{"id":855332,"date":"2026-08-14T20:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/855332\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T20:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:02:18","slug":"s-curve-modelling-says-renewables-can-kick-coal-out-of-australia-by-2032-but-is-this-soon-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/855332\/","title":{"rendered":"S-curve modelling says renewables can kick coal out of Australia by 2032. But is this soon enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1972 when I was supposed to be studying for my A levels I was completely distracted by the book Limits to Growth. This book was roundly castigated, especially by industry who scoffed at the predictions of peak oil and gas and environmental collapse. But half a century later, we can see how accurate most of the predictions have proved to be. The one that scared me the most and still does is climate change and that has given purpose and focus to my entire career and now into retirement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the years I became more and more despondent and angry as I saw decade after decade of climate science ignored, as climate record after record collapsed.\u00a0 I saw COP after COP fail ignominiously as commercial vested interests prevailed over the science and the totally bleeding obvious \u2013 a survivable future trumps economy because without people there is no economy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I saw the IPCC doing great science but still failing to give the precautionary advice needed to the UN!\u00a0The UNFCCC mandates that UN member nations act with precaution on climate even where the science is uncertain, but the academic peer review process stops uncertain science in its tracks and the summary reports are so highly politically moderated.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I saw my own efforts in environmental life-cycle assessment, building and infrastructure rating tools in UK, US and Australia substantially lobbied by commercial vested interests to Greenwash.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I saw how the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals were used by governments and corporations spruiking their progress on 15 nice-to-haves while utterly trashing progress on the two existential threats to our entire species forever \u2013 namely climate and ecology (where ecology depends most on climate).<\/p>\n

In 2017, when the \u201cHothouse Earth\u201d research pulled together different strands of research on the compounding feedback loops of the climate system and implied that we needed to be at net zero emissions by 2030 (or before 2\u00b0C of warming) otherwise climate change would probably accelerate unstoppably to 4-6\u00b0C of warming!\u00a0 Surely climate tipping into accelerated warming due to feedback loops would make our political and corporate leaders wake up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Greta Thunberg and the Sydney School Strike for Climate started in 2018 I thought, \u2018At last \u2013 the next generation gets this and now they will force everyone to wake up and demand the changes we need.\u2019 When XR took over London I thought, \u2018It\u2019s started \u2013 this will spread globally and we will make the changes needed, but is there still enough time.\u2019<\/p>\n

The 2019 bushfires in Australia were unprecedented and I thought that this would be the turning point \u2013 mass protest must surely follow and the change must happen, but is there enough time?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in China, where no protest is tolerated but the government is run by engineers and scientists, Beijing was shrouded in pollution \u2013 dust storms combined with horrific pollution from the manufacturing industries that were now starting to provide all of the world\u2019s needs and drag China out of poverty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

China embarked on a radical plan \u2013 plant trees everywhere to stop the dust, drawdown pollution and clean the air and transition as fast as possible to decarbonised energy and develop its industry to supply a world with the decarbonised tech that a survivable industrialised future would have to depend on.<\/p>\n

So I am a card carrying doomist, with prepper tendencies, for my kids and grandkids. My friend and colleague Prof Peter Newman chastises me regularly for being so negative\u00a0\u2013 arguing that things are changing, but not perhaps as fast as they should.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

We are working together on forecasting the lives lost to climate change and the results are catastrophic if we don\u2019t change. In his view we will change just in time, but to me this seems highly unlikely.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For this article I used crude S-curve modelling on the high-level statistics for Australia and globally to explore whether Peter is right \u2013 I dearly want to be wrong!!<\/p>\n

The main focus is electricity, because decarbonised electricity is the key to a decarbonised future, as Saul Griffith has demonstrated \u2013 we need to Electrify Everything.\u00a0So how fast are we progressing and, if we take the past trend and model it to an S-curve, how quickly are we\/can we decarbonising globally?<\/p>\n

First the good news.\u00a0If we look at the historic data for Australia or globally it doesn\u2019t look promising, except that the growth in solar and wind has been phenomenal and modelled to an S-curve it is likely to surprise us all and displace all fossil fuelled power by 2032 for Australia and by close to 2050 globally.<\/p>\n

Now the bad news \u2013 2030 is the real deadline for not triggering climate runaway, so a near miss is as bad as missing by a mile for a long-term survivable future and Australia is fairly contradictory on its climate commitments \u2013 heading for zero by 2030, but still opening new coal and gas even out to 2070! This surely shows the disdain our governments really have for their Paris commitments. <\/p>\n

These fossil fuels are for export, of course, with little to no net benefit for Australians who don\u2019t hold shares in these companies, so it\u2019s a pretty potent question why any government would approve such projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no financial advisor but it seems to me the writing is on the wall \u2013 fossil fuels will be completely stranded assets by 2050; the end of the fossil fuel gravy train is in-sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As to our governments, I want some of what they are smoking because it seems complete folly to be opening or extending fossil fuel projects or funding an oil refinery when everyone, everywhere will have transitioned to EV\u2019s and our freight has also transitioned to electric before the refinery is even commissioned.<\/p>\n

S-Curves say Australia can kill coal by 2032. The world can\u2019t. That\u2019s the problem<\/p>\n

Crude S-curve modelling of historical electricity data suggests Australia\u2019s grid could be carbon-free within six years \u2013 and that global electricity could follow by mid-century. Good news, except the climate clock runs out in 2030.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent a career in environmental life cycle assessment and carbon accounting, watching decade after decade of climate science get diluted by the time it reaches policy. So when I ran crude S-curve models over Australia\u2019s and the world\u2019s historical electricity generation data, I expected another exercise in disappointment. Instead I got a result that surprised me \u2014 and a result that should worry us even more.<\/p>\n

The good news: renewables are already on the steep part of the curve<\/p>\n

Technology adoption rarely follows a straight line. It follows an S-curve: slow uptake, then a rapid, self-reinforcing climb, then saturation. Solar and wind in Australia\u2019s grid have quietly entered the steep middle section of that curve. Coal \u2014 black and brown \u2014 is already in terminal decline, and once an S-curve turns, it turns fast.<\/p>\n

Model the trend forward and Australia\u2019s electricity system is on track to be running almost entirely on wind, solar and storage by around 2032, with fossil generation pushed to the margins well before then.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: [DCCEEW], author\u2019s logistic S-curve projection.<\/p>\n

Converted into emissions, the same modelling implies Australia\u2019s electricity sector could be close to zero-carbon by 2032 \u2014 a genuinely startling number for a country that spent the 2010s arguing about whether renewables could keep the lights on at all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: [DCCEEW], author\u2019s logistic S-curve projection.<\/p>\n

This is the case my colleague, Curtin University\u2019s Professor Peter Newman, has been making to me for years: the transition is happening faster than the doom in my head allows for. Running the numbers myself, for the first time, I have to concede he has a point \u2014 at least for Australia\u2019s electricity sector.<\/p>\n

The catch: the world isn\u2019t on Australia\u2019s curve<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the good news runs out. Apply the same modelling globally and coal and gas don\u2019t get displaced by wind and solar until close to 2050 \u2014 nearly two decades behind Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: [EMBER and other sources via OWID], author\u2019s logistic S-curve projection.<\/p>\n

Global electricity emissions follow the same lag, only falling to near-zero somewhere in the 2040s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: [EMBER and other sources via OWID with life-cycle conversion factors from UNECE and IPCC], author\u2019s logistic S-curve projection.<\/p>\n

That gap matters more than it looks. The scientific consensus behind the \u201cHothouse Earth\u201d work of 2018 was that the world needed to be at net zero before roughly 2\u00b0C of warming \u2014 effectively by 2030 \u2014 or risk tipping the climate system into feedback loops that accelerate warming largely beyond our control, toward 4-6\u00b0C. If that threshold is real, a near miss in 2050 is not a partial win. It\u2019s as good as missing by a mile, because the planet doesn\u2019t grade on a curve.<\/p>\n

Electricity is the fulcrum here, not a side issue. As Saul Griffith has argued, decarbonised electricity is the precondition for decarbonising everything else \u2014 transport, heating, industry. Electrify Everything only works once the grid itself is clean. So the pace of this S-curve effectively sets the pace for every other sector\u2019s transition too. Australia racing ahead on electricity while the world lags is a genuine achievement, but it\u2019s an achievement inside a system that is still, on the whole, running late.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s own contradiction<\/p>\n

What makes this harder to stomach is that Australia isn\u2019t just a bystander to the global lag \u2014 we\u2019re actively feeding it. While our own grid heads toward zero-carbon electricity by 2032, Australian governments have kept approving new coal and gas projects with approvals stretching out to 2070. That\u2019s not a minor accounting inconsistency with our Paris commitments; it\u2019s a wholesale contradiction.<\/p>\n

Almost none of this production is for domestic use \u2014 it\u2019s for export, delivering little direct benefit to Australians who don\u2019t hold shares in the companies concerned. Which raises the obvious question: on whose behalf, exactly, are these approvals being granted?<\/p>\n

The economics here are not subtle. If wind and solar genuinely displace fossil generation on the timeline this modelling suggests \u2013 2032 in Australia, mid-century globally \u2013 then coal and gas assets built now, or approved out to 2070, are being built directly into their own stranding. <\/p>\n

Financing a new oil refinery, or expanding a gas basin, on the assumption that today\u2019s demand patterns hold for 40 more years looks less like a bet on the market and more like a bet against the model. I\u2019m not a financial analyst, but the direction of travel here isn\u2019t ambiguous: fossil fuel demand curves down, faster in some places than others, and the assets built against the old curve are the ones left holding nothing.<\/p>\n

What Peter is right about, and what he isn\u2019t<\/p>\n

Peter Newman would say this is exactly the story of change happening in time \u2013 that the doom in my head has been consistently wrong about the pace of the technology, and he\u2019s not wrong about that. The S-curve for Australian electricity is genuinely, unambiguously good news, and I\u2019d rather be proven a doomist than be proven right.<\/p>\n

But \u201cin time\u201d has to mean in time for the climate system, not in time relative to how bad I expected things to get. On the numbers here, the technology curve and the climate deadline are running on different clocks \u2013 one arriving around 2032 for Australia and 2050 for the world, the other closing in 2030. Getting the electricity transition right and still missing the climate deadline isn\u2019t a win with an asterisk. It\u2019s still a loss, just a much closer one than I used to think.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the debate worth having, and it\u2019s not really about optimism versus pessimism. It\u2019s about whether \u201cfaster than we thought\u201d is the same thing as \u201cfast enough.\u201d The S-curves say we\u2019re capable of the first. Nothing in this modelling tells us we\u2019re on track for the second.<\/p>\n

Nigel Howard is Principal of Clarity Environment, with a background in environmental life cycle assessment and carbon accounting across the UK, US and Australia. He is currently working with Professor Peter Newman (Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute) on modelling climate-related mortality.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1972 when I was supposed to be studying for my A levels I was completely distracted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-855332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}