Coal has powered Australia’s electricity for decades. Now solar is quietly taking over.
Australia has always leaned heavily on coal to make its electricity. Over the last 20 years that has started to change, as solar power steadily rises to take its place.
This shows where Australia’s electricity has come from since 1999, and just how much the country relied on coal.
What’s surprising is that most of the solar boom has come from panels on people’s rooftops, not from big solar farms.
Here you can see coal’s share falling while renewables climb up to meet it.
As more renewables came online, the grid got cleaner, with emissions dropping from around 990 to 540 kg of CO₂ per unit of power.
Solar isn’t steady, though. It produces the most in summer and far less in winter.
Coal is a limited resource, and burning it harms the environment, so replacing it with solar is good news for the country. But solar comes and goes with the sun, surging in the middle of the day and in summer, then dropping off at night and in winter. Managing that swing is the big challenge as Australia keeps shifting to clean power.
Data: OpenElectricity (NEM), 1999–2025. Solar generation recorded from mid-2016.