Australia reached new renewable and battery milestones in 2025, while a union says about 190 WiseTech employees face possible AI-linked redundancy.
Australia’s clean-energy buildout reached major new highs in 2025, with renewables supplying 43% of national power and utility-scale batteries expanding rapidly, but the Clean Energy Council has warned that falling investment in new wind and solar projects could slow the transition.
The industry group’s annual snapshot found renewable energy’s share of electricity rose from 39% in 2024, and clean energy generated more than half the power in the national grid in the final quarter of 2025. Australia also ranked third globally for utility-scale batteries, behind China and the United States, with 2GW of large-scale battery capacity connected to the grid — a 233% rise on the previous year.
Despite the gains, the council pointed to a 48% fall in new investment in onshore wind and solar. The slowdown was sharpest in wind, where 0.9GW reached financial close in 2025, down from 2.2GW a year earlier.
Clean Energy Council chief executive Jackie Trad said the energy transition was nearing a “critical juncture”, warning that the next five years would be decisive. The report cited inflation, regulatory bottlenecks, slow transmission delivery and delayed coal closures as factors weakening investor confidence.
Battery investment remained stronger. Home battery uptake rose 260% from 2024, helped by the federal government’s cheaper home batteries program. More than 268,000 small-scale storage systems were added in 2025, a figure the report said has since increased to 400,000.
Energy minister Chris Bowen told the ABC that batteries were helping lower price pressure by storing renewable power generated during the day for use at night, when coal and gas are more often called on. The government says household standing-offer time-of-use prices will fall between 1.1% and 10.7% in South Australia, New South Wales and south-east Queensland under the latest default market offer over the next 12 months, while small business standing-offer time-of-use prices are set to fall between 12.1% and 20.9%.
In a separate development, Professionals Australia, the union representing workers at software company WiseTech, told Guardian Australia that about 190 employees in product development and customer service had been notified their roles could be cut as part of a broader restructure linked to advances in artificial intelligence.
The union said affected employees would enter a two-week consultation period with the company. WiseTech said no final decisions had been made about individual roles and that local jurisdiction requirements would be met before any decisions were finalised.
WiseTech founder and chair Richard White also wrote to staff alleging personal attacks and a handwritten threat against chief executive Zubin Appoo. A company spokesperson said the alleged threat was under police investigation and that WiseTech had “zero tolerance” for threats, abuse, intimidation or harassment. Staff who spoke to Guardian Australia disputed the characterisation of questions raised by employees, saying they had sought information about the redundancies in a professional way.
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