A new Climate Council comparing Australia’s states and territories has found Queensland has rocketed up the rankings from climate laggard to solar leader in just a few years.
Other governments are speeding ahead with electric homes and vehicles, and stronger plans to cut climate pollution.
“The amount of clean energy powering our homes and businesses has doubled in just six years. Our main national grid is often powered by at least 40% renewables, and the states have been key to this progress,“ said Climate Councillor and former energy executive Greg Bourne.
The Race to the Top report, which compares states and territories’ progress on important shifts like rooftop solar, home batteries, electric vehicle registrations and more, has found the most populous states are enhancing their plans to cut climate pollution, while South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT are already powered by close to 100% clean electricity.
“Most states have grasped that this is the critical decade, but there is plenty of work still to do. Our kids’ futures depend on the choices we make now, and there is no time to waste,“ said Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie. “Australia’s ‘race to the top’ on climate is bringing enormous opportunities, particularly for Queensland, which now leads the nation on rooftop solar and clean energy investment.”
Alarmingly, the report also found Western Australia and the Northern Territory’s ongoing expansion and approval of highly-polluting gas projects is undermining national efforts to cut climate pollution and protect Australians from worsening unnatural disasters.
“As a West Australian, I’m confident this great state can catch up by embracing clean energy to power its homes, businesses and industry alike,” said Councillor Bourne. “We know the way forward and Queensland has shown things can turn around quickly. No one wants to remain at the back of the pack.”
Key findings include:
| State | Leading on
|
Needs to work on |
| Queensland | Rooftop solar panels have been installed on 50.2% of houses, the greatest share of any state.
|
Boosting household batteries (0.86% of houses have solar + batteries) and increasing shared transport use (6.1%). |
| New South Wales | NSW has the greatest share of residents ditching polluting cars for shared transport trips (13.1%).
|
Approvals of renewable energy projects, big batteries and transmission lines, which are taking 2-3 times longer than other states. |
| Victoria | Household electrification. Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap is a leading plan for slashing climate pollution and electrifying homes.
|
Adding more rooftop solar. Only 28.1% of Victorian houses have solar, well behind most other jurisdictions. |
| South Australia | SA has the greatest proportion of households with solar and batteries (2.86%), and often gets 100% of its power supplied by renewable sources.
|
Phasing out support for polluting gas. |
| Western Australia | WA leads on battery and critical minerals research, and ranks third on household solar installation (44.6% of houses), behind only Qld and SA.
|
Increasing its share of renewables. WA gets only 17.6% of its electricity from renewable sources and is set to increase climate pollution by extracting more gas. |
| The ACT | ACT has the highest electric vehicle uptake (6.8 per 1000 people) and purchases 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources.
|
Canberra has the lowest shared transport use of any Australian capital (3.1%) with limited services in spread-out suburbs. |
| Tasmania | Tasmania leads on hydropower generation, and has the strongest renewable energy targets of any state or territory (greater than 100% by 2030).
|
Hobart ranks second-last of all Australian capitals for uptake of shared transport (just 3.4% of trips in Hobart are by bus) |
| Northern Territory | NT ranks third for the rollout of household batteries alongside rooftop solar (2.51%), slightly behind SA and ACT.
|
Improving its commitment to cut climate pollution and reducing support for new gas projects. |
Ted Mead
September 4, 2024 at 12:17
Despite our state governments failing to see that turbine wind energy isn’t the right way to go, it is however, inspiring to see the rapid take-up of photovoltaic, solar convection, and battery storage on a national level. Unfortunately, even if Australia reaches it Renewable Energy Targets and finds itself carbon neutral by 2050, it will all be proven in vain for global climate stability.
Australia has, and still is, lagging in comprehension that fossil fuels consumption needs to end immediately. Meanwhile it is obvious that the powers-to-be, in their myopic views, will continue to approve more coal mines and gas extractive projects whose products will be exported to other countries so they can continue heating up the planet – whilst we gloat hypocritically about our transition into renewables.
The slow conversion to renewables in Australia has been a product of conservative governments, particularly the coalition, broadcasting the inability for the renewable sector to provide adequate base-load power. The Howard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton troglodytes held back this country for far too long by supporting fossil fuels over renewables, but in fact the renewable energy industry in this country has provided a significant boost to in the fields of employment and economics, and that could, and should, be increased if renewable energy products were manufactured extensively here.
Tasmania with its Hydro schemes has, fortunately with some vision, been upgrading its turbines’ power output efficiency, but our governments still have their heads in the clouds by thinking we are going to be the ‘battery of the nation.’
It is most likely that Tasmania will make the same mistake by constructing another 1 or 2 undersea power cables while believing that they can profit from surplus power exports, which they have never done, at a cost of $90 million rent per year. This will be yet another financial disaster, but that is exactly what Tasmanian governments are so good at.
The construction of more photovoltaic energy farms, such as the one being built near Cressy, should be the preferred course over more wind farms and their omnipresent transmission lines.
In reality, there is far too much corporate money being donated to political parties to see the changes we need in this country!
Thinker
September 4, 2024 at 16:05
Ted, your animosity towards land-based wind turbines has very little justification. There’s more about Cressy here.
Your apparent hatred of transmission lines is irrational insofar as ALL energy transmission systems require them. That’s how electrical energy is transported from the source to the beneficiaries.
The reason for very high voltages to convey electrical power is that power cable resistance losses fall to 25% wherever the voltage is doubled. The catch is of course, that wire insulation costs rise to secure that huge gain.
Here’s an extract from the above Cressy weblink:
“The Northern Midlands Solar Farm is set to be installed on existing farmland in the small town of Cressy, 35 kilometres (22 miles) southwest of Launceston. The proposal, coming with plans for an integrated battery energy storage system (BESS) and a new 220-kV transmission line, was put forward by TasRex Pty Ltd, a recently-created company with ambitious plans to deploy up to 5 GW of solar, onshore and offshore wind power capacity in Tasmania.”
I can easily agree with you that high voltage transmission lines across rural landscapes can occasionally seem unsightly, but the return from them is surely massive for the time being. The good news of course, is that they don’t seem so unsightly at night.
Ted Mead
September 4, 2024 at 18:20
Thinker, it’s not animosity re wind generation, but rather that I feel it’s just not pragmatic to keep constructing them all across the island, particularly when vast natural areas and threatened species habitats have to be seriously altered to accommodate them. I understand voltage loss, so if there needs to be more energy farms then they should be suitably sited to utilise existing transmission lines.
Sometime in future decades there will be wide support for localised power supply through micro grids, hence the reduced need for transmission lines all over the landscape. The major cost to consumers when it comes to power prices is network charges because these transmission lines are expensive to construct and maintain.
Personally I don’t care about power costs because I am totally independent and off the grid. I just have empathy for the disadvantaged, the poor and the elderly.
Building endless numbers of transmission lines is visionless and superfluous. We are still stuck in last century’s ideology of building more power supplies regardless of the costs, the proposed pumped hydro initiatives for Tasmania being proof of that! The Snowy Hydro 2 will prove to be a financial disaster because by the time it is completed it would have been cheaper to give every city household a free solar power system.
It seems we just have to agree to disagree about the present direction of Tasmania’s power infrastructures.
Thinker
September 5, 2024 at 16:09
Ted, we have a major point of agreement!
Earlier on you accurately mentioned that vortex technology would be less landform intrusive than conventional wind turbines for electricity generation in Tasmania. I’m so pleased your raised this subject.
I found this on the Web about Vortex devices but perhaps more importantly for those with an engineering background is the maths behind it here.
“Since these devices are low maintenance and harmless to wildlife (like solar panels) they open new horizons for wind energy in urban areas and protected areas.
“However, they can take advantage of the installation zones of regular wind power as well, so this technique can be scaled up to bring its own characteristics to large-scale production in classic wind parks or huge offshore.”
Best regards, Ted.
Ted Mead
September 7, 2024 at 14:22
Thinker …
I wrote an introductory article on vortex wind generation which was published in Tasmanian Times on April 3, 2016.
At that time the technology was in its infancy, and I’m sure it has advanced a lot since then.