Energy analyses all the important statistics to determine whether Australia can hit its target of 82 per cent renewable capacity by 2030.
Several firsts were achieved in the Australian renewable energy industry in 2025 as the adoption of solar, wind, hydro and batteries continued to climb.
Last year saw more than 10GW of clean energy generation energised in the National Electricity Market (NEM) for the first time. This included the first pumped hydro operation to energise in more than 40 years, with Genex’s 2GWh Kidston project entering the NEM in November.
Renewables overtook coal on a monthly basis for the first time in September 2025, producing 48.8 per cent of total generation in that month with coal comprising 47.6 per cent of the share. Renewables remained on top from October to December.
The success of the Cheaper Home Batteries program must also be recognised as a first, with 200,000 installations completed from when it commenced on July 1 until mid-January.
This amounts to 4.7GWhs of battery storage capacity installed across households and small businesses, with the Federal Government targeting two million installations by 2030.
Meanwhile, to go alongside new energisation, the local renewable energy sector continued to stride forward with new project announcements, approvals and construction commencements.
Energy enlisted Rystad Energy senior analyst David Dixon to analyse the key trends from last year.
The Snowy 2.0 project is aiming to join Australia’s small fleet of pumped hydro operations. Image: Phillip Wittke/shutterstock.com
New announcements
According to Rystad data, Australia saw 130GW of new renewable energy capacity announced last year (90GW in the NEM), which Dixon said was “broadly aligned with what we’ve seen historically”.
“Our findings indicate that development activities are still tracking with what they have in the recent past,” Dixon told Energy.
“It’s certainly not bearish, but development activity is always pretty high, and you don’t get anywhere near that amount of capacity reaching financial close every year. The pipeline is very strong relative to what we actually need.”
Utility batteries made up 46GW of the 90GW announced through a mix of multi-GW standalone projects and add-ons to solar and wind proposals. This was followed by onshore wind with 29GW announced, with utility solar accounting for 8.6GW.
“These statistics are in line with what we’ve seen recently,” Dixon said. “From 2018 to 2022, we had a solar boom as PV costs started to come down. As the market has become oversupplied with solar, there’s been a transition to wind on the development side.”
Dixon said a reduction in battery costs and an increasingly amenable policy landscape were driving high rates of activity in this sector, with the Federal Government championing this technology as it looks to rapidly scale renewable energy adoption to achieve 62–70 emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2035.
New South Wales led the pack with 38GW of announced renewable energy capacity in 2025. Queensland followed with 33GW.
Approvals rise
Australia approved 21GW of clean energy projects in 2025, 19GW of which was approved in the NEM – a 43 per cent increase year on year.
Utility batteries made up 8.4GW of this, with onshore wind making up 6.9GW and utility solar comprising 2.6GW. Victoria led the way with 5.7GW of approvals, while NSW notched 5.3GW and Queensland 4.8GW.
Dixon said there was a red herring with these statistics.
“One of the key trends in recent years is project sizes have gotten a lot larger,” he said. “So what was a big project five years ago – maybe 50, 100, 200 megawatts – is now medium to small scale.
“On the wind side, the numbers are a bit distorted, because the projects being approved are large.”
Dixon said that while approved wind capacity in gigawatts was quite high, you could count the number of wind projects being approved “on one, maybe two hands”.
“It is still really challenging to get wind projects across the line,” he said.
“Batteries are low in height and have a small footprint, meaning you don’t run into many complaints. Meanwhile, there’s less solar development activity and a high proportion of solar already approved in the system.”
Despite the uptick in approved capacity, Rystad found approval pathways across the market becoming tougher “as rule changes, rising public objections, and greater scrutiny from central authorities lengthen timelines and complicate decision-making”.
Queensland, in particular, has added green tape to its approvals processes.
In December, the Queensland Government announced new regulation that graduated the approvals process for large-scale BESS (50MW or more) from local council to state government. This followed similar regulation for solar and wind projects announced in July 2025.
While there is currently no offshore wind generation in Australia, several states are pushing to change this. Image: corlaffra/shutterstock.com
Braving the wind
More than 5GW of utility solar, wind and batteries began construction in the NEM in 2025, with batteries making up 4.1GW of this.
“Utility batteries have garnered, for the third consecutive year, the highest capacity to start construction among all technologies,” the report stated.
Utility solar saw at least 1.4GW of projects commence construction, with the 300MW Blind Creek solar–BESS hybrid asset the largest (featuring a 243MW BESS).
Rystad found no new wind farms broke ground in 2025, which Dixon said came down to economics.
“Where the wind industry has suffered over the past 18–24 months is costs have gone up fairly dramatically in this industry, hurting the economics of wind assets themselves,” he said.
“Wind farms used to cost around $2.50 per watt 24 months ago, and now they cost about $3–3.50 per watt.”
Dixon said that while the cost of building solar and batteries is getting more affordable as “the efficiency of battery and solar cells gets better over time”, wind turbines are getting larger and more costly.
“Vestas, the biggest turbine supplier to the Australian market, was loss making for a period of time, and had to increase prices to get back in the black,” he said.
“A few turbine commodity inputs went up in price as well, so the wind market has experienced a double whammy of cost inflation and the need to get back to profitability.”
The on-site labour cost has also gone up in regional areas, while there are also service challenges.
“Because the turbines are bigger, you’re limited with the cranes you can use to lift the turbines up, meaning many wind farm developers are restricted to a narrower set of service providers,” Dixon said.
Despite the headwinds, Australia’s wind industry has experienced a rush of momentum in recent months, with several projects reaching financial close. This included the Andrew Forrest-backed Clarke Creek wind farm in Queensland, which secured a $1 billion financing package in early December.
The Kentbruck green power hub in Victoria, which includes a 600MW wind farm, received Ministerial approval in January following a positive Environment Effects Statement (EES) assessment.
Kentbruck construction is slated to commence in 2026 once all remaining approvals are achieved.
Energising the grid
A record 10GW of generation capacity was energised in the NEM in 2025, more than 6GW of which stemmed from the utility sector.
Utility batteries made up at least 3.8GW of this energisation, followed by 1.4GW of solar, with Snowy Hydro’s Kurri Kurri gas-fired plant the only gas facility to be energised in 2025.
Despite the record highs achieved, there were also new lows.
“What’s worthy of noting is how little utility solar and wind got energised, which – at about two gigawatts – was a figure we haven’t seen 2017,” Dixon said.
Dixon acknowledged the advent of the Federal Government’s Cheaper Home Batteries program, which, through a 30 per cent upfront subsidy, has created a boom in household battery installations, with 200,000 installations in its first six months.
Announcing a $5 billion expansion of the Cheaper Home Batteries program in December, the Federal Government announced a tiered system to ensure the discount remains at around 30 per cent for a range of battery sizes.
Discounts are on offer through STC (small-scale technology certificates), with the STC Factor to taper as the size of battery increases. The STC Factor will also taper as expected battery prices come down in the years to come.
Rystad observed a slowdown in rooftop solar installations throughout 2025 to below 2GW – its lowest figure since 2019.
Are targets within reach?
There is plenty of optimism regarding Australia’s renewable energy trajectory, but there’s still an uphill climb to reach desired targets.
In fact, Dixon said there was “no way” Australia was going to hit 82 per cent renewable energy generation by 2030 at its current pace.
“The numbers that you need to be installing per year in order to hit those targets are just simply too high,” he said.
When the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released its Draft 2026 Integrated System Plan (ISP) in December, it downgraded its forecast 2030 utility wind capacity to 26GW by 2030, down from 40GW in the 2024 ISP.
Forecast utility solar capacity was upgraded from 17GW to 32GW between the ISPs, with the potential to maximise deployment due to lower costs, shorter delivery timelines, and fewer planning constraints.
“To remain on track for national emissions and a grid reliability of 82 per cent renewable electricity by 2030, Australia will need to approve and deliver wind at a pace of approximately 3.6GW per year … alongside 4.8GW per year of utility-scale solar,” Rystad said in a January report.
“This rate of deployment is well beyond anything achieved historically.”
Rystad said the one of the most significant bottlenecks in the energy system was development approvals.
“In the NEM, the average approval timeframe for wind projects is approximately … 34 months, compared with around 18 months for utility solar and less than 10 months for utility standalone battery projects, reinforcing wind’s structural disadvantage within the current planning systems.”
The Federal Government has been working to expedite approvals for Australian renewable energy projects, with one significant measure including long-sought reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act which passed in November.
This included a new Streamlined Assessment Pathway to “significantly reduce the timeframe” for operators “who provide sufficient information upfront”.
New bilateral agreements between Federal and State Governments will remove duplication in the project assessment and approval process, while defined ‘go’ and ‘no go’ zones will provide greater clarity for project planning.
Asked if EPBC Act reform would change the regulatory and approval landscape in Australia, Dixon said he was “sceptical” but also acknowledged he wasn’t “in the weeds” of that reform.
It must be noted that EPBC Act reform will roll out in stages, with components of the revised Act not starting until mid-2027.
Dixon believes that while it’s unlikely Australia will reach its 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, the market “will continue to move forward”.
“The rooftop PV market and household batteries will continue to grow, as will the wind and solar markets,” he said.
“We realistically think these markets grow between one and two gigawatts a year, which is roughly in line with historical trends, with booms and bust cycles within that depending on challenges with the technologies and economics.”
Rystad forecasts Australia’s renewable energy capacity to reach around 60 per cent by 2030 – still a significant achievement on historical trends.
“We started the decade at around 20 per cent (renewable energy capacity), so to go from there to delivering the majority of our electricity supply in 10 years is a significant shift in the market,” he said.
This feature appeared in the March edition of Energy.