It's crazy to me that Australia hasn't gone for renewables though. The amount of land and sun they have, it's also decentralised, so when (climate induced?) Floods happen, they don't take out all the generating capacity. Plus even if they aren't convinced about climate change, that just frees up more fossil fuels to export.
Coal is a way of life for much of rural Australia, a transition to renewables without some plan to get the coal workers jobs in the renewable industry would be catastrophic to their livelihoods so they typically vote against it.
Recent reports have shown that many coal workers are open to renewables over coal, but they want to insure that they aren't left in the wake during the transition.
Plus renewables still provide jobs.
“Flooding earlier this year hit some coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland, while technical issues have cut production at two mines that supply the market's biggest coal-fired station in New South Wales.”
I guess there’ll be a lot more this in the coming years.