Embedded Files
Wendell Porter
March 2026
This title is a bold statement so I’ll provide a short review that will more than back up this claim. For the last quarter of 2025, more than 50% of the electricity used in Australia was produced from renewable sources. We’ve gone from producing over 90% of our electricity from black and brown coal in the early 2000’s to producing only about half of that (45%) near the end of 2025.
Australia’s goal is to produce 82% of Australia’s electricity needs from the National Electricity Market (NEM) from renewable sources by 2030. While quite a number of countries have already surpassed this goal, none have done so by predominantly using solar and wind energy. By itself, South Australia is nearly there. For the last 12 months, South Australia has produced nearly 75% of its electricity from just solar and wind energy. This percentage of just wind and solar is world leading and is planned to be 100% by 2027!
Many articles have recently been published that focus on the renewable energy projects that have been cancelled in Queensland and in other states. With a bit of online digging, it is possible to construct a list of projects that have reached financial closure or are in the construction phase, in other words, the projects that are still being built. These are summarized in the table below. I focused on projects that will be finished by the end of 2029, a year ahead of the 2030 goal.
The final column represents the growth in capacity from the present to the end of 2029. For example: utility scale batteries will have 3 times the capacity in MW and 4 times the storage in MWh by the end of 2029 as they do now. Operating these new resources in a similar manner as they are operated now, will show that by the end of 2029 renewable energy sources will provide nearly 80% of the electricity requirements of the NEM. Now that is good news, indeed!
But what about individual states? New South Wales is an excellent example. They are on track to nearly triple their wind and battery resources. These alone, will transform the state energy picture. When coupled with steady increases in residential and utility scale solar and the addition of massive pumped hydro projects, it is obvious that many days and nights will be completely powered by renewable energy in New South Wales. The same is already true in Tasmania. Western Australia represents the largest, most isolated grid in the world. It might represent an even bigger story than South Australia. They have already experienced overnight periods where batteries powered a portion of their grid continuously from 4:30 pm to 8:30 am the next morning. They are set to more than double their grid scale battery capacity. Combined with planned additions of wind farms, solar farms, rooftop solar and residential batteries, Western Australia will not be far behind South Australia and Tasmania in providing a 100% renewable energy electricity grid. Even in the laggard states, like Queensland for example, 2029 will see many days where black coal electricity generators shut off completely during the day.
In just eight years, we have gone from one utility scale battery that mostly supplied grid support services for events that lasted just a few minutes, to grid scale batteries that operate through the night. This truly unlocks the renewable energy revolution.
The end for burning coal to make electricity in Australia is in sight, and the demise of natural gas for the same use is not far behind.
Above: A typical day in South Australia. Rooftop solar (yellow) is providing 100% of the demand at mid-day. (Source:NEM Watch)
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