A report titled Castles and Cars, published by Rewiring Australia, argues that despite Australia's ongoing dependence on a coal-intensive grid, the country has all the tools it needs to rapidly cut emissions and save individual households thousands of dollars .

The report shows an average Australian household uses 102 kilowatt hours of energy a day at a cost of $5,248 a year, much of which comes down to the operational expenditure on emissions-heavy fuels like petrol and gas.

By replacing fossil-fuel powered appliances like stoves and heaters and vehicles with versions which can run on electricity generated by solar systems households could save an average of $5,443 a year and cut their emissions to zero.

The report ,developed in partnership with the Australia Institute, estimates the cumulative savings will be more than $300 billion by 2035.

The Rewiring Australia project is being promoted by a new think tank led by Australian inventor and US government advisor Saul Griffith, who started the Rewiring America project.

"This is not going to be solved without a public-private partnership like we've never seen before," Griffith said at Tuesday's launch.

"Government has to make the regulatory costs go away... and banks and individual households need to come to the table to finance it because it's beyond a single government."

"We need to get in it together as communities, as households, as nations and we need to solve these problems and look creatively."

"If we begin electrifying our homes with roughly three per cent in 2022, 15 per cent in 2024, and 40 per cent in 2026, the spending required to pay for the capital cost difference (or break even point) is predicted to be around $12 billion in total," the report reads," Griffith said.

The Newcastle Herald has previously reported that the number of Hunter homes using solar energy has more than doubled in the past decade with about one in five homes across the region making the switch to renewable energy.

Australian Photovoltaic Institute data shows there are more than 45,000 domestic roof-top solar installations, representing 21 per cent of homes, across the Hunter Region. The systems have a combined capacity of 225 megawatts.

Gloucester (26.1 per cent), Dungog (23.3 per cent) and Port Stephens (21.8 per cent) have the highest proportion rooftop solar installations.

But the areas that are producing the most energy from rooftop solar are Lake Macquarie, Gloucester and Maitland.

The Hunter's transition to electric vehicles received a boost in August with the announcement that 10 electric vehicle fast charging stations would be installed in the region as part of a $24.5 million national project.

The Hunter charging stations, to be funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, will be located at Rutherford, Raymond Terrace, Newcastle (3), Charlestown, Toronto, Belmont and Caves Beach (2).

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of electric vehicles registered in Australia rose by more than 62 per cent to 23,128 in the 12 months to the end of January 2021.

Australia Institute spokesman Richie Merzian described the Rewiring Australia report as a good news story.

"It reduces the solutions to climate change to a simple narrative: get to 100 per cent clean energy, electrify everything and then turn your carbon sources into carbon sinks," he said.

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