Will the lights go out if we don’t have baseload? “No, absolutely not,” say those whose job it is to keep them on

Giles Parkinson, ReNewEconomy, Dec 12, 2025

Australia’s green energy transition is continuing apace – not as quickly as many would hope, and possibly not as fast as we could. But it is certainly happening more quickly than nearly everyone imagined a decade ago, and at a speed some still find hard to digest.

The release of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest multi-decade blueprint, the draft 2026 Integrated System Plan, underlines what nearly everyone now accepts to be true – that the lowest cost option to replace Australia’s ageing fleet of coal generators is with wind, solar, battery storage, a bit more gas capacity and some transmission.

It’s been the case since the first ISP was produced in 2018, at the instigation of the then Coalition government, and the main thrust of the ISP has varied little since then (three were produced under the Coalition and this is the second under Labor).

Nicola Falcon, now the executive general manager of system design at AEMO, has been working on the ISP since the first was finalised in 2018, and points to its remarkable consistency, despite – or even perhaps because of – the technology changes that have occurred in that time.

“Even with those changes that are going on around us, it continues to be that that least cost mix is renewable generation, connected with networks firmed by storage and backed by gas,” Falcon tells Renew Economy in the latest episode of its weekly Energy Insiders podcast.

See: Energy Insiders Podcast: A blueprint to quit coal, and go green

Yet the biggest hurdle to the ISP’s success remains political – whether it be the political rhetoric and misinformation from the Coalition at the federal level that proves a lightning road for local opposition, or the destructive acts of new conservative state governments such as the LNP in Queensland.

The basis of this is almost entirely dependent on a red herring – that the future of Australia’s economy and the reliability of its electricity supplies can only be guaranteed by what they call “baseload”, by which they mean existing coal and future nuclear.

That’s not what the energy industry says, unless they have a particular vested interest in perpetuating that myth. The future is now focused on bulk renewables – wind and solar – supported by storage, mostly batteries but also some pumped hydro and other technologies – and some peaking gas as the last fall-back.

The big energy players, and the market operator itself, have been consistent with this line, but on Energy Insiders we wanted to hear it again, and asked Falcon if the absence of “baseload” means the lights will go out.

“No, absolutely not,” Falcon replied.

…………………………………………………………………………………..  the plunging cost of battery storage has had profound implications – both for its ability to store excess power and send it into the grid in the evening peaks, create demand in the middle of the day, and provide lower cost “virtual transmission” instead of new power lines.

The latest ISP models more battery storage, more solar and battery hybrids, more household PV (backed by more batteries), and less wind, less gas, and fewer new transmission lines.

But the fundamental story remains the same.

“There’s still going to be in a five fold increase in solar and wind that we need from now, where we’ve got about 23 gigawatts on the system to 120 gigawatts by 2050,” Falcon says……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Then, of course, are the customers themselves, with households expected to host some 87 gigawatts of capacity.

“By 2050 the consumer energy resources that we call them, which is your rooftop PV, your batteries and your electric vehicles, combined, will be providing half of the capacity supplied for the entire NEM, so, you know, a huge role,” Falcon says.

“They’re really at the heart of the transition. And to be fair, they’re setting the pace at the moment. As Australians, we’ve got 4 million households with rooftop PV on them.

We’ve seen with their household home batteries, huge uptake in the amount of CzeR storage and so forth. We’ve got, from a power system perspective, there’s opportunity through those investments, opting in to really provide value, not just for themselves, but also for all Australians……………….. https://reneweconomy.com.au/will-the-lights-go-out-if-we-dont-have-baseload-no-absolutely-not-say-those-whose-job-it-is-to-keep-them-on/

December 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | energy | Leave a comment