In this interview, Daniel Wild appeared on FiveAA Mornings with Graeme Goodings to discuss the IPA’s research on net zero.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Graeme Goodings:
Well, new analysis from the Institute of Public Affairs shows Australia still relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels with coal, oil and gas, making up 90.7% of total energy consumption in the year ’23, ’24. A surprising figure joining us now is IPA deputy director Daniel Wild. Daniel, good morning. Thanks for being with us today.
Daniel Wild:
Morning, Graeme. My pleasure.
Graeme Goodings:
Now break this down for us. How is it that 90.7% of our usage or energy consumption is based on or is fossil fuels? This is not what we’re led to believe regarding renewables.
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s right. The first thing I’ll say is this data all comes from the Federal Government Department of Climate Change. So these aren’t, just to be clear, our figures. We’ve analysed the reports provided by that department, which are publicly available. Now, the reason why these figures seem higher than what you might expect is, when we talk about renewable energy, often that’s in the context of electricity generation. So what you’ll hear is a figure of something like 20 or 30% of energy, sorry, electricity generation comes from wind and solar.
Now that is true, but our total consumption of energy is far greater than our electricity use. So what I mean by that, for example, is the gas that we use to cook and to heat, the petrol and diesel we use in our cars and trucks and other heavy machinery like tractors. And also in relation to when you have sort of an industrial site, for example, that will use their own sources of energy consumption, which are not from the grid. And so as it turns out, when you look at the total amount of energy that we need as a nation to do everything that we do, over 90% of that comes from the traditional sources of coal, gas, and oil.
Graeme Goodings:
And are those numbers increasing or declining?
Daniel Wild:
They’ve declined very, very marginally over the last few years. Basically it was steady, basically from the early 1970s until 2008 and 2009, it sort of peaked at 96% in 2009. And it’s come down slightly since 2009 to the current figure of just over 90%. So they have come down a little bit, but this gets to the broader point about the whole argument about net-zero and decarbonization, which is, look, even if you were to completely so-called decarbonize the electricity grid, that’s not going to make much of a dent in the total use of fossil fuels.
And the other point that I would make just about decarbonization is, it’s a bit of a [inaudible 00:02:33], it’s a bit of an accounting trick because if you think about it, we say that if wind or solar are going into the electricity grid, then that’s reducing emissions compared to coal. Well, okay, fair enough. But don’t forget that wind and solar infrastructure has to be manufactured, so the solar panels have to be made, the wind turbines have to be made. They go through an industrial process, which is often made overseas in countries like China, which use coal to make those things. And then it has to be transported on things like trucks which use diesel. So it’s a bit of a [inaudible 00:03:02] to say that we’re decarbonizing.
Graeme Goodings:
Can you see our reliance on fossil fuels declining in the foreseeable future?
Daniel Wild:
Not significantly. I suspect it will come down a little bit. Like I say, there is going to be the continued use of wind and solar in the electricity system, which will bring the overall numbers down a bit. But look, think about the billions and billions and billions that have been spent in subsidising renewable energy, so-called renewable energy, when in fact it’s not that renewable because the infrastructure has to be replaced every 15 to 20 years. But even, despite all of those subsidies, like I say, the figures have budged from 96 to 91%. So we are going to be heavily reliant on these sources of fuels. So I think this is a really important thing to remember as well, which is unfortunately like a lot of fairly complicated public policy issues, the matter of reducing emissions has been reduced to this simple concept around wind and solar power where we need to sort of broaden out the view of it and understand that really what we use is much broader than that.
Graeme Goodings:
How does Australia compare internationally on fossil fuel dependence?
Daniel Wild:
Well, that’s a good question, Graeme, and I actually don’t have those figures at my fingertips right now. What I can tell you is a lot of developing nations, I mentioned China before, we could also look at Indonesia as another example, are going through their industrial process, which of course relies on a lot of coal-fired power. We know that China is building dozens of coal-fired power stations. And so what’s really interesting to me about this is we’re told that climate change is a global issue. And if we are to believe that, then what matters is the global emissions [inaudible 00:04:39] emissions coming from Australia. So we’re in a position now where we’re sending our coal to China, and China will use that in its industrial process often in a much dirtier way. And they send us back manufactured goods, which again have to be transported here. So when you actually look at the situation, it’s actually a net increase to emissions that come from that process rather than a net decrease.
Graeme Goodings:
Now we have a question on the text line. Ask Daniel how renewables are pushing up prices if we’re almost entirely relying on fossil fuels?
Daniel Wild:
Well, there’s a couple of things. The first thing is when we’re talking about prices, often we’re talking about electricity prices. And as I mentioned before, the electricity generation sector is becoming more dependent on wind and solar. And so that’s, for example, when you go home and flick on your light switch, that’s coming from electricity rather than other sources of energy consumption, which I mentioned. And the reason why your electricity bills are going up is because renewable energy is more expensive than coal or gas generation. The wind is free and the sun is free. But generating electricity from most sources most certainly is not free. And the other point I would just make briefly is that, if renewable energy really is the cheapest form of energy, then why does it need to be subsidised?
Graeme Goodings:
What is the IPA’s view on achieving net-zero targets much in the news at the moment?
Daniel Wild:
Yeah, net-zero is not a good policy. It should be removed as government policy. And the reason for that is firstly, like I said before, emissions haven’t really been coming down anyway because a lot of it is an accounting trick. When you actually look at the total supply chain of what we do, emissions aren’t really coming down despite the immense costs that are being imposed upon our economy to do so.
The other point to make is a lot of the focus of net-zero is on, as I mentioned before, electricity generation, which is pushing prices up. But don’t forget, electricity generation is only something like a bit less than a third of our total generation of emissions. A lot of it comes from transport and also agriculture. So if you do actually want to get to net-zero, this is not just about having solar panels. This is about the cars we can drive, the food we can eat, the houses we can live in. The extent to which we can travel by aeroplanes and so forth. So it requires a significant amount of government intervention into almost every single nook and cranny of our lives. And for that to be centralised out of Canberra. So this is much more far-reaching than just having some solar panels on top of our roofs.
Graeme Goodings:
Is population and economic growth impacting energy demand projections?
Daniel Wild:
That’s a great question. And the short answer is yes. I mean, if you have more people, more energy generation is required. And this is one of the interesting intersections of two key policy issues, which is net-zero and immigration. And of course it’s interesting that the government won’t talk about the quickest way to reduce emissions in Australia is to reduce immigration. And so that’s one factor to this debate that is not accounted for. Also, when it comes to economic growth, well, if we’re going to grow our economy, we need to do so through dense energy sources, which comes from, largely, coal-fired power. And look, I’ll give you an example of this. As you know, productivity is a key part of economic growth.
We all know that productivity has been going down, and one of the reasons for that is we’re actually paying more to get less. We’re paying more as consumers and as taxpayers for so-called renewable energy, but we’re getting a worse outcome because prices are actually going up and we have a more intermittent supply of energy. So that’s the very different definition of productivity going down, and that’s one of the consequences that we see.
Graeme Goodings:
Does the IPA have a view on introducing nuclear into the mix?
Daniel Wild:
Well, I think with nuclear power, we currently have a ban on it. And the views that we have is that we shouldn’t have a ban on nuclear power and that we should have, really, an all of above approach to energy generation that we should have in our system. I’m not necessarily convinced that we need to have what the coalition took to the election, which was something like six or seven nuclear power plants that would be underwritten in some way by taxpayers or by government. But I do think that having a ban on nuclear energy is sort of tying our hands behind our back, and I think need to be in a situation where we can assess that form of energy fairly without having it completely outlawed.
Graeme Goodings:
Daniel Wild, great to talk. Thanks for your time today.
Daniel Wild:
My pleasure. Thank you.
Graeme Goodings:
Deputy Executive Director at the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild. The fact that coal, gas oil deliver 90% of Australia’s energy needs. And I think that would surprise a lot of people when we hear so much about renewables making such an impact. And I think Daniel explained the difference between electricity production and overall power consumption and power needs, that generating electricity by renewables is just a small sector of that. And that’s why we’re paying what we’re paying at the moment. 8223-0000. Your pathetic Graeme, wind is free, but it is certainly not free. What a non-answer. If it was the climate council person from last week, you would have cut her off 10 times. Sorry, Scott, explain that to me.
Wind is free. But what Daniel said was wind is free and solar is free, but the infrastructure to operate them is not free and you have to keep replacing the infrastructure. So Scott, give me a call because your text is not all that clear. So give us a call. 8223-000. I’d like to discuss it with you. Andrew says, we need fossil fuel in Australia without a practical alternative. Trump was all over it. He called out net-zero as a climate scam. Hence why he says drill, baby drill. He also pulled out the Paris Agreement. Yet our current government support Net zero and the Paris Agreement, but all opposition parties in Australia are against it.
Our target for 2050 for net-zero will never be reached. And if you speak to people in the government, off the record, they will tell you that it is an impossible dream. So sooner or later, they’re going to have to come out publicly and say, aspiration, we want to reach net-zero. And hey, we’d all be happy to do that, but let’s make a realistic target. And the target set by the government is not realistic.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on FiveAA Mornings with Graeme Goodings from 12 November 2025 has been edited for clarity.
