Australia’s energy transition: how’s it going?

Australia's energy transition – heard of it? You must have. But what exactly is it? And how's it going?

In a nutshell, it's about clean energy, renewables, climate change, Canberra, top politicians -- and good news, especially from government sources. At the top is the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Mr Chris Bowen. He's forever telling us things like "cheapest and fastest", "82 per cent renewables by 2030", and so on.

Elsewhere we've seen news like

• record numbers of renewables projects being approved
• increasing renewable capacity
• record quarterly renewable generation
• renewable transition "gathered pace in 2025", 54 renewable projects approved during 2025.
• 2026 first quarter produced record renewable generation, with renewables supplying 46.5% of NEM generation.

In a nutshell, lots of good news, plenty of confidence.

So, again, how's it going? Clearly, "just great!".

Let's check – this time with actual data.

Truth is, it's quite hard to tell without a lot of boring detail and some deep thinking. The topic is technical, the preferred performance indicators tricky to interpret. As befits a former career research scientist, I'm a sceptical type. Exploring evidence and looking for holes comes naturally. And I soon became suspicious. But I kept thinking "What exactly is wrong?" Are we being taken for a ride?

Let me be clear. I'm no climate sceptic. From the outset the evidence from climate science looked to me respectable and credible. Indeed, I was impressed by reading that a famous Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius was known as the first scientist to use the principles of physical chemistry to estimate the extent to which increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could raise the planet's temperature. And I happen to be an electrochemist, a type of physical chemist, and regularly used something called the "Arrhenius equation" in my research. I have no reason to doubt what climate scientists were, and are, saying. (That doesn't mean I failed to notice how less-informed fear and panic distorted their message.)

Energy science has become the key to understanding ways of tackling carbon dioxide emissions. These come from burning fossil fuels, for over a century the main means of generating electricity. At the start the politics rapidly turned to making clean electricity, generated without fossil fuels. Electricity and politicians don't make a good combination. Their misunderstanding of electrical terminology, for example, had long been legendary. So for me to read things about clean energy that didn't quite add up at first raised no suspicions. Then I began to worry. I sensed a pattern, perhaps a collaboration to deceive the public. Was that possible? It's not an allegation made lightly. And what about the technical people the politicians must be relying on? Surely they weren't aiding deception?

My doubts were at odds with more general perceptions of energy transition politics and progress. All signs were that clean energy policy was working beautifully. Certainly, the politicians themselves had no reason to make changes to renewables policy. At the polls Australians consistently supported a future powered by their favourite "low emissions clean renewables", namely solar and wind energy. And by happy coincidence, as more and more clean renewables emerged from more and more rooftops and solar and wind farms, they turned out to be our "cheapest form of energy", "fastest to deploy". The good news just kept getting better.

But something was definitely wrong. Renewables output had indeed been growing but seemingly not at a pace consistent with these "good news stories", especially about rate of growth in "percent renewables". The table below lays out the true growth picture given by official statistical data. Each year the sum of solar and wind generation does grow, but the growth rate, as measured by the additional generation, varies little. Is it really sufficient to justify such enthusiasm? And why doesn't a listless growth rate show up prominently in these and related numerical data?