Annual General Meeting Updates
We recently held our first online public AGM and we welcomed a distinguished guest speaker for the second half of the evening to share thoughts on the clean energy transition. The financial statements and annual report were accepted, and the members of Electrify Boroondara Inc elected our new Committee consisting of eight people. We thanked two retiring committee members for their outstanding contributions - Lindy Boyd, and Philippa Sholl. Our newly elected Committee members for 2026/2027 are listed here.
Our Chair Susan Biggar shared a short presentation reviewing Electrify Boroondara’s activities and wins in the past year and some highlights include:
Continued core focus areas: rooftop solar and batteries, appliance electrification, EVs and e-bikes, home energy efficiency.
Electrify Your Life Expo 2025: Our flagship event, we doubled attendance to 2,000, with 50 stall-holders; strong community feel, Co-Convenors Chloe Currie and Caroline Pribble were acknowledged for hundreds of hours of work. Read our Expo 2025 Report.
We continued participating in many community outreach events where we have stalls to chat with people about home electrification and our events: farmers markets, Glenferrie Festival, Swinburne orientation week, Melbourne Girls College cinema night, Boroondara Cemetery Firefly Festival, Lindy Boyd was acknowledged as our amazing Volunteer Coordinator who made most of this possible.
We’re seeing huge success with our webinars and joint events on a range of topics: hot water, heating, EVs, solar and batteries, in partnership with Lighter Footprints and others.
We’re building strong partnerships: City of Boroondara highlighted with strong support for Expo 2025 and 2026, as well as Electrify Yarra, Rewiring Australia, various Melbourne electrification small businesses.
Digital presence has grown, we’re excited to have a new part-time Communications Coordinator starting and we secured core funding to support this.
Guest Speaker Session ‘Electrifying our way to Net Zero’ with Professor Peter Newman AO, John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University; IPCC lead author; WA Scientist of the Year 2018–19.
His main thesis was that the shift towards reduction across the globe in the burning of carbon (ie the progress towards net zero economies) was happening faster than any of the projections put forward by IPCC or the Paris Agreement, and was driven primarily by the falling costs of rooftops and lithium ion batteries, largely because of China's decision to mass produce them.
The good news is that renewables have now surpassed coal generated power. Their modelling based on current costs and other relevant factors show that it could be as early as 2035 that renewables and batteries are dominant. Peter also discussed the strong growth in the sale of new Electric vehicles in Europe has surpassed ICE cars. (In Australia, new sales outstripped petrol cars for the first time, in August 2026.)
As part of his presentation on international achievements, Peter noted the surprise of Pakistan's take up of solar - 32 GW of solar installed in two years (vs. Australia’s 7 GW total) which resulted in the cancellation of 20 LNG shipments.
China steps into global leadership in these areas:
Household solar, batteries and EVs for every household income - all being taken up around the globe and in Australia
Freight trucks for every task - long and short trips
Agricultural and mining machinery
Industrial processing of minerals and cement. - hydrogen not proving itself thus far - other solutions emerging
Other points of interest included:
Nuclear power is not competitive; fossil fuel companies have one decade only if they do not pivot to the provision of renewable services
Saul Griffiths of policy advocacy organisation Rewiring Australia understands what has to be done in electrification, and Josh Burns (Gardening Australia) demonstrates how to do this with his house and garden
In question time when asked about what to do when we lose traction with change of governments both here and internationally, he said that market forces will force the hands of even right wing governments, and cited Hungary as such an example.
All of the slides from Professor Peter Newman AO’s presentation can be explored here.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the AGM. We’re excited to continue helping our community switch to electric in FY27, and we look forward to seeing you at future events!
