NEW | Clean power met ALL the growth in global electricity demand in 2025
Solar generation alone met THREE QUARTERS of the demand rise and grew by 30%.
Fossil generation stagnated (-0.2%).
🧵 A thread on changes in the global power system in 2025...
Renewable sources of electricity “virtually matched” coal in 2025 – they’re not niche anymore
2/10
huge news! I had the pleasure of working with Shane, and it is hard to find someone who approached politics with as much integrity and energy as Shane does.
He'll leave big shoes to fill both within the ACT Greens, but also the ACT legislative assembly.
www.canberratimes.com.au/story/922811...
If we limited the fungibility to only those LGCs or REGOs created by projects reaching financial close after a certain date, then it would be unlikely to crash the abatement costs. It would likely increase the green certificate value of those projects up to the ACCU price & reduce CIS costs.
Stacked bar chart of government spending by category (social protection, health, education, economic affairs, public services, other, defense) as a share of GDP for a selection of OECD countries, where it compares spending composition and shows totals of 28% to 57% of GDP with an OECD average of 43%. Data source: OECD (2026). License: CC BY to Our World in Data.
📊 How much do governments spend, and what do they spend it on?
In the chart, we see total government spending broken down by purpose, such as health, education, and defense, relative to the size of the economy (as measured by GDP).
This is shown for a selection of OECD countries.
One last point. In 2030 LGCs will be phased out, to be replaced by Renewable Electricity Guarantee of Origin (REGO) certificates. This proposal should also apply to REGO certificates.
/9
To address concerns about additionality, the scheme could only allow them to use LGCs acquired through Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for new build projects after a threshold date.
/8
Let's link the 2 schemes with 1-way fungibility. ie, emitters can instead purchase LGCs instead of ACCUs (with a conversion factor) to meet their Safeguard Mechanism obligations.
/7
Emission reductions in the electrity sectors are much more easily verified than those any reductions associated with ACCUs, so an LGC should be considered higher quality offset than an ACCU.
But currently ACCUs are trading at ~12x more than a LGC!(~$36 vs ~$3). This is crazy.
/6
With some minor adjustments for loss factors (already taken into account when calculating LGC entitlements), every MWh of additional renewable generation displaces a MWh of fossil generation. Every LGC is reducing emissions by about ~0.94 tonnes, so an LGC should be worth about 0.94 ACCUs.
/5
In the 5 years from 2021 to 2025, fossil generation on Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) has reduced by ~14.6 TWh, displaced by renewables. The average emission intensity of this displaced fossil generation has been ~940 kg CO2-e/MWh.
/4
New renewable projects are struggling to reach financial close. Large Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) have historically helped with project viability & to compensate for a lack of a carbon price. But LGCs are currently worthless, trading at ~$3.
/3
Big Australian greenhouse gas emitters are increasingly using Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to meet emission liabilities under the Safeguard Mechanism. The quality of these ACCUs is highly questionable.
/2
How is it that a low quality carbon offset (ACCU) is currently trading at 12x the price of a high quality offset (LGC)?
Let's improve 2 key Australian climate policies with a simple policy change to allow 1-way fungibility between ACCUs and LGCs with a suitable conversion factor.
/1
The 16 GWh figure is for utility batteries only.
Unfortunately there's no publicly available information about discharge from residential batteries.
Nice one Adam. I get the impression that many are underestimating the vehicle emission standard (NVES). The standard was clearly unambitious last year & perhaps this year too, so unlikely to bite much in those 2 years.
But from 2027 onwards it becomes really quite stringent, reducing by ~15%-20%/yr.
The following article contains many more details, assumptions & FAQs about my simulation, including what is ‘Other’, estimates of cost ($126/MWh), emissions, required capacity, scale factors, analysis of the most challenging days & much more (end)
reneweconomy.com.au/near-100-pct...
The simulation has used wind, rooftop & utility solar data from OpenNEM, rescaled to supply ~60%, 25% & 20% respectively over the year. It uses the storage & existing hydro to match demand. If there remains a shortfall then the model supplements generation with ‘Other’ (4/5)
Here is the simulation from weeks 239 to 242. It was 99.4% renewable (3/5)
Last week had:
- average demand (100% of long-term average)
- well above average wind (119%)
- below average solar (95%) (2/5)
Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
Results:
Last week: 100.0% RE
Last 242 weeks: 98.7% RE (1/5)
And of course my weekly mostly renewable NEM simulation assumes 120 GWh of storage.
We are likely to reach that before the end of the decade, though we still need to build ~3x more wind & solar than we have at present, which will take considerably longer.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Additional context.
On average our gas generators discharge 24 GWh/d.
So our current battery & pumped hydro assets can now discharge this much too.
Clearly they are well short of peak daily gas discharge rates of 100 GWh/d, but they may reach that level in just a few years.
/2
Australia's NEM smashed its daily battery discharge record on Monday.
16 GWh, up from 13 GWh on Feb 10.
For context, the original Hornsdale big battery was 129 MWh, so 16 GWh is equivalent to fully discharging Hornsdale 124 times!
Possibly another 10 GWh discharged from pumped hydro.
/1
Figure 1 Drivers of future grid electricity demand in NSW, net change from 2026 (source: Net Zero Commission analysis of AEMO 2025 ESOO). Comparisons of data centres with electrification of transport, business and residential sectors. Shaded areas show the range of values across AEMO’s four demand scenarios (Slower Growth, Step Change, Accelerated Transition, Data Centre Sensitivity) and the curves show the Step Change demand scenario (considered by AEMO to be the most likely demand trajectory).
A useful view of how data centre growth in NSW compares to future demand growth from electrification. The idea that crowding out connections, resources and cash with a desperate industry somehow "helps" the transition makes absolutely zero sense.
media.licdn.com/dms/document...
The following article contains many more details, assumptions & FAQs about my simulation, including what is ‘Other’, estimates of cost ($126/MWh), emissions, required capacity, scale factors, analysis of the most challenging days & much more (end)
reneweconomy.com.au/near-100-pct...
The simulation has used wind, rooftop & utility solar data from OpenNEM, rescaled to supply ~60%, 25% & 20% respectively over the year. It uses the storage & existing hydro to match demand. If there remains a shortfall then the model supplements generation with ‘Other’ (4/5)
Here is the simulation from weeks 238 to 241.
It was 98.9% renewable (3/5)
Last week had:
- below average demand (95% of long-term average)
- well below average wind (83%)
- average solar (100%) (2/5)
Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
Results:
Last week: 99.7% RE
Last 241 weeks: 98.7% RE (1/5)