This story originally appeared on Canary Media and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Australia has put itself on a realistic path to achieving what climate activists around the world have long dreamed of: running its power grid entirely on renewable energy.
The Australian Energy Market Operator oversees the nation’s power markets. Chief among them, the National Electricity Market serves about 90 percent of customers, minus remote areas and the west coast. At its peak, the system uses 38 gigawatts of power—more than New York state’s 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.
“This is not a climate-zealot kind of approach,” AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman told Canary Media. “Our old coal-fired power stations are breaking down; they’re retiring,” he said. “They’re getting replaced by the least-cost energy, which is renewable energy, backed with storage, connected in with transmission. We’ll have a bit of gas there for the winter doldrums. That is just what’s happening.”
Australia’s efforts could offer a proof of concept for how a nation with a bustling, modern economy can rapidly shift its electricity from fossil fuels—mostly coal with some gas—to wind, solar, storage, and other renewable sources like hydropower.
“There’s nothing impossible about 100 percent renewable supply,” said Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton University professor who has studied net-zero pathways for the US. “Australia has a better chance of this than almost anywhere.”
So far, renewables have surged to about 35 percent of annual electricity production, while coal still leads with 46 percent, according to the International Energy Agency.
Because this transition is primarily driven by market forces, rather than a legislative or regulatory requirement, Westerman couldn’t say for sure when Australia will hit the 100 percent mark. He does expect 90 percent of Australia’s coal generation will be gone by 2035, and the rest could shutter later that decade.
The more pressing milestone, though, will be the country’s 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’s a landmark 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 seven years later, in 2024.
AEMO has developed a clear sense of what is needed to keep the lights on whenever coal power flickers out, he said. It’s a matter of getting “kit installed in the ground,” especially the unsexy machinery that can maintain a stable grid in the absence of big fossil-fuel-powered generators.
