Essay by Eric Worrall
“… data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity. …”
Wind industry in crisis as utilities and corporate buyers go on investment strike
Giles Parkinson
Aug 15, 2025Australia’s wind energy industry is facing a crisis as new data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity.
The lack of investment in new wind projects is not news – it was highlighted by BloombergNEF at the Australian Clean Energy Summit last month, and confirmed in that company’s first half assessment released earlier this week.
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They are all investing billions in battery storage, largely because the flexibility and dispatchability of big batteries ensures that the big three retain their market power over wholesale electricity prices.
But they show little interest in new wind and solar. Origin Energy, for instance, has won grid access for the biggest wind project in Australia, the 1.45 GW Yanco Delta wind project in south-west NSW, but will not make a financial commitment on that project for another 18 months.
…
The wind industry is facing multiple issues. Turbine costs have not fallen much from the spike of a couple of years ago, and the likes of the CSIRO have increased their most recent cost estimates, largely because of the need for workers accommodation in remote areas and the rise in civil construction costs.
Wind also requires transmission, and this has been slow and costly to roll out, and the technology has run into planning issues.
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The article above mentions solar is also in a slump.
The one bright spot for renewables mentioned in the article above is battery investment, but this appears to be more about gaming peak electricity prices than a genuine interest in the renewable revolution.
Predictably this collapse in the economics of subsidised green energy has triggered a call for more climate communism;
The abundance agenda brainworm has infected Labor’s climate change reform
The Productivity Commission wants us to focus on the ‘costs’ of climate action, neutralising an urgent safety issue into a bland optimisation and efficiency project, and in doing so, ridding it of any social criticality.
KETAN JOSHI
AUG 18, 2025…
A real project to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels from Australia’s power grid would entail far greater state ownership of power, the deprioritisation of profit, along with widespread community benefit and profit-sharing schemes. The Roosevelt Centre’s “progressive permitting reform” centres equity and environment but also aims to streamline processes and eliminate replication. These ideas are virtually non-existent in Australia’s energy and planning discourse.
In America, we’re seeing what happens when you plug the abundance agenda into a fascist wall socket rather than a centrist technocrat one. Klein and Thompson’s language has been used to justify the right-wing fantasy of unregulated data centres and fossil fuel expansion, while the Trump administration actively implements new regulations to block clean energy and transmission lines. …
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Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/08/18/labor-economic-roundtable-deregulation-climate-change-energy/
Other issues might be helping to drive this slump. The Aussie government is worried about declining productivity, and has been talking up Australia’s participation in the AI revolution as a means to unlock productivity growth.
Address to Generation P: Unlocking productivity for Australia’s future, Future Forward Australia
Unlocking Gen P
It’s great to be speaking to Gen P. A generation with enough optimism to believe we can boost productivity and fix housing anddecarbonise the economy – all before lunch. I like your ambition.
Let’s talk about productivity. Not in the abstract, economic‑model kind of way – but as the thing that quietly shapes your lives, your wages, your choices, your future.
Productivity growth is how we produce more value with the same effort. It’s what allows wages to rise, governments to invest in public services and societies to lift living standards without just working harder or longer.
But right now, Australia has a productivity challenge.
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AI forms a central part of their productivity growth thinking, though I get the impression they don’t really know what it is;
Enable AI’s productivity potential
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform our economy and improve our living standards.
The AI models that have emerged in recent years apply advanced machine learning to increasingly sophisticated uses, including natural language processing, image recognition, personalised search and social media. AI technologies are increasingly undertaking complex tasks that are outside the scope of previous waves of automation.
Increased use of AI-based systems in Australia could create significant productivity benefits. But malicious or reckless use of these systems poses risks, which has led to calls for regulation.
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Read more: https://engage.pc.gov.au/projects/data-digital/page/artificial-intelligence
In the USA, the AI revolution has caused green tech giants to fall over themselves revising their green energy pledges. AI requires high quality low cost rock steady power which renewables simply can’t deliver.
Aussie opposition parties continuing to flirt with nuclear is also likely damaging confidence in wind and solar.
Energy companies can likely see the writing on the wall, it is obvious events currently happening in the USA and Asia will soon be replicated in Australia. The AI revolution is rapidly turning wind and solar into stranded assets, or at best bit players in a much bigger game, a trend which is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
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