Essay by Eric Worrall
The cost will be between A $500 billion to $1.5 trillion, but the government assures us there will be no impact on energy prices.
Independent advice spells out mammoth task ahead for government to reach 2035 target
By political reporters Maani Truu and Tom Crowley
In short:
The independent Climate Change Authority has warned achieving even the bottom end of Labor’s new 2035 climate goal “won’t be easy”.
Within a decade, 20 times as many electric vehicles will be needed and twice as many rooftop solar panels, while wind capacity would need to be quadrupled.
What’s next?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to New York this weekend for the United Nations General Assembly, where along with other nations, he will update Australia’s commitment under the Paris Agreement.
Australia would need twice as many rooftop solar panels, 20 times as many electric vehicles and almost all of its power generated by renewables within a decade to reach even the bottom end of Labor’s new 2035 climate goal.
It would also need to embark on a mammoth program of tree planting to counteract emissions from heavy industry and agriculture, but would escape a dramatic spike in household energy prices if it could do so, according to advice provided to the government.
After months of speculation, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday announced Australia would pledge to reduce its emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent on 2005 levels at next week’s United Nations meeting in New York.
That target, which Mr Albanese said was “responsible” and backed by a “practical plan”, would lift Australia’s climate ambition. Environment groups have decried it as too low, while business groups say it is feasible but will be difficult to meet.
…Failure to reach near-completion of the renewables rollout, Treasury warned, would have drastic consequences for power prices because of the looming closure of Australia’s ageing fleet of coal fired plants.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-19/the-task-ahead-to-reach-2035-emissions-target/105789538
The coal closure is a reference to Albanese’s claim that coal plants are not being replaced because coal is no longer an economically viable fuel. I guess someone forgot to tell Australia’s export customers.
This plan fails on so many levels.
Large tracts of Australia are simply unsuitable for EVs. They are barely suitable for diesel 4WD. Travel even a few miles away from the major roads, like the video below, and your automobile gets thrown around by broken, poorly maintained road surfaces. And we all know how much EV batteries like being bumped and thrown about.
Even if Australia did manage to switch to EVs en-masse, where is the energy coming from? Australia consumes around 1050000 barrels of oil per day. Each barrel of oil contains 1.7 Megawatt Hours of energy. To convert that into equivalent generation of electricity:
1050000 barrels / 86400 seconds per day x 1700000 watt hours x 3600 seconds in an hour = 74,375,000,000 watts of energy to replace all that oil, or 74 Gigawatts of new electricity generation capacity.
Obviously you could refine this calculation, by applying a thermal efficiency of burning oil of 25-40%, but charging batteries incurs losses as well, especially if you have to time shift the energy used to charge those batteries.
Australia currently has around 30 gigawatts of mostly coal and gas generation capacity. This would have to be converted to around a hundred gigawatts of renewable capacity, just to run the EV fleet. And we haven’t even begun to calculate electrification of industry and home heating.
In these days of AI, you don’t even have to be able to do the math to get this answer. I asked ChatGPT the following:
How much electricity generation capacity in gigawatts would be required to fully electrify Australian industry, households and vehicle transport?
Short answer — order of magnitude: ~60–70 GW (central estimate) of continuous generation capacity — roughly 590 TWh/year of electricity — would be needed to fully electrify households, industry (manufacturing + mining) and road/vehicle transport in Australia, using plausible efficiency assumptions.
…
GW numbers here are for average annual energy delivered continuously; the required installed nameplate capacity (especially for renewables + storage) would be higher.
Source: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc6ae8-0de8-800c-83c8-71bb58936e64
ChatGPT’s figure of 60-70GW is lower than my estimate of 100 GW of renewable capacity, so lets go with ChatGPT’s numbers.
I then asked ChatGPT how much it would cost to build this kind of renewable capacity;
If all this energy was to be produced by solar and wind, with battery backup, how much would it cost to create this generation capacity?
ChatGPT said:
Thought for 44s
Nice — I’ll give you a clear, justifiable estimate (with assumptions shown) for building enough solar + wind generation + battery backup to meet the ~594 TWh/yr electrification target from our earlier calculation (≈67.8 GW average load).
Short answer (headline)
- Capital cost (central case, 60% solar / 40% wind by energy, 8-hour battery fleet):
~USD 501 billion (range ≈ USD 301B – USD 762B) — that’s about AUD 761 billion at ~USD→AUD 1.52. ATB+2https://lazard.com+2- If you only build 4-hour batteries: ~USD 365B (AUD ~555B).
- If you try to size batteries for 24-hour firming: ~USD 1.04 trillion (AUD ~1.59T).
I show the step-by-step numbers and assumptions below so you can see exactly where these figures come from.
…
Read more: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc6ae8-0de8-800c-83c8-71bb58936e64
AU $555 billion to AU $1.5 trillion of investment over 10 years.
I then asked ChatGPT how much it would cost if we built nuclear power plants to supply this capacity. The answer, unsurprisingly, is still expensive, but significantly lower than the cost of renewables.
If instead we were to build nuclear power plants to supply this capacity, how much would the nuclear plants cost?
ChatGPT said:
Nuclear option — cost estimate (short version)
If you replaced the ~594 TWh/yr electrified load (≈ 67.8 GW average) with nuclear, and assume nuclear runs at ~90% capacity factor, you would need roughly 75.3 GW nameplate of nuclear capacity.
Using plausible overnight-capital-cost (OCC) ranges for large reactors, the capital cost to build that nuclear fleet is roughly:
- Low (best-case / low-cost fleet): ~USD 188 billion (≈ AUD 286 billion)
- Central (plausible mid-range): ~USD 377 billion (≈ AUD 572 billion)
- High (recent expensive projects / cost-overrun case): ~USD 828 billion (≈ AUD 1,259 billion)
…
Read more: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc6ae8-0de8-800c-83c8-71bb58936e64
I then asked ChatGPT to confirm nuclear is cheaper than renewables, but it got all coy. My guess is I ran into one of ChatGPTs idealogical guardrails.
…
5) Bottom line / verdict
- No — I cannot universally confirm “nuclear is cheaper”.
- If you compare overnight capex only, nuclear looks cheaper in a mid-case vs a renewables+8-hr-battery mid-case (because batteries add lots of energy storage capex). ATB+1
- If you compare system costs including transmission, long-duration firming, financing/interest-during-build, and delivery risk, many authoritative studies (AEMO, IRENA and others) find a renewables-centric pathway is least-cost for Australia today — but results depend on the assumptions you pick (cost of capital, battery/hydrogen/pumped hydro availability, speed of deployment, learning rates)
…
Read more: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc6ae8-0de8-800c-83c8-71bb58936e64
Just to round it off, I asked ChatGPT in a new conversation how much it would cost to replace all of Australia’s coal plants with new coal plants.
How much would it cost to replace all of Australia’s coal plants with new coal plants?
ChatGPT said:
Thought for 26s
Short answer up front: replacing Australia’s entire existing coal fleet with new coal-fired plants would cost on the order of tens–low-hundreds of billions USD (roughly A$40–A$155 billion) depending on the assumed capital cost per kW. That range covers plausible low, medium and high capital-cost assumptions and important extra uncertainties (environmental controls, mine/fuel upgrades, permitting, etc.). Database Earth+2U.S. Energy Information Administration+2
…
Read more: https://chatgpt.com/share/68ccbea6-686c-800c-9088-1e313c769f87
Replacing Australia’s entire coal fleet with brand new coal plants would cost between AU $40-155 billion, a fraction of the cost of electrifying Australia’s economy with nuclear plants or renewables.
What can I say? The wheel is spinning but the hamster is missing.
Something has to be done – Australia’s ageing coal fleet has been run into the ground, and needs to be replaced. There is no getting away from some level of capital expenditure. But we don’t have to spend $500 billion to $1.5 trillion to make this right. $155 billion would stabilise our energy supply, and restore the reliability of our coal fleet for decades to come. Australia has hundreds of years of coal supply just sitting in the ground waiting to be dug up and used.
It took me 5 minutes of calculations, and 2 minutes of talking to ChatGPT, to determine these climate targets are a joke. Even if they could be achieved without blowing up Australia’s national budget, there would be enormous costs for consumers, either through taxes to repay government borrowing, or direct costs for more expensive energy. You can’t magic $500 – $1500 billion in 10 years out of an economy as small as Australia without severe consequences for ordinary taxpayers.
In my opinion the people who come up with these plans are either deceptive or innumerate. Worse, nobody is using freely available online tools to ask the most basic questions. Most of our lapdog media repeats these nonsense targets like they are serious proposals, in most cases with only the most muted criticism.
In a world overflowing with free AI resources which can answer such questions, even if you suck at maths, there is no excuse for not doing some basic research. Our politicians are a joke for proposing such nonsense, and our mainstream media is a joke for not doing a few minutes analysis, and finding the courage to expose and call out such ridiculous climate targets.
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All by themselves. Australia will be going it alone. No other country on Earth will be swallowing the kool-aid. On their lonely island continent Ozzies will tilt at (with?) windmills as the rest of the world looks on with astonishment at their national suicide. And then China will take over.
And then China will take over is the plan
Albo is a communist always have been fifth column
The evil plan comes to completion
Naah. My home country Norway is not backing down. Nor the UK as far as I can see. Choo Choo, full steam ahead!!! We will race you to the bottom.
But Norway is has a small population which already gets 95% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams because of its plentiful rain and rivers. Replacing the remaining 5% of its electricity is an easy job especially compared to Australia where very little hydroelectricity is and can be generated. Also, Norway is a major exporter of oil and gas, world rank of 5 for oil and 3 for gas, and is not planning to change that to my knowledge. Thus Norway’s energy situation is a consequence of good fortune and hypocrisy.
Population density Norway: 17.8 people per square kilometer
Population density Australia: Approximately 3.5112 people per square kilometer
I’d hate to be the 0.5112 person. Ouch.
And I love how Google uses the word “Approximately” then goes to 4 decimal places.
Given that Australia has around 11 million households, this would cost each household from A$50,000 to A$136,000, every ten years. Never going to happen.
And EV sales in Australia have stalled at around 9% of vehicle sales, so there is no way they will be 50% in another ten years. The current Australian federal govt is delusional.
Cool, the Australian Board of Infrastructure publishes a really nice report, including vehicle age.
“The average age of vehicles across Australia increased from around 11.25 years in 2023
to around 11.40 years in 2024. The average age of passenger vehicles increased from
around 11.0 years in 2023 to 11.18 years in 2024.”
Yes, Graeme4 is nearly correct: “there is no way they will be 50% in another ten years.”
I would have said “…no reasonable way…”
It appears to me that Mr Albanese is well ahead in the race to peak stupidity.
It appears the U. of Sydney ‘scholar’/author of this piece seems to be giving PM Albanese a run for his money:
“The psychology behind climate policy paralysis“
‘Our brains are wired to ignore the climate issue so policy must speak to the gut.’
Independant… that’s a laugh
Funded by the renewable industry and climate trough.
“The wheel is spinning but the hamster is missing.”
Between them, Albo and Bow-wow don’t have the brain capacity of a hamster. !!
—–
“to counteract emissions from heavy industry and agriculture”
If Albo and Bow-wow remain in power much longer…
… Australia won’t have any industry, heavy or otherwise, .. or agriculture for that matter.
And, will often not have electricity.
Meanwhile, Ford cut battery banger production and cut 5000 jobs. Progress indeed, for managed decline, the end goal of the WEF.
I thought the rooftop solar was destabilizing the grid at mid-day. So more rooftop solar is needed?
That’s a lot of money for a nation with only 27 million people!
Me being stupid probably but do we account the longevity of wind, solar and batteries versus nuclear power plants?
AI while not perfect is a perfect tool to calculate things, politicians have no more excuse to spew nonsenses. Months ago i already did this for my country, The cheapest CO2 reduction would be from building gas power plants, then nuclear and most expensive is green energy. The numbers are out there, it’s a fact.
The AI calculations were for new build, not life cycle costs.
Nor does it include maintenance and repairs, especially for damage inflicted by weather.
Has the independent Climate Change Authority considered what machinery will be needed to supply the grid when the wind and sun are zero or too weak to do so? It seems not. Are they aware that electricity is needed absolutely all of the time, even on the members birthdays, weekends and Christmas? It seems not. Are they aware that electricity must be supplied at the required voltage and frequency everywhere and all of the time? It seems not. Neither wind nor solar machinery nor batteries to supplement them can do these things. A real plan is needed to assure the grid gets what it needs all of the time. Adding wind and solar systems cannot do that so is not a real plan.
But wait! /s They are planning for 4 hours of battery backup. That should do it, right?
The independent Climate Change Authority is only independent of science and thought. It’s members are glued to left leaning ideology under guidance of our ultra-left Prime Minister and Bozo the Clown Energy Minister.
And from your post, derive that they are glued to their paychecks.
How much gasoline is in your 10.5 mmbpd figure? You will need to isolate this for the moment because trains, heavy equipment, jets and ocean going vessels aren’t electrified yet (or ever). I’m used to seeing 40-45% of the barrel is naphtha (gasoline). You’ll need ~10% of the barrel for chemical feedstocks.
Australia must be planning to import everything, and not include emissions for doing this in their calculations. Yet, those ocean going vessels won’t show up if they can’t refuel because oil supply has disappeared.
Not easy to replace 70% of everything one touches or uses. I think Albanese is playing to his base. Making sure he keeps his invitation to hang with the swells.
Are you sure about 10.5 mmbpd? US consumes 20 mmbpd and we have 10x+ the population.
I did a double-take on that statement: some organization really claims to have “authority” regarding “climate change”???
Here is what Google’s AI overview spits out about the Australian CCA (my bold emphasis added):
“The Climate Change Authority (CCA) in Australia is an independent statutory body that provides expert advice on climate change to the government, including recommending emissions reduction targets and publishing reports on climate policy. Established in 2012 under the Climate Change Act, its role is to advise on setting and achieving national emissions targets, conduct independent reviews, and inform the public about climate change issues and solutions. The Authority is comprised of a chair, several members, and Australia’s Chief Scientist in an ex officio capacity.”
So, in actuality, this group of . . . what? . . . ten or so individuals has AUTHORITY over NOTHING. ROTFL!
A review of the current makeup of Australia’s CCA (available at https://www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au/about-authority/who-we-are ) is insightful:
— The head of the CCA is Matt Kean. He was “appointed” in August 2024 and is a former New South Wales government minister and Liberal Party member. In other words, he is a 13-year career bureaucrat with no scientific training . . . his CV does not indicated that he even graduated with a degree from a college, only that he “studied business at the University of Technology Sydney”.
— Of the remaining nine members, there are only two scientists with climate-related training/experienced listed, Professor Lesley Hughes and Professor Tony Haymet (ex-officio)— The other seven members are a witch’s brew of career business people, organizers, bureaucrats and even one farmer.
Hard to believe this small group could provide “expert advice” to anyone else relevant to the issue of “climate change”, but there you have it. Only fools would take them seriously.
“its role is to advise on setting and achieving national emissions targets”
Not much chance of being independent of government policy or any pushback when this is built into their role
All while exporting NG to more practical countries and people
“Key Statistics
Production and Exports: Australia is the second-largest exporter of coal globally, with approximately 70% of its coal production exported. In 2023-24, Australia exported $91.4 billion worth of coal, reflecting its importance in the global market.”
Wow, leader is NOT USA:
“Indonesia: The world’s largest exporter of coal, …”
Who knew that extractive industries for global energy would in turn fuel the policy equivalent of beach mentality.
Re: headline
I don’t think it will happen, but it isn’t impossible because the words don’t specify cost to whom?
Ask not for whom the tolls cost?
They cost for thee?
Very nice Eric you are right on all accounts. I can make this even easier.
“The independent Climate Change Authority has warned achieving even the bottom end of Labor’s new 2035 climate goal “won’t be easy”.”
This sentence is the key to the solution. The only reason these knuckledraggers are doing this is because they have set a meaningless impossible policy. Get rid of the policy and your problems are solved. Then get busy building coal and nuclear plants. This is really simple.
Perhaps go a step further and get an estimate of the long-term cost of all options.
Assuming the life-time of nuclear generators (50 years maybe?), what would be the additional cost for renewable components having to be replaced 2, 3, 4 times?
I believe it was about 12 months ago, in Sydney. Three retail power supply outfits told their their customers, “If your solar panels add power to the grid between 10AM and 2PM, ‘we’ will charge ‘you’, for that power.” Seems there’s more supply than demand between those hours.