Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If energy had an Olympics, solar would win gold year after year after year. According to the International Energy Agency, for the 22nd year in a row renewable capacity has broken records, with each year exceeding the year before. This is nowhere more evident than in China, which installed more solar in 2023 than the whole world did in 2022. And where in the energy Olympics would nuclear be? Still in the change room lacing up its boots. The race, folks, has been run and won.

The International Energy Agency predicts that renewables will exceed nuclear generation globally not in the distant future but by 2026. The Economist predicts that over the next 10 years the amount of solar commissioned will be equivalent to the world's entire nuclear fleet multiplied by eight and delivered in less time than it takes to build a nuclear plant. With no sound and no toxins, solar is the quiet achiever.

The market has backed solar because it's cheap, available and everywhere all at once. It's as common as dirt because it's made of dirt—sand. So could we compete with China? We would need a country bathed in sunshine, awash with sand and a company that makes the most efficient solar panels in the world, backed by a government with a billion dollars, on a disused coal-powered station site. In fact, we already have the ingredients. Let's bake the cake.