{"id":58091,"date":"2025-10-06T20:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/58091\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:26:11","slug":"as-coal-fades-australia-looks-to-realize-dream-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/58091\/","title":{"rendered":"As coal fades, Australia looks to realize dream of\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia has put itself on a\u00a0realistic path to achieving what climate activists around the world have long dreamed of: running its power grid entirely on renewable energy.<\/p>\n

The Australian Energy Market Operator<\/a> oversees the nation\u2019s power markets. Chief among them, the National Electricity Market serves about 90% of customers, minus remote areas and the west coast. At its peak, the system uses 38\u00a0gigawatts of power<\/a> \u2014 more than New York state\u2019s peak consumption. Over the last five years, AEMO has rigorously studied how the country, whose coal fleet is aging and which banned nuclear energy decades ago, can run this grid on renewables alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a\u00a0climate-zealot kind of approach,\u201d AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman told Canary Media. \u200b\u201cOur old coal-fired power stations are breaking down; they\u2019re retiring,\u201d he said. \u200b\u201cThey\u2019re getting replaced by the least-cost energy, which is renewable energy, backed with storage, connected in with transmission. We\u2019ll have a\u00a0bit of gas there for the winter doldrums. That is just what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s efforts could offer a\u00a0proof of concept for how a\u00a0nation with a\u00a0bustling, modern economy can rapidly shift its electricity from fossil fuels \u2014 mostly coal with some gas \u2014 to wind, solar, storage, and other renewable sources like hydropower.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing impossible about 100% renewable supply,\u201d said Jesse Jenkins, a\u00a0Princeton University professor who has studied net-zero pathways for the U.S. \u200b\u201cAustralia has a\u00a0better chance of this than almost anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, renewables have surged<\/a> to about 35% of annual electricity production, while coal still leads with 46%, according to the International Energy Agency.<\/p>\n

Because this transition is primarily driven by market forces, rather than a\u00a0legislative or regulatory requirement, Westerman couldn\u2019t say for sure when Australia will hit the 100% mark. He does expect 90% of Australia\u2019s coal generation will be gone by 2035, and the rest could shutter later that decade.<\/p>\n

The more pressing milestone, though, will be the country\u2019s first day with no coal generation on the system, which could happen far sooner due to some combination of competitive forces and mechanical trouble at the aging plants. It\u2019s a\u00a0landmark Westerman has experienced before: He operated the U.K. electricity network in 2017 when it ran without coal for the first day since the Industrial Revolution. The last British coal plant shut down<\/a> seven years later, in\u00a02024.<\/p>\n

AEMO has developed a\u00a0clear sense of what is needed to keep the lights on whenever coal power flickers out, he said. It\u2019s a\u00a0matter of getting \u200b\u201ckit installed in the ground,\u201d especially the unsexy machinery that can maintain a\u00a0stable grid in the absence of big fossil-fuel-powered generators.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s now a\u00a0physical problem rather than an intellectual challenge, a \u200b\u2018no one knows how to do this\u2019 challenge,\u201d Westerman said. \u200b\u201cWe can deal with\u00a0that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unleashing renewables, large and\u00a0small<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s renewables outlook is strong for a\u00a0few key reasons.<\/p>\n

For one, it enjoys distinct geographical advantages, Jenkins noted: It spans a\u00a0sunny, windy landmass the size of the contiguous United States, but with just 27 million people to provide for. (The U.S. has nearly 13 times\u00a0more.)<\/p>\n

It also has policy advantages. Australia has a\u00a0national market governing the power sector, which allows technologies to proliferate faster than in places with patchwork regulations (like the U.S.) or strong incumbent monopoly utilities (also like the U.S.). Furthermore, Australia has avoided U.S.-style clean-energy trade protectionism, so cheap Chinese imports are plentiful.<\/p>\n

Last month, the National Electricity Market topped out at more than 77% renewable generation for a\u00a0half-hour period, Westerman said. Grid constraints kept that number from being even higher. The state of South Australia regularly generates more electricity from renewables than it consumes, shipping the excess to neighbors.<\/p>\n

Australia doesn\u2019t just excel at big renewables and big batteries. Four million homes produce rooftop solar; a\u00a0few weeks ago, those households temporarily supplied 55% of demand on the National Electricity Market, Westerman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralians have an absolute love affair with rooftop solar,\u201d he said. \u200b\u201cWe have the highest rooftop PV penetration in the world, and it\u2019s one of the driving forces of our energy transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding new \u200b\u201cshock absorbers\u201d for the\u00a0grid<\/p>\n

Westerman flagged one big technical obstacle to reaching 100% renewables, and it\u2019s not what many people expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The key hurdle to unlock a\u00a0completely renewable system is to build up \u200b\u201crotating machines on the grid that don\u2019t necessarily produce power,\u201d Westerman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia has put itself on a\u00a0realistic path to achieving what climate activists around the world have long dreamed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-58091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}