This report finds that the inevitable closure of ageing, inefficient, polluting coal plants provides a critical opportunity to move to a modern 21st Century electricity system.

KEY FINDINGS 1. Globally, solar photovoltaic (PV) power is surging on the back of scaled-up production and continually falling costs. 70GW (projected) of new solar power capacity was added globally in 2016, breaking last years’ (2015) record of 50GW capacity added. China (34.2GW), the United States (13GW) and Japan (10.5GW) continued to lead with the...

In July this year, South Australia experienced a series of high wholesale electricity price spikes in one week, which some politicians and media commentators simplistically linked to the state’s high proportion of renewable energy, particularly wind (For example, Australian Financial Review 2016; The Advertiser 2016a; The Australian 2016). This was incorrect. The mistaken attack on...