The Noosa Power & Energy Conference (NoosaPEC) convenes June 15-16 at Peppers Resort, Noosa Heads—a working forum to assess the state of play in the energy transition and what’s required to bridge the gap to 82% renewables.
Hosted by The Cleantech Network, the 2026 agenda addresses five of the most consequential issues facing Australia’s clean energy and industrial future.
Related article: Network costs and data centres dominate discussion at Australian Energy Week 2026
Renewables are working but investment is lagging
The Clean Energy Council’s 2026 annual report confirmed that renewables generated 43% of Australia’s electricity last year, Australia is now the world’s third-largest utility-scale battery market, and investment in new generation fell 50% to $4.4 billion. Onshore wind commitments dropped 57%. Ninety unscheduled coal outages across summer 2025-26 left 25% of coal capacity offline at any given time across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
Australia has 64GW of generation and storage waiting for grid connection. Capital and capability are not the constraint. Converting the pipeline into committed investment is.
Tony Wood, senior fellow in energy and climate change at the Grattan Institute: “The 2.3GW of new utility-scale renewable energy generation capacity that reached financial close in 2025 represents about half what is needed to meet the government’s 82% target by 2030 and, of greater concern, creates potential supply shortfalls if ageing coal plants close as anticipated. Australia has targets for the energy transition, but we do not have comprehensive policies or plans to meet them. A lot now has to go right in the next three to five years to avoid electricity supply disruptions.”
Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance Australasia: “The picture is not all doom and gloom. Private households have invested almost $10 billion in just 11 months to deploy over 400,000 home battery systems. It is amazing to see the scale of deployment, showing we can mobilise the skilled workforce needed at speed when the pricing and incentives align. Australia simply needs to go faster.”
Data centres: opportunity or grid crisis?
AEMO received 44GW of data centre connection requests, and commissioned Oxford Economics Australia to make sense of them. Finding: six in every seven megawatts is phantom demand unlikely to materialise. But what does materialise will be significant. Under AEMO’s Step Change scenario, data centre consumption triples by 2030 to 6% of NEM electricity. Queensland, currently underrepresented relative to its population, has the greatest growth potential of any state.
Alex Hooper, who led the Oxford Economics forecasting work, joins Simon Currie of Energy Estate and Shadow Energy Minister Lance McCallum to examine why the opportunity isn’t being fully realised—and what Queensland needs to do differently.
Integrity gap: Why truth is now an energy infrastructure problem
The CEC report found organised misinformation campaigns are derailing critical generation and transmission projects—increasing costs and slowing delivery at the exact moment the system needs to accelerate. Senator Peter Whish-Wilson has spent three years examining this problem directly.
As chair of what is believed to be the first parliamentary inquiry of its kind anywhere in the world – the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy—Senator Whish-Wilson led 243 submissions and 11 public hearings on climate misinformation during the energy transition. The inquiry has attracted international attention, including from the United Nations. He will present the findings at NoosaPEC and the harder question they raise: how parliaments, governments and industry restore the public trust that delivery depends on.
The Gangulu Way: Traditional Owners setting the terms
What if Traditional Owners could define the standard for how energy development takes place on their Country—not just as a compliance requirement, but as a framework to support genuine cumulative impact management and lasting prosperity?
Lyn Blucher and Deborah Tull, alongside Katrina Grange of Ochre Social Performance and Ali Davenport of Co-existence Queensland, will discuss their work to date on a Whole of Country Standard and Accreditation Framework, giving Traditional Owners the tools to set the standard for how they participate in energy development, uphold their traditional laws, customs and protocols, and create lasting investment in Caring for Country and community.
Manufacturing economic security: the five-year window
The 2026-27 federal budget committed $22.7 billion to Future Made in Australia while simultaneously cutting $1.3 billion from early-stage clean industry programs—a shift from broad ambition to targeted near-term delivery. The question NoosaPEC’s Manufacturing Economic Security stream puts to the room: can Australia’s industrial base move fast enough to match it?
Speakers include Professor Roy Green (UTS), Paul Cooper (Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre), Lynnard Cucksey (Advanced Materials and Battery Council), Matt McKee (Beyond Zero Emissions), Oliver Hartley (Net Zero Economy Authority’s Silicon to Solar Study), and Catriona Rafael (Australian Pipeline and Gas Association).
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The program also features case studies on renewable energy in agriculture (Karin Stark), Australia’s first agricultural renewable natural gas project (Jarrod Irving, LMS Energy), and community engagement in Queensland renewable projects (Tom Dixon, RE-Alliance). A virtual address from Matt Kean, former NSW Energy Minister and former CEO of the Climate Change Authority, opens Day 1.
NoosaPEC is hosted by Cleantech Network. Further information can be found at noosapec.com
