Australian Associated Press, September 10 2024

Peter is the Managing Director of Proven Energy, a private company established in 2012, which specialises in Solar Energy. The word Proven comes from Pete’s desire when he started the business to help inform people that solar was not a new and untested solution. He’s passionate about helping home and business owners transition into renewable energy. Peter is a self-confessed nature lover and believes that he can make a more tangible difference by building a company than on his own. He is 31 and would like to start a family in the next few years, so the future of the world is an issue close to his heart.

Read more about Peter and Proven Energy below.

Can you tell us more about Proven Energy?

Proven Energy works hard to produce solutions in the solar sector that focus on helping customers reach long term sustainability. We achieve this through very stringent quality control and training processes and having a team culture where everyone is proud to be making a real difference.

Why is Proven Energy taking climate action?

Some people have a resounding voice, some have amazing abilities to rally people together to make a stand. Proven Energy shows how a private company can provide good jobs, turn a safe profit and provide a trusted solution that makes an actual difference. If we don’t provide jobs and profit, then it is not sustainable. 

Every customer that chooses Proven Energy, chooses solar power that helps the climate in the most sustainable way possible. 

Most of the Proven team is young and have young families, and there’s a strong team culture around making a difference through sustainable energy. All our staff want to be able to say they’re giving their best for the customers and for the planet!

Can you tell us about your commitments to climate action? 

We consider ourselves high achievers considering our small resource pool. We have installed the biggest solar system roof spaces allow on our own building, and we also provide heavily discounted solar systems to our staff. We have worked hard to develop different ways to bring solar to more home and business owners including developing our own ground-mounted system suitable for highly reactive farmland soils in Southern Queensland.

We have very efficient recycling and upcycling processes in place. Our packaging is 95% reused or recycled and we recycle our copper and aluminium spares as well as bottles, paper, cardboard and plastic.

We take the time to educate our clients on the carbon impact of the different products available on the market, so they can make informed decisions to spend their money on sustainably produced quality products that will last a long, long time. 

One of the biggest actions we as a company believe we can take is to ensure we sell products that help instead of harm the environment. In maturing markets such as solar, it is too easy to sell poorly made products for a massive profit and close up shop when the warranty claims begin. That does not help customers, or the environment. We work hard to do the opposite; good components, tiny warranty claim percentages, and happy clients who save money and the environment. We build a passion in our clients for solar and sustainability.

Is there a project you are working on that you are excited about?

We have been working hard for a few years to bring to market a way of getting solar on rental properties, both commercial and residential. There are many energy users in this space frustrated by the fact they cannot justify spending money on a system on a rooftop they don’t own. 

We have invested considerable resources since the beginning of 2018 into several experimental projects around this very idea, and we’re looking forward to taking the next steps in this area.

What real-world opportunities have you uncovered from taking climate action today? 

We have become known in the industry as a quality-driven company who cares about renewables. This has led to some great opportunities, including a recent installation of 40kw of solar in the Queensland Energy Museum at Highfields Pioneer Village, with an integrated display showing the savings the museum is making in real time, and telling the history of solar energy. The installation was undertaken thanks to a Community Grant from Heritage Bank.

What climate action would you like to see Australia take?

• Lasting policy commitment. A guarantee that just as the government has supported coal-fired energy for the last 100 years, they’ll then throw the same support behind renewable energy. We need simple tangible recognition that renewables are the most important part of the energy mix, and are here to stay, to maintain and to invest in.
• Provision of further R&D incentives for renewable companies that have lasted the test of time, so that deserving companies have the chance to make a real difference in the renewable space.
• On a global scale, our Government needs to lobby for further research worldwide and become part of climate change reforms on more than just a national level.

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Michael is CEO of Indigenous Energy Australia. He shared with us that Australia "should be facilitating a society wide transformation by fostering a conviction, role modelling appropriate behaviours and mindsets, developing skills and capabilities and establishing formal mechanisms that push us to a zero carbon compatible culture”.

Indigenous Energy Australia is committed to improving Australian livelihoods by combating climate change and bringing a high degree of commerciality in the pursuit of social objectives.

Read more from our interview with Michael below.

Can you tell us about Indigenous Energy Australia? 

Indigenous Energy Australia (IEA) is an Aboriginal, profit-for-purpose organisation committed to combating climate change and improving the livelihoods of remote, regional, vulnerable and Indigenous Australians. IEA achieves these commitments through the development of enabling infrastructure:

• water
• waste
• transport
• telecommunications
• waste water

IEA specialise in best practice engagement and management principles, and offer an innovative project approach that pursues social objectives and generates economic outcomes. All of our developments adapt around community characteristics, harness community knowledge including Indigenous knowledge, and contribute to community outcomes.

Our purpose is to revolutionise the way the infrastructure is developed in Australia, ensuring that communities are involved in the development and management of their infrastructure. We will collaborate with communities, industry, government and academia to demonstrate how infrastructure can be developed around community characteristics, knowledge and goals, to achieve and sustain holistic outcomes.

Why is IEA taking climate action? 

We are taking climate action for a number reasons:

1. Indigenous and vulnerable Australians are those that are being, and will be, most impacted by climate changes, further exacerbating the inequities they currently face;
2. We see an opportunity for Australia, particularly Indigenous and aforementioned communities, to thrive. We have a number of natural competitive advantages that bolster the case for an Australian led climate response, where Aussie grown technologies, technical approaches and business models are applied around the globe so that Australians reap the benefits of the new zero carbon economy;
3. There is a significant opportunity to take an Indigenous approach to our climate response, Indigenous culture is centred around custodianship, which is highly applicable to our climate predicament. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge, practices and culture into our climate response is a step towards both a reconciled and zero carbon society.

Can you tell us about your commitments to climate action? 

Our climate commitments are mainly ingrained in how we do business. All energy systems we develop are renewable and we seek to push any project we are involved in to the most sustainable point possible. We don’t have an office and never have, and where possible we minimise our travel.

In addition to the social outcomes we pursue in our projects, we also pursue environmental benefits in a highly commercial manner, evaluating all benefits and risks with a truly objective lens, and also taking an innovative approach to the development of business models to ensure we can get the best of both worlds.

Is there a project you are working on that you are excited about?

There are two, we are doing a lot of work with community, organisations, government and academia on bringing the links between Indigenous culture, knowledge, and practices through the anecdotal-academic-commercial funnel to the forefront not only sharing this knowledge in an accessible, digestible and resonant manner, but also demonstrating and applying these concepts.

The second climate focussed initiative we are currently working on is “The Management of a Changing Climate”, where we have identified that climate change must be handled as an organisational transformation or change, and thus the practices and approaches from the professional field of change management should be applied. The sharp operators in change management have a high rate of success and can affect permanent changes to the fundamental mindsets and behaviours throughout an organisation. We believe that an absence of a number of key individual mindsets that form organisational characteristics, which in turn make up a companies ‘culture’, is at the root of the climate inaction we observe across organisations and societies.

What real-world opportunities have you uncovered from taking climate action today? 

Our whole business is built on taking climate action, so every opportunity we have uncovered. Recently, interest in what we are doing has increased quite significantly which is primarily due to our work connecting Indigenous wisdom to what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of a climate catastrophe.

What climate action would you like to see Australia take?

We believe the Federal Government needs to lead the facilitation of the right individual mindsets being developed in our society. The Federal Government is responsible for ensuring we have the appropriate societal environment to overcome challenges, innovate and thrive. Our collective mindsets create a set of societal characteristics that form this ‘environment’, if we can get this right with the support of the Federal Government we will be able to develop the skills, capabilities, knowledge, systems, tools, processes to fully understand the problems we face and develop holistic and long lasting solutions to them. This Federal support should essentially be facilitating a society wide transformation, by fostering a conviction, role modelling appropriate behaviours and mindsets, developing skills and capabilities, and establishing formal mechanisms (incentives and disincentives) that push our individual mindsets and thus Australia to a zero carbon compatible culture.

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