Tasmania wants to turn itself into a battery.
The island state off the Australian mainland’s southern tip is pursuing what its leaders say is the world’s most ambitious renewable energy target, boosting hydro and wind generation to twice its own needs by 2040 and exporting the rest via a planned undersea cable. The strategy could play a key role in weaning the nation’s urban centers of Sydney and Melbourne off their reliance on coal.
Tasmania already gets almost all of its power from hydro and wind, making it an outlier in the nation, one of the world’s most polluting on a per capita basis because of its heavy coal and natural gas use both domestically and for export. While the federal government is pushing for a "gas-fired” recovery from the economic hit of coronavirus measures, it is offering a cleaner source of energy.