Essay by Eric Worrall
“… data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity. …”
Wind industry in crisis as utilities and corporate buyers go on investment strike
Giles Parkinson
Aug 15, 2025Australia’s wind energy industry is facing a crisis as new data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity.
The lack of investment in new wind projects is not news – it was highlighted by BloombergNEF at the Australian Clean Energy Summit last month, and confirmed in that company’s first half assessment released earlier this week.
…
They are all investing billions in battery storage, largely because the flexibility and dispatchability of big batteries ensures that the big three retain their market power over wholesale electricity prices.
But they show little interest in new wind and solar. Origin Energy, for instance, has won grid access for the biggest wind project in Australia, the 1.45 GW Yanco Delta wind project in south-west NSW, but will not make a financial commitment on that project for another 18 months.
…
The wind industry is facing multiple issues. Turbine costs have not fallen much from the spike of a couple of years ago, and the likes of the CSIRO have increased their most recent cost estimates, largely because of the need for workers accommodation in remote areas and the rise in civil construction costs.
Wind also requires transmission, and this has been slow and costly to roll out, and the technology has run into planning issues.
…
Read more: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-industry-in-crisis-as-utilities-and-corporate-buyers-go-on-investment-strike/
The article above mentions solar is also in a slump.
The one bright spot for renewables mentioned in the article above is battery investment, but this appears to be more about gaming peak electricity prices than a genuine interest in the renewable revolution.
Predictably this collapse in the economics of subsidised green energy has triggered a call for more climate communism;
The abundance agenda brainworm has infected Labor’s climate change reform
The Productivity Commission wants us to focus on the ‘costs’ of climate action, neutralising an urgent safety issue into a bland optimisation and efficiency project, and in doing so, ridding it of any social criticality.
KETAN JOSHI
AUG 18, 2025…
A real project to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels from Australia’s power grid would entail far greater state ownership of power, the deprioritisation of profit, along with widespread community benefit and profit-sharing schemes. The Roosevelt Centre’s “progressive permitting reform” centres equity and environment but also aims to streamline processes and eliminate replication. These ideas are virtually non-existent in Australia’s energy and planning discourse.
In America, we’re seeing what happens when you plug the abundance agenda into a fascist wall socket rather than a centrist technocrat one. Klein and Thompson’s language has been used to justify the right-wing fantasy of unregulated data centres and fossil fuel expansion, while the Trump administration actively implements new regulations to block clean energy and transmission lines. …
…
Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/08/18/labor-economic-roundtable-deregulation-climate-change-energy/
Other issues might be helping to drive this slump. The Aussie government is worried about declining productivity, and has been talking up Australia’s participation in the AI revolution as a means to unlock productivity growth.
Address to Generation P: Unlocking productivity for Australia’s future, Future Forward Australia
Unlocking Gen P
It’s great to be speaking to Gen P. A generation with enough optimism to believe we can boost productivity and fix housing anddecarbonise the economy – all before lunch. I like your ambition.
Let’s talk about productivity. Not in the abstract, economic‑model kind of way – but as the thing that quietly shapes your lives, your wages, your choices, your future.
Productivity growth is how we produce more value with the same effort. It’s what allows wages to rise, governments to invest in public services and societies to lift living standards without just working harder or longer.
But right now, Australia has a productivity challenge.
…
Read more: https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/andrew-leigh-2025/speeches/address-generation-p-unlocking-productivity-australias-future
AI forms a central part of their productivity growth thinking, though I get the impression they don’t really know what it is;
Enable AI’s productivity potential
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform our economy and improve our living standards.
The AI models that have emerged in recent years apply advanced machine learning to increasingly sophisticated uses, including natural language processing, image recognition, personalised search and social media. AI technologies are increasingly undertaking complex tasks that are outside the scope of previous waves of automation.
Increased use of AI-based systems in Australia could create significant productivity benefits. But malicious or reckless use of these systems poses risks, which has led to calls for regulation.
…
Read more: https://engage.pc.gov.au/projects/data-digital/page/artificial-intelligence
In the USA, the AI revolution has caused green tech giants to fall over themselves revising their green energy pledges. AI requires high quality low cost rock steady power which renewables simply can’t deliver.
Aussie opposition parties continuing to flirt with nuclear is also likely damaging confidence in wind and solar.
Energy companies can likely see the writing on the wall, it is obvious events currently happening in the USA and Asia will soon be replicated in Australia. The AI revolution is rapidly turning wind and solar into stranded assets, or at best bit players in a much bigger game, a trend which is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
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Morons in charge of the taxpayer’s credit card being advised & managed by grifters.
Who stands to win in this setup?
Certainly not the Aussie taxpayers.
“It (wind energy) is often the victim of misinformation, astroturfing and the like”
The article predicted this type of propaganda from Worrall
“Renewable energy” advocates bring to mind overextended variations on their being asshats.
They are convinced that if they only believe hard enough, their wishes will come true.
TBS — TinkerBelle Syndrome!
Much as I am flattered by your suggestion something I said brought down the billion dollar renewable industry, that’s not the true explanation for this collapse. Positive thinking stops working when your ledger bleeds red ink.
Eric, accept his praise with good grace (it doesn’t happen often).
Hey 🙂
The article doesn’t say what you claim, but it does warn that it will be used as propaganda like what you wrote. Your dishonesty was foretold
Readers please hover your cursor over Flesch’s name at top of post , read link…..WUWT??
I got …/author/god
Your reading comprehension is wanting.
The full quote:
“It is often the victim of misinformation, astroturfing and the like, but some sections suffer from their own hubris – Renew Economy is often asked by project developers not to write about their projects for fear it may attract “unwanted” attention (We ignore these requests).
“It is not surprising that the few projects that have reached financial close in the first half of 2025 are standalone batteries, and solar-battery hybrids, which are more easily deployable, can find space on local grids, and are now more than competitive with the combined price of wind and transmission.”
A wind ‘farm’ at Jerilderie on the Riverine Plain … what could possibly go wrong!
Who’s bringing the popcorn??
And once again, the reality challenged proclaim that anything they disagree with is misinformation.
Did you know that wind energy is erratic , and totally useless when there is no wind ?
Did you also know that their production in China produces a HUGE amount of toxic waste?
Did you know that they destroy landscape and habitats where ever they are installed?
Did you know that at end of their short life, they take up huge areas of landfill and degrade slowly into a toxic mess of glass fibres?
There are actually one of the most environmentally destructive forms of part-time energy that there is… apart from solar.
His high priests haven’t mentioned anything about such problems, therefor they don’t exist and you are just peddling mis-information.
All hail the sacred models.
Well everybody but you got fooled by the misinformation then because no-one is investing 🙂
What can we say you are special … real special.
Now back to reality there is a fight about to erupt in Victoria with farm owners
https://www.nationalagricultureandrelatedindustriesday.com.au/farmers-fury-over-victorian-governments-power-grab/
The interesting thing about action on climate change is it always involves stomping on somebodies rights it’s never a passive process.
True, but the stomping on of rights never seems to affect the inner-city Teal and Labor types, so they don’t care. And they probably don’t know that it is some of our most fertile and cost-effective food growing areas they are stomping on. We can’t live a modern life without reliable energy, but Australia is a food exporter. Someone somewhere may not survive without our food exports. Again, the inner-city types don’t care. Virtue signaling is more important than actually doing something that might require their comfort to be slightly disturbed. Meanwhile us Aussie peasants just have to suck up the damage done to our lives.
The only rights those types recognize, is their right to free stuff. They don’t care what has to happen to people who aren’t like them in the process.
Plus it won’t change a thing about the climate!
“The interesting thing about action on climate change is it always involves stomping on somebodies rights it’s never a passive process.”
THE point!
Do you have any examples? Wind is not intermittent? Wind does not diminish under CC/AGW?
Money talks dude, money talks. If you don’t like the fall in investment, maybe you should put YOUR money where your mouth is!
Where does a 15 year old mindless parrot get that sort of money ?
That’s what government is for. To put your money where his mouth is.
You had to search very carefully to find a snippet you could use to insult the author.
The article absolutely did not predict any kind of propaganda from anyone.
The wholesale market in Australia is in decline. It peaked in 2008 and is down about 5% since the peak. The decline is accelerating due to the uptake of rooftop solar, which supplied 13% of the estimated demand in the NEM from Aug 24 to Aug 25.
But the demand for dispatchable generation has increased because rooftops, grid solar and grid wind all rio missing when most needed. The batteries that delay the time that the dispatchable plant starts up. But all the batteries eventually run flat.
Clearly Blackout is not offering enough incentive to the grifters. They need all the money up front because sovereign risk looms large even in australia.
All proponents of wind and solar know they need the consumers and/or taxpayers to bent over so they can screw them unless they get the money up front. The proponents want money today to build useless capacity that might produce something down the track.
The predicament in Australia can be shown in a single chart -per attached.
Australian industry is kaput. And no other country in the world has conditions where rooftops can provide a large slice of the demand. The average cost of electricity to households in Australia has been static over the past decade despite electricity price almost doubling. The reason is that about 35% of households are making some or all of the electricity they need; albeit many produce more than needed at lunchtime but not enough at night but still pay very little in electricity. We are using the grid as a battery and passing the costs onto those without rooftop solar – a highly regressive government orchestrated theft.
Nothing surprising about this. Like good little grifters, they’re just following the money. Albo & Bowen are pumping money into batteries which are a better return on the subsidy than big risky renewable generation 😜
Don’t forget Snowy-2 …. oh wait, speaking of grifters there’s more: https://www.turnbullrenewables.com.au/.
Where’s that up to now ? Haven’t heard much since the machine got buried again. 🙂
I think they’ve ordered their batteries from an American company that has shut down?
Slight Supply-Side interruption?
The article uses a quote containing the word “fascist”. Now that the word has been misused to the point of a unprecedented, 1000-year spikes in gaslit fire tsunamis, I require a definition for what the author or speakers wants it to mean each time it is used.
When a “Crikey” author uses the word “fascist”, I interpret it as meaning “someone who disagrees even slightly with my ideas”.
Ironically the people calling the folks that disagree with the climate agenda “fascists” support those who actually are the fascists. Dictators who paint themselves as “green” saviors thirsty for more power and control.
Full marks to the ones that stood up to the insanity from the start. Half marks to the ones that are just starting to recognise reality. No marks to the useful idiots who have helped heap disaster on the rest of the population. The perpetrators, meanwhile, should be removed from anywhere they might do more damage.
A remote island with just enough resources to support them. But only if they manage those resources wisely.
They’ll be dead in a month.
They would have to construct wtg and wv generators from the material at hand, by hand.
South Georgia?
Wind and solar don’t work. It doesn’t matter who owns them they still won’t work. Remove all solar and wind from the grid. The batteries you should be making are those used in internal combustion vehicles. You know the transportation that actually works. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. The only real advantage I see with AI is they have lots of money to help build more fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Let’s get their money before the government screws that business up.
To a limited extent SV can supplement the energy on the grid. When the sun is shining, there is a small but measurable reduction in fuel. A niche application. There are a few places taking this approach and it is working. NOT GRID SCALE.
Nothing is good news like that of a failed wind project.
“Aussie Renewable Energy Crisis”
Thank goodness for a new crisis to panic about, because the old ones …
(‘The Bomb’, Ice Age, Global warming, Peak Oil, Starvation, Mass Extinction, Acid Oceans, Boiling Seas, Global Firestorms, Coral, Penguins, Polar Bears, Robots, Immigration, Emigration, Covid, Asteroid Strike, Rising Seas, Melting Ice, Simultaneous Perpetual Floods & Drought (that one really worried me), Flesh-eating Bacteria, & worst of all ‘The Coffee Crisis’ ) are so yesterday !!!
We need a new crisis every month, something we can rally around & vent our spleen, make placards & go on protest marches about. If we all band together, we can fight this existential threat to the planet,
‘Think of the children’( No, on second thoughts, don’t think of the children, you can be locked up for that sort of thing ).Worry’d Wheelchair Warrior
You left out Zombie Apocalypse.
MORE BRAINS!
It will be interesting to watch the bids at the next UK offshore license round
Now would be a good time for Reform to announce intent to impose a windfall tax on renewable energy companies.
Better yet – announce that what they produce will no longer receive “priority” over dispatchable sources, nor will they receive any more tax credits, subsidies or “cutailment” fees.
Offshore Wind biz surveyed 166 stakeholders across the floating offshore wind chain in May 2025 and found 63% were less optimistic about future prospects than in 2024. 72% of responders also anticipated that less than 3GW of offshore floating wind would be operational by 2030.
Reasons given for the lack of optimism were
There never was an “energy transition” and there was never going to be one. Unless Stone Age living conditions suddenly became fashionable.
10pm Tuesday, and the current supplies of COAL and GAS in the three main states are…
NSW: 79%
Qld: 78%
Vic: 86%
Even SA is using 65% Gas, and Tassie is run 14% Gas to conserve water supplies for hydro.
The difference between the insanity attempted and a true transition is a true transition is not an abrupt step function. Evolving to where we are today (coal, hydrocarbons) was an evolutionary scale transition from wood and whale oil. Steam turbines were a technological innovation that kicked off an evolutionary transitions.
Point is: Transitions can be evolutionary or revolutionary. Step functions always create instability (Systems Engineering 101).
What is Generation P? Is that what some people are calling Generation Alpha ?