Renewable energy projects near the Australian capital continue to spring up after Canberra became a clean energy trailblazer – Image: Chu Chen/Xinhua/picture alliance
Australia is a fossil fuel giant, yet its capital is a global clean energy pioneer. As coal and gas investment was banished in favor of wind and solar, cheaper electricity bills followed.
Holding up a lump of coal in the federal parliament in 2017, Australia’s then soon-to-be prime minister Scott Morrison said the fossil fuel was integral to a “certain energy future.” Yet the capital city he stood in was almost 100% powered by wind and the sun.
This goal was reached in 2020 when the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) — home to the nation’s half a million-strong capital, Canberra — had enough renewable electricity to make coal and gas obsolete.
It was the first state or city with a population above 100,000 to decarbonize its grid outside of Europe — the first being Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, a city with 70% clean hydroelectricity. In 2021, Canberra was judged the world’s most sustainable city by UK energy comparison website, Uswitch.
But at the same time, the broader Australian nation ranked bottom among OECD nations on clean energy investment, making the ACT a green outlier.
Despite support from the Australian government, large coal-fuelled power stations like this one are shutting in favour of renewables – Image: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Still today, the average share of electricity generated by renewables in Australia is only around 35%. In Germany, by comparison, carbon-free electricity already powers some 60% of the national electricity grid. Yet as its coal-fired power plants close and the price of solar and wind plummet, sun-rich Australia is tipped to make up for lost time and achieve its 2030 target of 82% renewables powering the electricity grid.
So how was the nation’s capital able to become a clean energy island within a sea of fossil fuels?
Canberra’s revolutionary road to decarbonization
In the mid-2010s, when Australia’s ruling conservative government shut down clean energy initiatives nationally to maintain reliance on coal and gas, renewable energy investments ground to a halt, explained Geoffrey Rutledge, deputy director-general for environment, water and emissions reduction at the ACT government.
But ACT authorities were willing to go it alone and make large investments in new solar and wind projects to decarbonize its grid — the “easiest and cheapest” first step towards its goal of net zero emissions by 2045, Rutledge said.
It helped that the ACT had a pro-environment center-left government that has remained in power since 2001, in addition to a largely climate conscious population, explained energy expert Greg Bourne, a climate councillor with independent Australian climate organization, The Climate Council.
“They had a long-term vision,” he said, adding that an incumbent regional government allowed the ACT to avoid the climate politics that hindered ambition at the national level. “They could ignore the machinations of federal government and fossil-fuel lobbyists.”
The ACT also looked to countries in Europe, sending a delegation to Freiburg in Germany, a solar energy pioneer, as it created its own Renewables Hub in 2016 to drive clean energy innovation and investment.
Trailblazing research in photovoltaic solar panels at the Australian National University in Canberra was thrown into the mix, Bourne noted.
Soon enough, the ACT was offering contracts to renewable energy firms that would become the nation’s largest wind and solar projects both within the ACT, but mostly beyond in larger states. The power generated when the renewables went online gradually offset the fossil energy consumed by ACT residents, Rutledge explained.
Rooftop solar is a common sight in Canberra – Image: LUKAS COCH/Imago Images
The ACT was in a unique position to “make early moves when there was little appetite for renewables,” said Rutledge, since, unlike bigger Australian states, it had no existing investments in large and costly coal or gas power plants.
Apart from three solar farms located within the ACT’s borders, some 95% of its renewable power is generated by five wind farms located in suitable areas in the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. This energy did not flow to Canberra directly, but simply went into the national grid to offset the ACT’s former reliance on coal-powered electricity.
Consolidating clean, green, decentralized energy
Canberra residents now pay between $257-385 (€245-367) less for their annual electricity bills than their neighbors in the state of New South Wales, according to Rutledge. This is because the fixed ACT renewable price is often lower than electricity powered by fossil fuels that are subject to volatile market swings.
Canberrans are also benefitting from a “highly distributed” or decentralized energy network where, in addition to solar and wind projects, citizens create energy when they drive their EVs or power their homes with the sun. While ACT residents have a high rooftop solar uptake, state subsidies across Australia means the nation has the most solar panels per capita in the world.
When the ACT set an ambitious 2045 net-zero target in 2018, its further goal was to move away from a 1960s model, whereby major metropolises relied on massive, centralized power plants.
“Energy is generated almost everywhere, is used everywhere, is stored everywhere,” said Bourne.
Battery storage projects are also being developed across the ACT to limit reliance on a centralized grid, including 5,000 storage batteries in homes and businesses.
A “vehicle to grid” trial is also underway in which electric car batteries — the ACT is also the EV capital of Australia through generous incentives — are used to charge homes and public hospitals, for example, to guard against blackouts, says Ruttledge.
All public housing will also be electrified within the next five years, meaning no gas or oil appliances — a gas phase-out is being gradually applied to all households.
With an ambition to reach more than 80% reliance on renewables by the end of the decade, wind and solar will feature across the country – Image: Rafael Ben-Ari/Newscom/picture alliance
The nation-leading clean energy city has cut a swathe via which other Australian states are starting to follow.
The now opposition conservative party is promoting nuclear energy over renewables, arguing the latter cannot provide “base load” power — an “anachronism” in the decentralized energy systems of the future, says Bourne.
But the last unviable coal plants are expected to shut within a decade, the Australian Clean Energy Council told DW. The ruling center-left federal government recently approved the world’s largest solar and battery project in the country’s north.
For Bourne, it’s all about “embracing the future, not hugging the past.” (DW/NAN 06-03-25)
