Australia’s capital city switches to 100% renewable energy

The Australian capital, Canberra, will become the first city outside Europe to shift from fossil fuel to 100% renewable energy.

Wind farms provide some of Canberra’s renewable energy.

From 1 January 2020, Canberra will join seven other districts around the world that produces or purchase the equivalent of their total electricity consumption from renewable sources, according to a report released on 18 September by policy think tank the Australia Institute in Canberra. 

The report analysed data on more than 500 regions around the world with populations greater than 100,000 people.

The district of Rhein-Hunsrück in Germany became the first area to go 100% renewable, in 2012; two German states, three states in Austria and one region in Spain followed.

The analysis used information from the CDP, a non-governmental organization in London that gathers mostly self-reported environmental-performance data from local governments and companies.

Read the Nature story by Bianca Nogrady - “Australia’s capital city switches to 100% renewable energy.”

Victorians want renewable energy - poll

Victorians want this ugly coal-fired power station
replaced with 100 per cent renewable energy.

The vast majority of people in Victoria – and even a majority of Liberal voters – support the state moving towards 100% renewable energy “as a matter of urgency,” a new poll has found.

The polling comes as the state government works to rewrite the Climate Change Act, including pre-2050 emissions reduction targets.

More than 68% of Victorians said they agreed or strongly agreed that “Victoria needs to transition its energy use from coal to 100% renewables as a matter of urgency”, according to the ReachTEL poll of 1,137 people conducted on 4 August and commissioned by Friends of the Earth.

That was in line with previous national polls. But when the researchers drilled down to the views of people who supported different political parties, they found consistent support for an ambitious state-based renewable energy target.

A majority – 51.2% – of Liberal-voting or leaning Victorians agreed that victoria needed to move urgently towards 100% renewable energy. And support among Labor-voters was very high, at 78.6% and virtually unanimous among Green-voters at 93.5%.

With a large number of Liberal-voters undecided, just 15.9% of Liberal-voters disagreed with the statement.

Read Michael Slezak’s story in The Guardian - “Majority of Victorians support urgent shift to renewable energy, poll finds.”