Ms Hawke would like to see hundreds of similar batteries across the nation but says Australia's targets for reducing carbon emissions are too weak to provide businesses with enough incentive to invest.
Referencing the world's greatest sprinter, she adds that Australia's energy market — and its high carbon emissions — will have to change.
It's a month until world leaders meet in Glasgow to discuss how to prevent runaway climate change from irrevocably altering the globe.
Ahead of COP26, the United Nations' 26th climate change conference, the leaders of some of the largest countries on Earth have been lifting their commitments to reduce carbon emissions.
"We're faffing about here in Australia," Carbon Market Institute chief executive John Connor tells The Business.
"We need to recognise we've got carbon prices, we've got carbon markets.
Mr Connor, from the Carbon Market Institute, says the creation of a carbon price — a concept that has bedevilled both major parties for more than a decade — will happen either by us or to us.
"Europe is looking to implement them, but also importantly we're seeing Japan, Korea, and other countries looking at that," Mr Connor says
"So that's another way in which we're going to have carbon pricing imposed upon us if we don't make the reforms here at home that suit the Australian economy the best."
But the federal government hasn't signed up to the target of net zero — achieving balance between the amount of carbon emissions produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere — by far-off 2050, much less targets for 2030 being pushed by business and advocacy groups
The former head of the Australian Coal Association, Ian Dunlop, says it's not submarines, China or COVID-19 that will dominate our lives in the next 20 years, but rather climate change
"What we do in the next three to five years is going to determine the future of humanity and that's the seriousness of the situation we're actually in," he says
USA
UK
France
Germany
Russia
India
Canada