‘Way off the planet': regional businesses use renewables to slash costs

In the heart of Queensland’s mining belt, a businessman who has grown his enterprise mostly off the back of the coal industry sees the energy sector going only one way.

Businessman Jason Sharam’s Linked Group has spent
$460,000 on a solar and battery installation. 

“I think renewable energy is where the market’s going – what we class as the energy revolution,” says Jason Sharam.

The self-described “dumb-arse electrician”, who will have grown his Mackay mining energy business from a starting staff of six to 150 by mid-2018, says he is trying to help people “see through the politics” on energy.

“We try to stick to the facts and the real numbers,” Sharam says.

In Mackay, as elsewhere in regional Australia, power prices are already eye-watering for small and medium businesses.

One of Sharam’s clients has gone off the grid to run a diesel generator, which is not cheap, but still cheaper than paying for network electricity at an average of 86 cents – and as much as $1.26 – a kilowatt-hour.

Read Joshua Robertson’s story on The Guardian - “‘Way off the planet': regional businesses use renewables to slash costs.