Why doesn't Australia use the massive potential of Solar? They must have million square miles to spare which has year-round (very strong) sunlight?
Even at relatively low yields, it would be huge.
Edit: just realised it's 0200 there and it's a live graph! It looks like solar made up almost 10% in 2018 - most of this is small-scale rooftop systems.
Further, setting up solar panel infrastructure is high up-front capital expense, and the Australian banks that might finance such expenditures are notoriously risk averse, and likely have plenty of assets tied up in the coal industry, so they'd have no interest in disrupting it. Toss in the idea that cheap coal probably equals cheap electricity, whereas solar would be relatively expensive (most countries get with now-mature solar industries circumvent this by subsidizing nascent solar generators).
That's a killer recipe for maintaining the status quo.
This has lead to stunts such as an MP saying “coal is good for Australians”, and bringing a lump of coal to parliament. The current conservative government desperately trying to approve the Adani coal mine despite the consistently falling price and demand for coal and the fact that they would need to seriously damage the Great Barrier Reef to build it. Another MP wearing a hi-vis vest of a coal mine into parliament, the current government spouting all sorts of lies about “clean coal” and how “nobody really cares about climate change”.
I highly recommend carbonbrief in general
To some extent it's also about jobs. Where I grew up, in the Hunter Valley, coal mining is a major employer. The export boom in commodities fueled the economy and lifestyle of tens of thousands. Shut down that industry a lot of people are going to hurt financially. Politicians just won't do it.
It's a case of short term electoral thinking at the expense of the environmental future.
A poorly maintained grid and a storm bringing down some infrastructure, and then the government steadfastly refusing to bring a power station online in peak demand were the causes of the power outages; renewables had nothing to do with it.
Renewables haven’t actually been the cause of any of our recent blackouts. Even back in the big storm a few years ago when they were blamed by conservative politicians and journalists, the actual reports came back showing it was more to do with the wind downing critical transmission lines, one of the interconnectors being out of service, grid management issues, etc. - that a bunch of wind turbines tripped due to safety settings was basically meaningless given all the actual problems.
More recently, coal and gas plant failures have been much more of a problem, like in the recent Victoria when over a GW of fossil fuel generation was out of service. It would been a lot worse without solar and hydro, as well as unexpectedly good wind conditions that took up a lot of the shortfall.