Australia’s Climate Council released a video this month on the back of their landmark report into the ageing fossil-fuel energy sector, finding that many of Australia’s generators will be too old for carbon capture and storage (CCS), as well as being too costly to compete with the clean and increasingly more cost-efficient renewable alternatives, as the world moves towards a low-emissions future.

Meanwhile, as Australia lags behind, the rest of the world is beginning to take greater strides towards a clean-energy economy:

• Worldwide, new capacity added in wind, solar PV and hydro is already far greater than fossil fuelled energy – over 100,000 MW (more than twice Australia’s total power capacity) are being added each year.
• Wind capacity is forecast to double worldwide by 2017. China will be the leading country, with capacity more than doubling to 185,000 MW, followed by the USA (92,000 MW), Germany (44,000 MW) and India (34,400 MW).
• Global PV capacity has been growing, on average, over 40% per year since 2000 and there is substantial potential for long-term (decadal) growth.
• The United States is in the process of setting it’s binding emissions limits on fossil-fuel power generation in order to achieve an overall cut of 30% nationally from these sources.