Australia has backed a rapid shift to renewable energy – and given Labor a

Analysis of the election result has barely begun, but this much is clear: the country has backed a rapid acceleration towards renewable energy. Labor didn’t say much about the climate crisis during the campaign, announcing only one new policy. But Anthony Albanese and his climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, emerged with their ambitious goal of the country getting 82% of electricity from solar, wind and hydro by 2030 not just intact, but emphatically endorsed.

Labor’s position has been relentlessly attacked by the Coalition, rightwing organisations backed by fossil fuel interests and one of the country’s biggest news media companies. Australians rejected this comprehensively.

This is evident not just in the big swing to the ALP. The Greens have had a bruising time in the House of Representatives, in part because there has been a rebalance after they got a little lucky in some three-way contests in Brisbane in 2022. The swing to Labor hurt them. But their national vote largely held up and strengthened in the Senate, where they will have the balance of power in their own right.

Support for independents continues to surge, up from about 500,000 votes in 2019 and 750,000 in 2022 to roughly 1m this time. Not all of this went to community-backed indies advocating stronger action on climate change and renewable energy, but most of it did. Wherever the seat count ends up, the independent movement that is focused on climate, lifting integrity and improving safety and respect for women continues to grow.

The result is that 2025 may be Australia’s strongest vote for doing more to address the climate crisis. The Coalition’s position – unwinding or scrapping nearly all of Labor’s climate policies, abandoning the Paris climate agreement in spirit if not name, and slowing the rollout of renewable energy while substantially boosting local fossil fuel energy for the next two decades – is basically climate denial, and not what a majority of Australians want. That’s not a new idea, but the election confirmed it.

It’s too soon to know what this means for the Coalition’s promise to build taxpayer-funded nuclear generators, or whether it will accept that the grid is on a path to running overwhelmingly on renewable energy backed by firming support, as the Australian Energy Market Operator says it can.

But it may be a moot point by the time Australians next vote in 2028. By then, at least 60% of power should be coming from renewables.

Experts differ on whether we will get to 82% renewable energy by the end of the decade. Ultimately, it is not the key point. We won’t be far away. The goal is to get there as rapidly as possible while maintaining support for the transition by managing reliability and costs – and the impact on nature. There will be few more important projects undertaken across the country over the next five years.

With so little focus on climate policy during the campaign, it is worth a brief stocktake of where we are…