As an Australian, I find it fascinating that New Zealand is using Australia as a role model for climate policy. One of the two major parties plans to drop out of the Paris Agreement entirely, retargetting everything to 2050 for the next generation of politicians to deal with.
It makes most of its export dollars from coal/gas/iron/aluminium.
Western Australia is the mining powerhouse.
But because they make so much money from coal and gas, that influences politics and they can’t transition faster to other sources. Australia is energy independent from coal and gas.
China on the other hand doesn’t have its own gas, oil or coal to satisfy their demands. So for them energy independence means going full throttle on solar and batteries.
Australia could have done that. For their population size they could be net zero, but their politics and money influence will slow it down significantly.
I live in WA and our state government is ridiculously, nakedly corrupted by the mining and gas industries.
WA can achieve the best wind and solar capacity factors in the world yet there hasn't been a single utility-scale wind or solar project completed in the last four years (although rooftop PV has absolutely gone nuts).
I was surprised to learn Aussie WA (Western Australia) has 40% higher electricity prices compared to Murican WA (Washington).
Aussie WA could be having the dirt cheap electricity with utility-scale solar + batteries but they don't.
Same could be said of US solar belt states though. I bet China will be laughing in a few decades with energy magnitude of order cheaper than gas guzzling nations.
