Just FYI, South Australia is Running on 50 Percent Renewable Energy

South Australian energy minister Tom Koutsantonis confirmed today that in the past year, 53 percent of the state's electricity came from renewable sources like solar and wind. To put that in perspective, Australia's federal renewable energy target is for 23.5 percent of our energy to come from renewable sources by the year 2020—and we're a long way off achieving it.

Koutsantonis told the ABC that he was "pleased with the results", which make South Australia one of the world's renewable energy hotspots. "It means we are not only leading the nation but probably the world. Renewable energy is the future," he said. South Australia had only been aiming to attain 50 percent renewable power by 2025, which means they're almost eight years ahead of target.

The announcement times well with a national poll from the Australia Institute, which reveals widespread support amongst Australians for increased renewable energy investment. Conducted in March 2017, the poll said that 67 percent of people felt Australia was moving into renewable energy "too slowly", with 35 percent saying it was moving "much too slowly". A majority of voters across all states and all political parties felt this way, with only nine percent of the opinion that Australia was transitioning to renewable energy too quickly.

Among those nine percent are members of the South Australian Opposition, which has heavily criticised South Australia's speedy transition to renewable energy sources. The state has experienced multiple severe power outages in 2016 and 2017, which many politicians—including Malcolm Turnbull—have been quick to blame on the state's heavy reliance on renewables.

To address these concerns, the South Australian Government announced last month that it would invest more than $500 million from the state's renewable energy fund to build a new 250 megawatt gas-fire power plant, as well as Australia's largest battery, for use in power emergencies.

So what about the federal renewable energy target? Well, you might have heard of a little thing called the Paris Agreement, which Australia has ratified but so far done little to address. The terms of the agreement commit to an energy reduction target of about 30 percent by the year 2030, but federal politicians have recently argued that we need more coal power, not less.

Luckily, South Australia isn't the only state to take renewable energy into its own hands—Victoria has committed to 40 percent renewable energy by 2025, and the Queensland government is considering a 50 percent solar target by 2030.

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