Still looking positive one year on
I think we’re all in the mood for Christmas as we race towards the end of December. But before we wrap up the year, Liv and I would like to celebrate the first anniversary of Positive Good, our business partnership, friendship and working relationship that stretches back to our days at Enphase Energy in 2014.
So here are our milestones for the first anniversary of Positive Good:
We’ve welcomed new clients - the Australian Energy Storage Alliance, HIP V. HYPE, NEXTracker, SunWiz and S-5! to the Positive Good family.
We’ve grown our virtual team who partner with us from Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney to deliver exceptional work for our campaigns. Through weeknights and weekends, thank you for being by our side - we couldn’t have done it without you.
We’re honoured to be named as a finalist for the Clean Energy Council Marketing and Communications awards, for a business that was barely a year old stacked against large corporates for an award in recognition for the work we’ve done for sonnen.
We’ve put our weight behind the Not Business As Usual campaign to rally for cleantech companies to sign up for the national protest in September as Australian businesses joined schools in the Global Climate Strike.
A big shout out to Zoom for helping us run our business remotely and for keeping us connected on video to run meetings across time zones and the flexibility to work from home. There have been continuous discussions in our industry on how we achieve work/life balance and we believe it is truly possible.
Over this year, we’ve held each other accountable for our fitness by skipping off to F45 / Paramount Recreation Club in the mornings, working through the day, child minding and sharing cheeky wines over Zoom in the evening.
As we head towards a new decade, we would like to thank our clients for choosing to work with us, for your encouragement and insights when we first started, the word of mouth introductions we’ve received and to many people who believed in us and partnered with us.
We couldn’t have made it through this year without you. Happy holidays and here’s to a new decade of positive change.
Positive Good is Born
Positive Good, an integrated marketing communications consultancy that is dedicated to cleantech and renewable energy brands in Australia was launched today.
Co-founders and directors, Gabriel Wong and Olivia Smith, who had worked with Enphase Energy since 2014, started Positive Good to represent brands that are driving Australia’s clean energy revolution as the uptake of renewable energy grows in the country across households, businesses and industries.
Positive Good develops and manages integrated marketing and communications campaigns for foundation clients including sonnen, deX, Solar Analytics, Sungrow and GreenSync.
Gabriel Wong and Olivia Smith, Directors at Positive Good said, “The Australian cleantech and renewable energy market is sorely lacking the industry expertise of marketing and communications consultants who understand the clean energy landscape. Positive Good is looking to change this.”
“We’ve spent a significant amount of time during our career working with consultants who don’t know what is the difference between a kW or kWh or how to influence a newscycle to address clean energy policies and stakeholders. This can mean the development of content remains the responsibility of the client, which is inefficient both from a time and cost perspective. Instead of having clients having to take us through these fundamentals to build a campaign, our clients know that we can hit the ground running to deliver results from day one,” said Gabriel and Olivia.
Gabriel has spent over two decades managing integrated marketing campaigns for cleantech and technology brands. Besides Enphase Energy, he has worked with brands such as Yingli Solar, SolarMax, Landis+Gyr, Ecoult and Star Scientific.
Olivia is an agile, creative marketer with 15 years of experience in PR, advertising, events and marketing management. She has executed marketing and communications programs for the likes of LG Chem, Sungrow, Enphase Energy, GreenSync, deX and Solar Analytics.
Investment in solar grows despite policy vacuum
Australians embrace the sun like no other country in the world. Beyond slapping on some sunscreen and racing out to the beach, our love for the sun includes an obsession with solar power, with Australia receiving the largest average solar radiation per square metre globally.
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator, six to 10 solar panels are installed every minute in the country if we included large-scale commercial solar projects. Today, the solar boom has been further boosted by solar and storage subsidy schemes to make generation and storage more accessible to homeowners in South Australia, Queensland and Victoria.
Two million homes in Australia now have rooftop solar and 70,000 homes are expected to install batteries in 2019. However, homeowners are not the only people driving the growth of Australia’s clean energy evolution. Businesses and investors are backing solar either through Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) or direct investments in building solar farms.
In 2018, close to 2,000 MW of wind and solar generation was backed by a PPA. This year in January, Flow Power signed a ten year agreement to draw 48 MW from two solar farms to companies like Mars Australia who are aiming to power 100 percent of their operations solar through a PPA.
Investors have also signalled their interest in making direct investments in Australian solar projects with Advisian most recently advertising that it was seeking 20GW of clean energy projects on behalf of an international power company.
There have been repeated calls from businesses, industry and investors for the Australian Government to provide greater policy certainty for energy to encourage further investment. Yet in the face of rising energy prices and demands for companies to reduce their carbon footprint, not everyone is prepared to wait. Instead, many are choosing to move forward with solar and the sun will continue to shine on Australia’s solar industry.