Saul Griffith is a prolific inventor, an engineer and a successful entrepreneur. His bold ideas on energy caught the eye of the US president and helped shape the ground-breaking climate legislation that passed there late last year. Now he’s returned home after two decades in the US and has joined with his community near Wollongong, south of Sydney, in an ambitious project to electrify homes in his suburb and power them with renewables. If successful, the pilot project will prove that household electrification is a potential solution to an urgent problem.