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Australia can be powered 100% by renewables by early 2030s, says Garnaut

Diletta Darrigo31 May 2019

Leading economist and climate change policy expert Professor Ross Garnaut says that Australia could be powered 100 per cent by “intermittent” renewables by the early 2030s, and have a grid that is both reliable and secure and cheaper than it is now.

In the third of a series of six public lectures being delivered by Garnaut in the lead up to the next election, Garnaut says a grid powered by wind and solar, and backed by storage and demand management, could be achieved quite quickly, but it would require the “train wreck” of regulatory failures to be fixed.

“I now have no doubt that intermittent renewables could meet 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity requirements by the 2030s, with high degrees of security and reliability, and at wholesale prices much lower than any experienced in Australia over the past decade,” Garnaut says in his talk last week at the University of Melbourne.

“More importantly, I now have no doubt that with well-designed policy support, firm power in globally transformative quantities could be supplied to industrial locations in each State at globally competitive prices.

“That is around $45 to $50 per MWh today, whenever the power is required. No other developed country has a comparable opportunity.

 “That means that we can contribute our fair share to the global effort to contain temperature increases as close as possible to 1.5°C, even if it takes time to make strong headway in other sectors.”

Garnaut sees the electricity sector as the key to cutting emissions across the economy, and for securing Australia’s long-term economic future and as a global base for low-cost industry.

That’s because decarbonising the grid is the quickest and cheapest option, and in turn can lead to zero, or near zero emissions in transport, much of industry and fugitive emissions.

In turn, the decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity grid can play a big role in global decarbonisation efforts, because it could lead to exports of renewable energy in the form of hydrogen or ammonia to north Asia, and then other economies, and through subsea cables to Indonesia and beyond.

“Australia’s renewable energy is a path to low cost emissions reduction in the rest of the world,” Garnaut says. “And before that, if wet our act together, we can go to find ourselves as the natural home of energy-intensive industry.”