Transmission lines required to make renewable energy sufficient would be ‘absurdly expensive' - The Australian

An analysis of Australia's renewable energy transition has concluded that the transmission infrastructure needed to make a high-renewables grid workable would cost far more than currently acknowledged. The assessment, reported in The Australian, characterises the expense as "absurdly expensive," flagging a gap between the headline cost of wind and solar capacity and the whole-system cost of integrating it into the grid.

Where this fits

This is a direct cost and reliability pressure on the renewables-only pathway. A grid running on weather-dependent generation requires either vast overbuild of capacity to smooth weather variability, or major transmission investment to move power across regions when local generation fails. The article names transmission as the binding constraint, and prices it as prohibitive. This sits at the heart of the Energy Realism case: renewables are cheap per megawatt, but the system to make them reliable and dispatchable is not.

What it means

Australia is discovering in real time that a renewables grid demands a parallel grid. The cost of connecting remote wind and solar sites to demand centres, duplicating lines to handle the uneven output, and building storage or gas plants to cover gaps, renders the total bill uncompetitive with the headline figures that dominate policy. A firm, energy-dense, long-lived alternative like nuclear, which needs no overbuild, no weather-dependent firming, and minimal transmission, remains banned by law. The transmission bill is the cost of enforcing that choice.