A workshop was held at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, to consider 100% renewable electricity and energy futures and meeting climate goals.

The workshop was timely considering the startlingly rapid current deployment of solar and wind in Australia, at a rate that is about 5 times faster per capita than the USA, EU, Japan or China.

Date: Wednesday-Friday, 13-15 February 2019.

We hosted people from Singapore, USA, Europe as well as senior Australian figures from academia, business, utilities and regulators. Attendees had backgrounds in technology, business, economics, market design and policy in order to bring a wide perspective.

The workshop was free of cost.

Moving towards 100% renewable electricity#

At a global level in 2017, solar PV and wind constituted 60% of annual net new capacity additions, followed by fossil fuels (28% and shrinking), hydro (9%) and all others combined (3%). PV and wind have a central role to play. Pumped hydro is currently 97% of global storage, while batteries (both stationary and in EVs) are rapidly becoming important.

Coal, oil and gas cause around 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. A leading method to rapidly push fossil carbon out of markets is continued rapid deployment of wind and solar coupled with extensive electrification of energy services, relying on the maturity, scale, low cost and the lack of constraints on their continued rapid growth.

Organiser’s CV: researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/blakers-aw.

Workshop summary (PDF, 1.5 M)

Attendees as at 11th Feb (.xlsx, 16 K)

Workshop details (.docx, 18 K)

Workshop program (.docx, 490 K)

Presentations can be downloaded below:

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