The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released its latest report on trends and performance in our energy grid. The upshot: Australia was powered by a RECORD amount of renewables from October to December 2024 and, at the same time, power from coal reached an all-time low.
We read AEMO’s latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report from cover to cover, so you didn’t have to. Here’s what we found:
1. Thanks to Aussies’ love for solar, renewables are setting records and cutting climate pollution at the same time.
Renewables are working harder than ever to power our lives – they supplied a record 46% share of the energy in our main national grid (covering New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania) in the last three months of 2024.
At the same time, climate pollution from our power system hit an all-time low, down more than 3% compared to the same time last year. This drop is largely thanks to Australia’s love affair with solar: AEMO’s data shows that rooftop solar generation grew by a massive 18% in just one year, and large-scale solar generation increased by 9%.
Record solar uptake is great news for Aussie households looking to cut costs as well as pollution – our research shows that homes with rooftop solar save on average $1500 per year on energy bills. As many of us struggle with increasing costs of living, rooftop solar is helping millions of homes cut their power bills and climate pollution at the same time.
2. Batteries are providing more 24/7 renewable power than ever. Now we need more of them
We’ve never had more clean, lowest cost renewable power in our main national grid. And, as AEMO’s latest report shows, we’ve never had more capacity to soak up excess electricity and provide 24/7 power, either.
Late last year, batteries were powering us 91% more than at the same time in 2023. On average, 1.9% of our power came from batteries, compared to 1% in the last three months of 2023. Impressive growth in just 12 months, however with polluting gas still a big generator of evening energy, we have a long way to go.
While we keep up the great work and add more solar and wind power, we also need to make sure we can store all the clean, cheap energy that will be created. Rolling out more batteries that tap into solar power is one of the fastest ways to cut our use of polluting coal and gas. This will help renewables power us around the clock, and more Australians to cash in on the benefits.
3. Our ageing, unreliable coal stations are sending energy bills sky high. More safe, clean and lowest-cost renewables means more money in your pockets.
First, the good news. Thanks to a 9% drop in brown coal generation, the most polluting energy source we have, coal supplied less than half of Australia’s electricity for the first time ever.
Unfortunately, this drop was caused by outages across our ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations, which drove up electricity prices and cancelled out the bill busting progress renewables were making.
With solar powering more of our grid than ever, new records were set for zero or negative wholesale electricity prices in our main energy grid. However, overall wholesale prices were 83% higher than at the same time in 2023 due to outages at coal-fired power stations, as well as high demand and transmission constraints.
As recent Climate Council analysis shows, the ability of our coal generators to reliably produce electricity has dropped off dramatically. Coal outages have driven power outage warnings in recent years (particularly during summer) and are the main cause of some of the most severe energy price spikes.
Australia’s coal power stations will close by 2038 at the latest, and all of these unsafe, inefficient power stations will have to be replaced over the coming years. As CSIRO research consistently shows, the cheapest way to grow our grid and keep the lights on is to add renewable power, backed up by storage, whereas nuclear energy is too risky, too expensive and too little, too late for Australia. So, let’s keep doing what’s already working!
In a nutshell: we know renewable power works, we need more… and fast
AEMO’s latest quarterly report confirms what we already know: our decades-old coal-fired power stations are becoming increasingly unreliable and driving up power prices. But it’s too early to pop the bubbles just yet: while we’ve already made great progress to increase the wind, solar and battery storage in our grid, we need to keep up the momentum and add more renewables to provide lowest-cost, clean, reliable power to every Australian home.
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