Australia is quitting coal in record time

High investment: Wind turbines stand at the Capital Wind Farm in Bungendore, New South Wales. Australia needs to increase its grid-scale wind and solar capacity nine-fold by 2050. — Bloomberg

SYDNEY: Like so much in our modern era, Australia’s high-stakes gamble on renewable energy starts with an Elon Musk Twitter brag.

South Australia’s last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighbouring region.