No coal power, no new petrol cars by 2035 for net zero - Australian Museum

The Australian Museum has published modelling showing that Australia could achieve net-zero emissions by 2035 with no coal power and a ban on new petrol car sales from that year. The analysis is part of the museum's contribution to climate policy discussion.

Where this fits

This proposal bears on both cost and reliability. A coal exit by 2035 leaves less than a decade to replace roughly 40 per cent of the grid's generation capacity with renewables and firming. The modelling does not specify how that firming will be delivered, or at what cost. It touches sovereignty too: the solar panels, batteries and inverters that anchor such a transition are manufactured almost entirely in China, and their supply chains depend on Chinese-controlled processing of critical minerals. A petrol car ban accelerates demand for EVs whose batteries face the same supply-chain constraint.

What it means

The deadline compresses an already challenging engineering problem into a period where transmission and storage infrastructure cannot be built fast enough to absorb renewable capacity without either curtailment losses or reliance on gas. Australia has chosen to ban nuclear by law, foreclosing the one firm, low-emission alternative that would reduce both the material burden of the transition and its dependence on China's supply chain. The 2035 target is achievable in engineering terms, but the bill, in transmission overbuild, storage capacity, firming plant, and strategic dependence on a single supply chain, is the cost the modelling does not price in.