Coalition plan: scrap net zero, remove 4 offshore wind zones, lift nuclear ban

For the climate and energy sector, the Coalition's eight-point plan is not a tweak to market settings — it is a wholesale attempt to reverse Australia's legislated decarbonisation trajectory. Repealing the Climate Change Act, scrapping net zero targets, removing four offshore wind zones and lifting the nuclear ban would, if enacted, unwind the policy foundations that renewable developers, grid planners and international partners have spent years treating as settled. With Australia due to lead COP31 negotiations in Turkey and host pre-COP talks in Fiji and Tuvalu, the timing turns a domestic political pitch into a live test of the country's climate credibility.

Australia's centre-right Coalition has placed a radical overhaul of national energy policy at the centre of its next election pitch, releasing an eight-point plan on 23 September 2026 that opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan framed as taking 'a chainsaw to Labor's green, ideologically driven approach to energy.' Unveiled in a speech to the Energy Nation Forum in Sydney, the plan would dismantle the core architecture of Australia's renewable transition within 30 days of a Coalition election victory: abolishing incentives for renewable energy projects, removing four offshore wind zones, repealing the Climate Change Act to scrap legislated net zero targets, lifting the prohibition on nuclear energy, and scrapping the existing vehicle carbon emissions policy. Developers would instead be encouraged to invest across 'all energy types' — coal, gas and nuclear.

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For the climate and energy sector, the Coalition's eight-point plan is not a tweak to market settings — it is a wholesale attempt to reverse Australia's legislated decarbonisation trajectory.

The political context is decisive. The Coalition has contested the last two federal elections partly on energy and climate, and Labor cabinet minister Pat Conroy's retort that he 'would have thought they would have got the message from the last two elections' captures the electoral risk the opposition is embracing. Labor's governing framework targets just over 80 per cent of the national grid running on renewables within four years, a transition that depends on the scheduled closure of several coal power plants. The Coalition plan inverts that logic, betting that voters prioritise 'energy abundance' and lower bills over emissions reduction, and that memories of high power prices and grid reliability concerns outweigh climate ambition.

The nuclear dimension is the most consequential structural shift. Lifting the federal prohibition on nuclear energy would end a moratorium that has defined Australian energy law for decades. Nuclear would enter the generation mix conversation just as the grid faces retirement of an ageing coal fleet — yet no plant could be operational within a decade, and the plan's promise of abundance would in the near term lean heavily on extending coal and gas. The economics and timelines of Australian nuclear remain contested, and Tehan offered no costings.

The international dimension is sharply awkward for a country preparing to lead COP31. Australia is set to lead negotiations at the largest annual government climate conference, held in Turkey later in 2026, and is hosting pre-COP events in Fiji and Tuvalu — Pacific nations among the most climate-vulnerable on Earth. A domestic agenda that scraps net zero targets, removes offshore wind zones and repeals the Climate Change Act would put Australia's COP leadership and Pacific diplomacy in direct tension with its own settings; Conroy explicitly flagged 'the impact Australia's energy policy has on regional diplomacy.'

Implementation detail is conspicuously thin. Tehan did not outline what alternative mechanisms would replace the abolished incentives, and flagged another emissions reduction policy 'in coming months' — an admission that the plan is a demolition exercise without a fully specified rebuild. The private members' bill to be introduced when parliament next sits in roughly two and a half weeks is a signal of intent rather than a costed framework.