NSW responds to REZ inquiry recommendations as Barnaby Joyce dials up the anti-renewables rhetoric - Renew Economy

NSW has responded to an inquiry into Renewable Energy Zones by announcing it will adopt some recommendations while resisting others. The state government has faced pressure over REZ development as a new round of political commentary has questioned the renewables transition, with Barnaby Joyce restating opposition to wind and solar deployment.

Where this fits

The REZ inquiry response exposes a fracture in Australia's energy policy: state governments are committed to a renewables-only build-out, but the transmission infrastructure and firm power needed to make that work are not being deployed at pace. This is the core cost and reliability problem. REZs concentrate renewable generation in remote areas and require massive transmission overbuild to get that weather-dependent power to load centres. That overbuild is expensive and slow. The alternative, firm dispatchable power, has been legislatively excluded: nuclear is banned. The result is that every REZ expansion deepens Australia's reliance on gas for firming and on China for the solar panels, batteries and inverters that the REZs demand.

What it means

Australia is building a grid architecture that is renewable-heavy but not reliable without continued gas use and without a supply chain dominated by Beijing. Each REZ rollout adds to that structural dependence. A genuinely decarbonised, affordable, sovereign grid would need firm generation at scale. That means either accepting decades more gas use for grid firming, or lifting the nuclear ban. The current path does neither: it pursues renewables expansion while locking in gas dependence and China supply-chain exposure, and calls it energy transition.