Renewable energy in Australia

Renewable energy in Australia deals with efforts being made in Australia to quantify and expand renewable energy, which includes electricity, transport fuels and thermal energy. Total renewable energy consumption in Australia in 2015 was 346PJ, representing 5.9% of Australia's total energy consumption. This is an increase of 1.6% from 2011–12 levels (265PJ), representing 4.3% of Australia's total energy consumption. Of all renewable energy consumption in 2015 (in order of contribution) biomass (wood, woodwaste and bagasse) represents 53%, hydroelectricity 19.2%, wind 10.7%, solar PV 5.1%, biogas 4.7%, solar hot water 3.8% and biofuels 3.6%.Bioenergy (the sum of all energy derived from plant matter) represented 61.3% (211.9PJ) of Australia's total renewable energy consumption in 2015.

Renewable electricity has undergone substantial growth in Australia in the 21st century. It is estimated that Australia produced 35,007 gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable electricity (or equivalent) over the year ending December 2015, representing 14.6% of the total production in Australia. By way of comparison, in 2006, approximately 9,500 GWh of electricity came from renewable sources, representing less than 4% of nationally generated electricity.

Of all renewable electrical sources in 2012, hydroelectricity represented 57.8%, wind 26%, bioenergy 8.1%, solar PV 8%, large-scale solar 0.147%, geothermal 0.002% and marine 0.001%; additionally, solar hot water heating was estimated to replace a further 2,422 GWh of electrical generation.

Similar to many other countries, development of renewable electricity in Australia has been encouraged by government energy policy implemented in response to concerns about climate change, energy independence and economic stimulus. A key policy that has been in place since 2001 to encourage large-scale renewable energy development is a mandatory renewable energy target, which in 2010 was increased to 41,000 gigawatt-hours of renewable generation from power stations. This was subsequently reduced to 33,000 gigawatt-hours by the Abbott Government with the agreement of the Labor opposition. Alongside this there is the Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme, an uncapped scheme to support rooftop solar power and solar hot water and several State schemes providing feed-in tariffs to encourage photovoltaics. In 2012, these policies were supplemented by a carbon price and a 10 billion-dollar fund to finance renewable energy projects, although these initiatives were later withdrawn by the Federal Government.

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