Aussie Government plans an ambitious 30 minutes of battery capacity to stabilise the grid.

Albanese government substantially expands renewable energy scheme amid 2030 target concerns

Chris Bowen says Labor will increase size of its main climate and energy program by 25% to capitalise on falling cost of solar panels and batteries

Adam Morton Climate and environment editorTue 29 Jul 2025 12.26 AEST

The Australian government will substantially expand a renewable energy underwriting scheme as it aims to capitalise on the falling cost of solar panels and batteries and combat concerns it may struggle to meet its 2030 climate target.

The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the government would increase the size of its main climate and energy program – known as the capacity investment scheme – by 25%.

It means Labor plans to underwrite the construction of 40 gigawatts of large-scale solar, wind and storage by the end of the decade. In capacity terms, this is nearly twice as much energy infrastructure as the country’s existing coal-fired power fleet.

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He announced the government would add 5GW of dispatchable capacity, which typically means large-scale batteries and 3GW of large-scale wind and solar generation to its underwriting program. In total, the government has promised to underwrite 26GW of generation and 14GW of storage or clean dispatchable capacity that can be called on when needed.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/29/australia-expands-renewable-energy-scheme-2030-target

None of this comes close to meeting Australia’s energy needs. 14GW of “storage or clean dispatchable capacity” covers half of Australia’s 35GW of peak demand. When a 35GW peak occurs during one of our wind droughts, and there is only 14GW of storage while demand shoots up to 35GW, after a few minutes the electricity will fail.

But what else would you expect from the engineering dyslexics who currently run Australia?

Of course even the Bowen / Albanese government will soon realise they have to continue playing the green hypocrisy game even with this additional capacity, and splurge taxpayer’s money on paying for a second set of real dispatchable power to remain on hot standby. Ready to step in when the fake renewable power system fails us.

The saddest part of this, by hamstringing Australian energy like this, we have no hope of participating in the AI revolution, except by proxy using AI installations located in other nations. Australia is stumbling and falling right at the start of the game due to our own national stupidity. But fumbling the ball has been our thing for at least the last half century.