Battery Safety

Why this matters

Batteries are an essential part of how households, businesses and communities power their lives. As this grows, so too does the need for trusted, clear information about their safety.

Rapid growth in residential, community and commercial batteries has outpaced community understanding, trust and confidence in battery safety. Communities are increasingly concerned about fire risk, toxic fumes, end‑of‑life disposal, unclear accountability, misinformation and inconsistent regulation. These concerns risk slowing consumer adoption, increasing opposition to Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) projects and undermining trust in the energy transition overall.

There is a clear opportunity to improve battery safety outcomes by building a shared, evidence‑based understanding across communities and supporting local community engagement with councils, emergency services, industry and consumers.

Impact

The #BetterTogether Battery Safety initiative aims to improve the understanding and confidence in battery safety within the energy transition.

To achieve this, we are collaborating with community, fire authorities, the energy sector and government to: 

• Co-design the #BetterTogether scope and priority actions cross-sector, complete an analysis of the community perceptions and concerns regarding batteries, conduct cross-sector workshops and provide evidence reviews including identifying existing information, review and consensus of content to use. 
• Develop plain language resources, translate complex and technical information into usable explanations and develop FAQs to be hosted on a dedicated mircosite. The tools, resources and engagement approaches will be tested throughout. 
• Provide prototypes to 2-3 communities including site visits, information sessions and feedback capture to apply findings to materials based on real community response. 
• Conduct an independent evaluation and measure impact metrics including confidence, understanding and acceptance of batteries, report back with lessons learned and provide input into scaling decisions.