Spring has sprung, and with it, the hibernating climate data briefing emerges into the sunshine!
I've returned from a brief journey in the wilderness (both figurative and literal) and am happy to be home and writing to you again.
Let's pick up exactly where we left off some weeks ago — WIND ENERGY. Is it reasonable for us to believe we'll hit our targets?
Reading time: 5 mins
Recap
Wind powers 10-15% of the national electricity market. (You can check this daily using our Energy dashboard and drill into each state using the geolocation dropdown tool.)
For Australia to fulfil its promise to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, our wind industry has to grow by about 350%.
At the end of 2023, Australia had 11.5 gigawatts (GW) of generative power capacity from wind turbines. That's roughly the equivalent of nine large nuclear reactors.
By 2030, we need about 42GW of capacity from wind.*
It's quite the step change. Can we do it?
What's in the Wind Pipeline?
My tenacious colleague, James, has spent the last couple of weeks combing through publicly available data about current and planned wind projects across Australia.
We've compiled a dataset using the Clean Energy Regulator, Australia and New Zealand Infrastructure Pipeline, various state planning portals and countless company websites.
What's in the wind power pipeline?
- Just under half (13.2GW) of the projects needed to meet our 2030 target have been approved or are already under construction.
- Roughly half (15GW) are currently being assessed for approval, or are in their detailed planning stages.
- The remainder are 'prospective' only, meaning they have not yet been tested for feasibility or submitted for approval.
(Note - We've classified the wind projects based on most-like categories across different reporting entities. See data notes below).
How is each state and territory feeding the pipeline?
Let's answer this by looking at each category.
Operating: Right now, Victoria can make the most energy from wind, followed by South Australia and NSW.
Under construction: Queensland is currently building the most wind projects. When it's finished, it will have roughly the same generating capacity as South Australia, and be just behind NSW.
Approved: On top of that, Queensland has approved the most wind projects.
So, we can see Queensland leads Australia for wind projects that are reliably in the pipeline.
Now let's look at projects that are not guaranteed.
Assessment / planning: The states with the most projects awaiting approval or in a detailed planning stage are NSW and Tasmania.
NSW has 8.5GW of projects in this category and Tasmania has 3.3GW — more than Australia's total wind power capacity today.
Prospective projects: NSW has a huge number of prospective projects that are in their earliest stages. That amount of aspirational projects is less pipeline, more pipedream. But it shows us something important.
The NSW pipeline is clearly blocked at the assessment and detailed planning phase. This is having a spillover effect to the prospective phase as the industry looks elsewhere.
Let's compare the pipelines for Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and NSW. They're ordered from front-heavy to back-heavy.
In terms of projects that have progressed to an advanced stage of the pipeline, NSW is falling drastically short.
- NSW has just 5GW of projects that are either operational, in construction or approved.
- Queensland has nearly 8GW and Victoria has more than 6GW.
- South Australia has nearly 3.5GW - beating NSW by 3x on a per capita basis.
With 8.5GW of potential wind power languishing in pre-approval in NSW, the problems with this state's pipeline will hinder Australia's ambitions to triple renewable energy targets by 2030.
Ps. A note on Western Australia - WA has a few massive wind projects in the pipeline that are for the specific purpose of supplying energy to major facilities. For example, BP's Australian Renewable Energy Hub in the Pilbara (in assessment / planning phase) aims to create 15GW of wind power for hydrogen and ammonia production, as well as mining companies. We've left them out of this analysis, but you can see our full dataset, including 'for purpose' projects here.