Net zero could gobble up one-third of Australia’s farmland 

Australia could lose one-third of its productive agricultural land to solar panels and wind farms if the government pushes forward with its plans to reach net zero emissions through wind and solar, a new study has warned.

Australia could lose one-third of its productive agricultural land to solar panels and wind farms if the government pushes forward with its plans to reach net zero emissions entirely through wind and solar, a new study has warned.

The alert comes as the Coalition signalled a new push to remove bans on uranium mining and exploration as well as the ban on nuclear power plants, which have a much smaller footprint than solar and wind farms.

According to analysis by the Institute of Public Affairs, Australia produced around 5000 terawatt-hours of energy from oil, gas and coal in 2023.

Due to growing energy demand in Australia and among our trading partners, the amount of energy that currently represents would increase to more than 15,000 terawatt-hours by 2050.

To meet the demand, and become a “renewable energy superpower”, replacing that power with a 50-50 mix of wind and solar would require 119 million hectares of land, an amount equal to 15 per cent of the country’s landmass and one-third of all agricultural land.

The study notes that modelling by Net Zero Australia has already said that “five Tasmanias’ worth of solar farms will be needed to produce the energy necessary to replace Australia’s current hydrocarbon fuel exports in addition to domestic consumption.”

By contrast, nuclear power is extremely “dense”, requiring far less land to generate an equivalent amount of electricity.

At the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai last week, more than two dozen nations led by the United States pledged to triple nuclear power generation capacity to help meet net zero targets by 2050.

On Saturday, shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien urged Australia to remove restrictions on nuclear power.

“Australia has a moral obligation to provide the world its uranium,” he said.

“It’s time we took back energy security for the West. And we should do so ambitiously for we have the capacity as a nation to do more than just supply uranium but also develop capabilities in other areas of the nuclear fuel cycle to become an indispensable part of a broader supply chain.”

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IPA senior research fellow Kevin You warned that “prime agricultural land will have to be sacrificed to satisfy net zero mandates,” something which has already caused political tension in regional communities.

“As renewable energy generation will need to occur near existing population centres, it will be regional farming communities that will be sacrificed to meet the radical and niche demands of inner-city activists,” Dr You said.

“As usual, it will not be wealthy, inner-city elites who will incur these burdens and costs mandated by the policy of net zero emissions by 2050. It will be working families and small businesses in the outer-suburbs and regions who pay the price.”