Does Austrailia have space for the energy transition?

Some people question whether Australia has enough room for an energy system based on wind and solar. In reality, there are few countries in the world better suited.

In its favour, Australia:
✅ Has enormous solar potential, with solar irradiance similar to the Sahara Desert across >90% of the country.
✅ Has world-class wind resources across most of the country
✅ Is one of the world’s largest countries, with a small population and huge areas of largely empty space.

Let’s look at the area required for wind and utility scale solar (since rooftop solar doesn’t take up any space).

Based off the Step Change scenario in AEMO’s 2024 Draft ISP, we would need 61 GW of wind and 55 GW of solar in 2050.
➡️ For solar, using 4 acres/MW gives 62 MW/km² so for 55 GW we’d need 890 km².
➡️ For wind, say a 4 MW turbine needs 1 ha, that gives 400 MW/km² so for 61 GW we’d need 153 km².
➡️ The total is 1,043 km² which represents just 0.014% of Australia’s land mass and is barely visible on the map.

That was a bit easy wasn’t it? Let’s imagine a future where Australia becomes a renewable energy superpower, exporting green minerals and more.
➡️ For this idea, assume Australia needs to build out 5X as much wind and solar.
➡️ The total is 5,200 km², which still just represents 0.068% of Australia’s land mass. Not even a tenth of one percent.

But some critics may say we’ve cheated, and 1 ha per 4 MW wind turbine isn’t fair because the whole wind farm spans far more land area than that. So OK, let’s look at the total land requirement. For wind, we can use a conservative 4 MW/km².
➡️ This makes our wind land requirement increase by 100X.
➡️ The total is now 80,700 km² or 1.05% – finally we’ve been able to reach one percent of Australia’s land mass.

But the reality is that the wind farm doesn’t really “occupy” this much land. Animals can graze right up to the edge of the tower. That’s why on the map this circle is show an an empty ring. Animals can also graze around solar panels, and that hasn’t been factored into this analysis.

Remember this next time someone tries to tell you Australia doesn’t have room for all the solar panels and wind turbines we’re going to need. Australia is big enough to comfortably power the entire world.