Thanks to huge growth in solar and wind, renewable energy broke records in 2023, generating 30% of electricity worldwide.
Green energy from solar and wind made up nearly 91% of net new power capacity, compared to only 6% from fossil fuels.
While we’re still waiting for the 2024 results to come through, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate some big achievements globally and see how Australia stacks up.
First sport, now energy. Could renewable energy be the next battleground between Australia and the UK?
Australians may not like celebrating the UK for anything, but it’s worth noting the amazing progress they made on clean energy last year.
Actor Emma Thompson is at the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm welcoming the news that offshore wind has hit a record low price. She holds a giant price tag showing that the price paid for electricity from offshore wind farms has dropped by more than 50% in under five years. The card reads “50% OFF Offshore Wind.”
The Thanet Offshore Wind Farm is located off the coast of Thanet district in Kent, England. © Will Rose / Greenpeace
2024 was the first full year where the UK generated more electricity from low-carbon renewables than from fossil fuels.
Wind power alone was incredibly close to overtaking gas as the UK’s largest single source of electricity in 2024, with the jury still out at the time of publication (we’re on team wind).
Either way, 2024 saw the third largest fall in gas use in the last 10 years.
2024 was also the year they closed their last coal power plant, 142 years after opening the world’s first coal-fired power station in 1882. In doing so they joined a third of OECD nations that are now coal free.
This is a really big deal! Only three years ago, fossil fuels were generating 46% of electricity in the UK, while low carbon renewables made up 27%.
How does Australia stack up on renewable energy?
The World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index benchmarks 120 countries on how they’re tracking towards the clean energy transition. Though not in the top 10, (or even in the top 20), Australia is still making important progress worth celebrating.
In October 2024, Australia generated 25% of its electricity from only the sun for the very first time.
Since September, solar and wind saw a combined record – generating 40% of Australia’s electricity. That’s nearly halfway there!
Rooftop solar played a huge role in this. According to the Clean Energy Council, rooftop solar alone has already surpassed coal generation capacity. This is driving dirty coal out of the grid, with it now making up a record low share of our electricity generation.
Our solar and wind generation has quadrupled since 2015.
We’re now the ninth-highest country globally for combined solar and wind power in terms of absolute generation.
According to the Clean Energy Regulator, 2024 saw record levels of new renewable energy capacity being added to the grid.
Looking back at the last decade, the renewable energy growth in Australia is pretty remarkable.
But the real hero of renewable energy in Australia? South Australia!
South Australia: leading the nation on renewable energy
In South Australia, wind and solar were already contributing a remarkable 75% of the energy share in 2023, prompting the state government to bring forward its 100% renewables target by three years. The state is now aiming to reach this target by 2027.
If you live in South Australia, there’s now a 50% chance you have rooftop solar. South Australia is doing better on renewables than most countries around the world.
Bipartisan support for renewable energy, supportive policies, and strong climate laws have been instrumental in the state’s success. But there’s still time for other states to catch up. And the longer we wait, the higher the cost and the harder the transition.
So, how does nuclear energy fit in?
Activists use fairy costumes and an inflatable castle to protest outside the Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels, Belgium, near the Atomium building. The summit is co-hosted by the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and features several heads of state including French President Emmanuel Macron as well as some 300 nuclear industry delegations. The gathering aims to accelerate the goal of tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a goal the protestors denounce as pure fantasy. The activists come from some of the more than 500 organisations who this week signed a joint declaration opposing nuclear energy and demanding that governments focus on building renewables like wind and solar power instead. © Eric De Mildt / Greenpeace
Short answer: it doesn’t.
Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy is not a plan to tackle climate change – Nationals senator Matt Canavan himself recently labeled the Coalition’s nuclear policy a ‘political fix’ that they know is a more expensive form of power.
Trying to introduce a nuclear energy system in Australia would actually slow down the roll out of renewable energy – halting the incredible momentum we’re seeing around the country and pitting nuclear vs renewable energy. The Coalition’s fossil fuel donors are thrilled, because it could take up to 20 years to get a single nuclear power plant up and running. If the Coalition gets its way we would be facing a reality where we actually extend the life of coal and burn more fossil fuels for longer. The proposal is outrageous when you consider that we’re already 40% of the way there on renewable energy – using sources that don’t produce highly radioactive waste needing to be safely stored for literally hundreds of thousands of years.
Ultimately, nuclear energy in Australia is just a dangerous distraction from the urgent work we need to do to phase out fossil fuels, using our abundance of wind and sun to complete our transition to clean sources of energy.
With a federal election coming in the first half of this year, we won’t try to predict what will happen next. But we do know that we have no time to waste in accelerating the shift away from polluting fossil fuels.
We weren’t just breaking renewable records in 2024 – we also broke heat records. 2024 was once again the hottest year on record, A trend we’ve seen repeating every year for a decade.
We need to stay the course with solutions that are cutting pollution now, not go backwards with a dangerous plan to burn more dirty fossil fuels and produce highly radioactive waste.
Here’s to more big renewable energy in 2025!
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