which is the coordination, if you like, of of what is existing on rooftops, commercial, industrial, and behind the MENA solutions, and other distributed energy resources. So we're starting to see the beginning of community battery models being played out. But there are many parties who who have not been able to make the investment case for batteries work yet.

And that is a function of uncertainty about price forecasts. It's a function of there sort of being an insufficient value attributed to the the storage capacity, really. And that particularly impacts in the long duration part of the market. So getting beyond six hours, eight hours, and then into intraday or seasonal storages, etcetera, which is obviously getting a little bit beyond the scope of batteries.

But I think our ability to understand and evolve the way we look at storage as we transition is is tantamount to the success of batteries and and how we see more participants be able to get more projects to FID and and into operations.

In Australia, there's like a huge pipeline of batteries coming online. I think we're at about almost almost two three gigawatts online today. As with these new projects coming online, as the industry kind of gets more comfortable with what you're just talking about, do you see anything changing if you think specifically on the financial side? So with, like, kind of project financing or transactions, Do you see anything changing there as that kind of sector matures?

Yeah. I think you're seeing a a really high degree of comfort now around portfolio financing, and and that's been an important evolution. I think the next phase of innovation, and we're starting to see this, is fractional offtake and making sure we're able to have a whole lot of contracts into play successfully with the operation of of a single asset, cause that allows you to build storage at scale in the right locations and allows you to spread that, you know, hefty development timeline even though it is relatively short compared to the generation projects or transmission.

But that fractional offtake capacity allows different pools of capital to own the parts of the risk curve that they're comfortable with, and that's very, very important. I think it's we've seen a little bit of an inflection point, I suppose, in in the market here where there's there's been a little bit less off take available because we've got these large projects and and people hoping to do sort of one or two part contracting for these assets. And I I think we need to see much more distributed layering of how that revenue stack can work from from individual batteries and and allow perfect matching across portfolios.

So that means lots of work for lawyers and advisers and bankers. But I I think that that's really the next level of sophistication, and and that allows the commodity houses to kind of take the risks that they're comfortable with, the infrastructure funds to take a slightly different risk profile and so on. It also allows you to mix and match a little bit better. And I see that batteries kind of are the glue, if you like, in in this whole transition.

And the more we are able to slice and dice the way those assets perform and can can contract, the better we're able to defray the risk across the whole system and and get the right outcomes for generation pull through and and the best return on investment for the transmission that we're building as well.

Yeah. And so just quickly, by sort of fractional contracting, essentially, you might someone might build, like, say, a three hundred megawatt battery, but then secure kind of long term offtake contract structures for, like, portions of that battery, and then they will stack up, which I think feels like something I mean, it's it's relatively new to Australia, but I feel like Australia is probably pretty leading globally on that, which is quite a cool thing to see. So essentially, and the work that, yeah, companies like yourself doing in terms of getting people getting investors comfortable with that is, you know, kinda critical to making this all happen.

And I think that's a little bit of a response to the lost decade that we had in Australia. There was there was a lot of capital that was interested in financing this transition, a lot of highly motivated parties wanting to develop projects. And and I think what we've seen in the very recent federal election is a groundswell of support, actually, for this transition, which is which is not one hundred percent renewables, but but it's clearly there's a mandate across the bulk of the population to do this and to get on with it. And so the way to do that is to is to not hold back progress by saying we can only do things in sort of bilateral contracting basis.

And I think that maybe comes from a bit of the the commodity DNA that we have in this country is understanding how to take risk, because we have so much of that skill base across the resources and the agricultural sector. And we're an island, so we're we're obviously used to understanding the interplay of all sorts of macro factors on on our local economy. So I think that really helps with the IP that exists in the financing organizations in this country as as well as the big institutions and infrastructure investors. We've we've got incredibly sophisticated capital here, and I think we do punch above our weight globally, and that that's been a function of really intelligent infrastructure development over many decades, and that's translating into increasing appetite to understand and manage the risk differently, and and batteries allow you to do that.

And so you kinda touched on it a little bit there in terms of post the recent election in May. Yeah. Like, where the industry is going. So I was gonna ask you kind of where do you feel like sentiment is among amongst both sides, I guess, the picture, so investors and developers. But yeah. So that kinda tells me you think it's it's positive.

Incredibly positive. I I think we're we're in this enviable position that we haven't been in for a very, very long time in Australia, where we've got very clear policy settings. There's a willingness on the parts of of the different levels of government to hear feedback, to consult, and to keep innovating. And there's a very very clear message in terms of the policy settings for investors coming into Australia, that that private capital is a huge and important part of the equation.

And so we need to keep massaging the mechanisms, if you like, to to ensure we get the outcomes we're looking for. So I think sentiment is positive and, you know, we were talking about today's newspaper this morning, the Clean Energy Council has sort of, I think, regalvanized into looking at its role toward the next phase of development of this industry, which is to say, this is the peak body for industry. And as an industry, we need perhaps to think about a more collaborative and functional way of gaining social license, which has probably been one of the bigger challenges to renewables and energy transition so far.

Maybe we can't expect that to be achieved successfully on a project by project basis or in a renewable energy zone basis, for example. We need to have a more holistic and and positive and encouraging conversation, and that includes thinking differently about how benefits are shared and and and how we attribute success in in this transition. So I think we can all say we're breathing a sigh of relief, in fact, but it's it's just hugely positive. And and that means it's incredibly busy in the M and A space right now as well.

So you kind of were talking about the sort of evolution of contracting structures, the fact you've now got these kind of like portion of portioned offtake structures. Is there any other way that you've seen kind of investors, developers evolve their thinking about battery energy storage in the last, say, five years? Or is that the main thing?

I think I'm thinking of ways to evolve that. Okay.

What would you yeah. What would you what would you think of?

Well, I think we're in this very interesting position now where some of the state governments have also decided to allocate capital to the transition. And so they're looking if you look at the mandate of the ESC in New South Wales and the SEC in Victoria, and I think I think Queensland is is kind of assessing how it participates and and induces private capital to participate in the transition on the ground in Queensland. There is an opportunity to to think about acceleration. And so when I think about storage opportunities, we obviously have some some specific long duration tenders that exist specifically in New South Wales, and those are able to give credit support or revenue support directly to projects.

But I wonder if there's also an opportunity for this type of capital to play a role in accelerating the transition by underwriting sort of the last hours, if you like, of duration. So that's a different way to slice and dice. It's not all about all the output at different layers. It might be, let's call it, the last mile of capacity.

And I that's sort of an that's the beginning of that conversation, but I think that's a really important way to think about.

Would you say that's something we've seen happen in, say, New South Wales with the Altessas, or is it different to that?

Not quite in that way. Because that's that's a a price mechanism, so it's a price floor. I'm I'm thinking about capital contributions that allow additional hours to be built, which might preempt and and and help drive the smooth exit of coal. You can't have a smooth exit if you're waiting for it to exit and for the price signal to then encourage you to build the asset for that extra duration. So it's I think it's about, you know, the clever ordering of things and making sure we have just enough capacity in the system without crowding out private capital because we we know very clearly that in Australia, we want private capital to to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. But I think there's there's an order of events that needs to be considered in in terms of energy security and reliability as we go through kind of this this next decade of volatility.

Yeah. I think that neatly kinda brings us onto the kinda next topic, which is yeah. So the well, I guess, across the whole sector, like, how does the industry do this next step of that transition away from coal towards renewables and storage? So one thing, I guess, yeah, you just mentioned is, like, more government intervention, which, I guess, at state level, they have indicated they're willing to do. Is there anything else you would say?

Well, I think the forms of of that, let's call it support, are yet to be determined. And and so I would say, you know, the the doors are well and truly open in terms of ideas. So what I think that means though is it's not about permanent intervention, it's about facilitating transition and accelerating us achieving, like, the new normal, if you like, the new steady state where we've got sufficient storage in the system to to really pull through this incredibly valuable and and cheap solar generation that we can do, given the the landmass we have available, and where we can see wind projects, I think, not stalling because there's enough storage to to kind of pull through those electrons too, if you like.

What we're seeing very recently is is escalating costs for the development of wind projects and and particularly long development delays. And so that that those differences in lived experience, if you like, are yet to feed into the integrated system plan and those those big market wide planning tools.

And if you if you see the generation start to falter because of either negative prices or or higher and higher costs to build out, storage can't store something that's that's not being generated. Yeah. So we're not gonna quite achieve our objectives in terms of reliable and affordable and secure energy supply if we don't probably put the foot on the gas pretty seriously around storage, and I I think that's around the extra duration. I think the the case for two hour, four hour, even six hour is actually is actually pretty strong now. And we need to not disrupt the fundamentals of the market. We need to be very considered but quick about the forms of support, I'd call it, rather than intervention, that allow this transition to make sense.

This probably goes to another question about the alignment between the public sector and the private sector. I think there's a misconception perhaps on both sides of the table that the other side could do a lot more.

And that's simply about those parties not walking in each other's shoes all the time, and that is to say they have fundamentally different objectives for good reasons.

And if we wanna see a smooth transition and a meeting of policy objectives and and the objectives of delivering return on capital for for private investors, we need to set the market mechanisms in the right way to to induce that. And in my view, it's not just about revenue contracts that sort of get us through this lumpy period. I think we've gotta think very hard about capacity.

And and that's that's if you don't do that, then then coal continues to set the pace, if you like. And then that becomes a bigger and bigger issue for governments to solve, and I can see that becoming very painful in the not too distant future.

You mentioned the business case for, like, three, four, six hour batteries. I think this is what we've been thinking up quite a lot because we're we've been developing our own sort of long term revenue forecast for batteries and them.

And I mean, even when we look at June last month, there were sort of three days of price big price spikes that happened across all of them. And it was quite interesting because on the first day, it was maybe something we'd seen before where was, you know, thirty minutes an hour. But then the next day, so he had a price spike that lasted for three hours. Yeah. Three hours above about ten thousand dollars per megawatt hour. And then a colleague's later one that lasted for four hours.

And so it's, like, almost it's anecdotal, but also it's kind of these one off price events that really show the need for longer duration Yes. Storage and that the value that those projects can get in the short term.

I think this is the the absolutely fascinating question about forecasting and what you do with volatility. Because it's there. We know it is. There's an awful lot of people who say, well, you can't deal with that. But I just don't think that's an adequate response, and it doesn't deliver the investment case you need to actually underwrite additional storage. And I'm pretty clear, let's call it instinctively, that that's what's needed. And and so I think the I'm I'm super excited to see what what Moto is putting out in terms of energy price forecasts for BESS, including across that duration profile.

You know, looking through the rearview mirror only tells you the sum of the thing the conditions that have existed to date.

And and my view has been that, you know, twenty twenty was the beginning of the decade of what I would call peak volatility.

We're in twenty twenty five, and I think my decade of peak volatility is actually gonna be at least fifteen years.

What we've seen in the last five years is phenomenal in terms of macro disruption, geopolitical disruption, fuel price disruption. Every kind and and interest rates going from zero to here at the same time as as people are trying to get these very long lived assets and and complex projects through investment gateways.

So we get almost used to this level of disruption and the unexpected coming to pass. But being able to build that into, let's call it, a range of forecast outcomes is something that I haven't seen successfully prosecuted yet, but it is essential to understanding the value of storage.

Yeah. It's definitely a challenge.

Yeah. Thanks for that. Which I'm glad you're working on.

And so, like, one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about was Waratah Superbattery, you mentioned you'd been working on previously. At the time of recording, I think Waratah is sort of still going through its commissioning. It recently, I think, likes sort of dispatch records for the instantaneous megawatts coming out of battery in the NEM, But I think it's still got a little bit of way to go.

It's very, very close to achieving that Okay. Big milestone.

That's great to hear. And so, yeah, I guess if we just rewind a bit, like, what was your involvement in that project? And can you just give it also a quick summary of what the Rorotar Superbattery Project is?

Yes. So I was on a steering committee in in twenty twenty one inside New South Wales government that needed to respond to potential early closure of a rowing power station, either in in units or or in whole. And so New South Wales government response, because we'd set up the electricity infrastructure roadmap and Energy Co had had sort of just been formed, was to to do a rapid exploration of of the set of alternatives in in in front of government to actually consider reliability, security, think through the unintended consequences, if you like, of taking any particular course of action.

So that was done in an incredibly short period of time.

And as a result, I was fortunate to be selected as the inaugural project director for the Waratah Superbattery, which is a priority transmission infrastructure project under the New South Wales legislation, which is legislation that allows us to go faster, essentially, than than the national electricity framework would offer.

And it allows, in essence, for you to look forward at expected security issues rather than having to look at existing parameters to define what can be a regulated return under the national electricity rules. So we had the joy and the challenge of being the first project that went through design implementation of a contestable tender process and regulatory approval. And and we did all that in, I think, setting land speed records.

So, yes, I was project director, had an incredible team of advisers. But I think the story I like to tell most about Waratah Superbattery is that it is a beautiful example of what happens when you get radical collaboration.

So we needed really to pull out all the stops across the transmission network service provider, which is TransGrid. In this case, the infrastructure planner, who is Energy Co, keeping in mind the role of the consumer trustee in response to renewable energy zones that that that sit around priority projects like this, the role of the regulator, and this was their first time performing their obligations under under the act, as well as the private market, who would actually step up to the plate and and bid into a tender process that was asking for an incredibly tight delivery timetable, remembering that at the start of twenty twenty two, we were heading toward peak lithium.

We were in year two of of the war in Ukraine, year three of COVID. So some pretty shocking instability factors that meant making a decision to build a battery as big as this was was no mean feat. And for the private sector to to respond in kind and put forward a really amazing set of proposals. I'll happily say our our decision was quite hard in terms of shortlisting because you're you're absolutely treading into uncharted waters in terms of the capability and experience to deliver solutions like this.

And so, in terms of tender design, we were a little bit radical as well. We we brought land to the table to level the playing field. We considered, essentially, virtual solutions, because what we're building is not a single asset designed to just discharge power. It is a system integrity protection scheme, meaning its purpose is to provide insurance value to allow the network to essentially operate on particular lines and deliver more renewable electrons to Sydney by putting some backup redundancy in place.

So there are a huge amount of moving parts, and all those parts need to get to the finish line So we are we are sort of just past the original intended COD, and I just think that is an incredible achievement on the part of every single party involved in this project, which is to say, you know, they're a matter of weeks behind schedule over three years.

Yeah. I think the I mean, I was actually we were looking at this last week because we'd done a bit of analysis into how long projects were taking to build Mhmm. In the NEM. And I think, actually, the thing that stood out was where it's at because it's so interest rate's eight hundred and fifty megawatts, about seventeen hundred megawatt hours. So at the time, by far the biggest battery both by power and energy capacity big belt in Australia.

Yeah. And Almost one of one of the biggest globally.

Yeah. One of the biggest globally. And so I had this new battery energy storage supply for Australia, so power in which has actually now gone gone, I mean, administration bust. I'm not even sure.

I can't Yeah. I'm sure. I'm not sure what the latest is on it. But it was turned around it was constructed in I think about seventeen months, which is pretty amazing for projects that size.

I think kinda shows what can be done.

Yes. So so all of the constructors I'll even say credit to my team and and New South Wales government, we got a DA through in pretty record time as well for that site to be available and for work to be able to start on time. So, yes, we needed everything to go right, and almost everything went really right.

It's not surprising, really, that there's some hiccups, you could say, along the way. I think this is a phenomenal effort and case study, and I know that I was involved for the first twelve months.

All of the people who've been involved in that project, and I couldn't even count, have just not stopped running for the three years since we announced that tender.

And I think it will stand the test of time in terms of a very, very high quality decision. You have to appreciate that that governments are making these decisions with imperfect information. And so there might be some people who look back and say, well, did we need to do this? I I had a very firm view that it was a no regrets policy because the ability for that asset in terms of the way we designed the contract to deliver benefit for consumers is is in multiple avenues. So it provides the insurance value, which allows more renewable electrons to to get from generation upcountry through to the load center. But we also designed excess capacity mechanisms, meaning the asset owner, which is Acacia, is able to trade that battery, which means there's pressure on on the marginal wholesale price of electricity?

Yeah. Because I was gonna ask about that. Because So I think it's around so a hundred fifty megawatts, which is sort of able to trade No. Freely or a hundred megawatt?

It it's a it's a it's a shaped profile. Okay. So there are intraday differences, intraseasional differences, and there are other mechanisms in the contract that allow additional differences. So so it's quite complex, but it what it means is consumers are bearing basically the the the most minimal cost for that huge insurance value, benefiting from the renewable supply that that is is now free to get through instead of curtailed.

And the asset is contracted for a reasonably short period of time to provide this SIPs service.

And so after that, what we've done is really bring forward the build of a a very, very significant asset that is then able to operate completely as as a a merchant asset or or contract in other ways for the remainder of its useful life in this market. And I think pleasingly, we're we're hearing from multiple parties that batteries are performing much better than expected in terms of performance through cycles and low degradation. So useful life is Yeah.

Is a really interesting concept right now too.

Yeah. That's something I think we've been seeing kind of globally what we see. Yeah. I think just quickly then.

I mean, because, yeah, the one of the I mean, the core thing that kinda underpins the RotoPatch then is that SIPs contract Yes.

Where so, yeah, I think if correct me if I'm wrong, but basically so it's kind of it's almost like a reserve contract Yeah. For specific failures on the transmission network.

Yeah. So there are service obligations, and those obligations step up in terms of the the the megawatt hours that are reserved at different periods of time for for when we expect to need it most. And we won't, I think, have a perfect crystal ball, but there's a there's the ability to to flex that up and down in response to what else happens in this transition at the same time. But it's really designed to bridge the gap between what we might call the earliest potential closure of some units that are raring and the build out of more high voltage transmission, which is the Hunter Transmission Project, the Central West Arana Res project, and all the generation that connects into those. So the timing of those things may move, but we've got this mechanism in place, which means we get greater utilization of the existing network coming into Sydney.

I think having reached almost this this huge milestone of of getting getting that asset to to COD, I would expect to see consideration of of more SIPs projects in this market.

That was gonna be my question.

It was I was guessing it would.

Do you think but, yeah, like, do you think this kind of because obviously, a lot of work went into it.

So is it I can promise you that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, is it just gonna end up being like a sort of one off sort of better work, or is it something else to fix or is there a framework that could be duplicated?

It's it's an incredibly, if I do say so myself, well thought through contract and and market design.

I'm sure it can be improved, and and it was an improvement from some of the other contracts that we'd seen developed in this market in Australia. So Victorian Big Battery was was an important precedent, and I think that's what you were touching on before. It's the reserve capacity and the ability to trade in the Victorian big battery is is probably a slightly more simple mechanism. This one has a lot more flex because we wanted to try and get the cost borne by consumers for the insurance value down and and essentially get the merchant value up.

So as we think about the delays, the cost, and the challenge of transmission, and and we've seen incredible project progress from Energy Co on moving through the beginning phases of the other RES projects. But you can see that the Southwest RES, there was incredible oversubscription, if you like, for for access rights and also capacity investment scheme contracts relating to that region. But there is still a curtailment problem getting that that power through to Sydney.

Very significant tailwind problem.

Yeah. As you know. So I can't imagine that there's a better solution, although I am not an electrical engineer, as you may have figured out, or or a power systems analyst.

But I I can see incredible value in thinking about different ways to construct SIPs contracts and SIP services to achieve something akin to what the southern limb of the Sydney ring should be achieving, but probably won't be able to because I I just can't see how you cut a path through that urban development if you haven't already started five years ago. So I think we could expect to see a more meshed and a different slightly different set of contract design, but but really building on the bones of of what the Waratah Superbattery contract did and and reusing all the IP that is developed in the New South Wales legislation. You know, New South Wales is match fit to do this now. And, you know, potentially, could see other states follow suit, like like Victoria did with the VBB as well.

Yeah. I think that'd be great to see. And also, yeah, I'm really excited to see, yeah, where it's actually kind of finally begin commercial operations, which, yeah, fingers crossed will be sometime imminently.

I had a few more questions, but actually, think that's probably a good place to wrap it up. Yeah. So I do actually have two two final questions, which are the two questions we we do always end with, which is firstly, Belinda, do you have anything you would like to plug?

Look. I I think my plug is kind of on the theme of the Waratah Superbattery, which is that radical collaboration is the hallmark to success in this energy transition. So my particular firm has a a huge and phenomenally capable team of people who are able to think through the complexity, the different ways to to intersect the capabilities of the private sector and the public sector.

And, you know, we've got the hearts and minds, if you like, the passion to continue to see these these projects through and to keep thinking about what the right solutions are and and bring them to life. And that is going a bit beyond what you would call the ordinary bounds of of m and a. We're not just buying and selling a project that exists or or a company. We're here for that and all the innovation that needs to go around that to successfully develop the right revenue strategies and and the right risk profiles.

So that, in addition to to really helping everyone who's involved from a public sector and a regulatory perspective, understand what is at risk for capital and and developers is incredibly important. And and we all need to lean into that conversation. We need to lean into the social license conversations. They're not issues.

They're conversations that haven't been had sufficiently to get to get buy in. And I think this is incredibly exciting. And and I think, you know, the next ten years is gonna be pretty fun as well.

Yeah. Fingers crossed. And so final final question is what is your contrarian view?

So I don't know if it's incredibly contrarian at this point in time. I I think, as I said before, we haven't finished or maybe even started the conversation about capacity yet for for a long duration storage.

And I think if we're talking about a level playing field as we compare technologies and solutions and and you think about what is value for money, what is the business case from a from a public sector perspective, you have to consider that that carbon is not priced in this economy right now. And that is a disadvantage to anything that requires the technology and invention and innovation to deliver storage that is not handed to you through two million years of nature doing work for you. So I think, you know, capacity and carbon are probably my probably not that contrarian views.

I mean, carbon, I think he knows. I think coming over here from you, it feels more contrarian say.

I I think it has felt contrarian over the last decade, but but I've been stunned to see it really start to surface in in the productivity discussions going on between industry and governments in in the last weeks. So stunned in a very, very happy way. I I think this is a really sophisticated conversation. And if Australia gets this right, then then we are well on the road to success in terms of a a new clean, green economy.

Awesome. Well, yeah, let's wrap it up there. Belinda, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

And thanks everyone for listening.