Plans by the federal government for Australia to generate more than four-fifths of its power from renewable sources by 2030 are coming under pressure amid claims the country is way off track.

Key points:

  • There are increasing suggestions Australia will fall short of its 2030 renewable power target of 82 per cent

  • Analysts predict Australia’s share of renewable energy is on track to be about 60 per cent at the current rate of progress

  • The forecasts come amid mounting opposition to projects such as transmission lines in some parts of Australia

  • bpalmerau@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    What are the motivations behind this article? What are the interests of the organisations quoted? Are NIMBYs the only bottleneck? Is it only one place in Victoria that’s affected or are there more? Are there any technical engineering issues involved? What do you think of the suggestion to switch government incentives from rooftop solar to batteries? How quickly could that happen?

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What are the motivations behind this article?

      The ABC has a mandate to deliver “accurate, impartial, and independent news”. It’s a government agency and failing deliver that would likely result in serious consequences for anyone who decided not to publish this content.

      Articles like this one are a critical component of the way democracy works in this country. Keeping people informed of progress on mitigating climate change is absolutely critical.

      What are the interests of the organisations quoted?

      That gets a bit more tricky. Nexa is a research organisation that does research into whatever someone pays them to research. They’re not unbiased - I don’t think they’ve said who funded them for this paper?

      Are NIMBYs the only bottleneck?

      Um. No. Obviously not. But they’re a big one.

      Is it only one place in Victoria that’s affected or are there more?

      Again, obviously, there are more.

      Are there any technical engineering issues involved?

      … yes?

      What do you think of the suggestion to switch government incentives from rooftop solar to batteries?

      I think the world doesn’t have the capacity to produce batteries in the quantities required even if nobody every uses one in a home, so, no. If anything batteries at home should be heavily discouraged. We need those batteries for electric vehicles, not houses.

      How quickly could that happen?

      Nowhere near quickly enough.

    • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      For transmission (at least in NSW) there’s a fair bit of bad blood because transgrid has a history of building unnecessary powerlines. They get paid on their asset base and were building a lot of powerlines that had no use in any reasonable projections, only in bullshit projections from transgrid.

      That’s now made it very hard for these projects to be done as there’s a history of the bad projects that’s pretty recent.

      I’m not saying that these aren’t necessary now, but it’s no surprise people are opposing them with the history transgrid has.

      For example they dumped a proposed Stroud to landsdowne powerline around 2012 after it was shown to be just the trying to increase their regulated asset base