ABC News Australia Falsely Claims There Are Several Countries Completely Powered by Renewables
“There are already countries which get 100 percent of their energy from a combination of wind, water, and solar, according to one expert,” stated an ABC News Australia fact-check published on March 24, 2024. The recent fact-check was a response to Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith, who argued no country had been able to run entirely on renewable energy. “Experts rejected Mr Smith's claim that it would be ‘impossible’ for it to power an entire country,” argued the article, citing Paraguay, Albania, and Nepal as exemplary successes.
However, ABC News’ fact check refers to forms of energy supplying power for grid electricity, rather than a country’s total energy usage. After receiving criticism for the misleading fact-check, ABC News updated the story by adding renewables in Albania, Paraguay, and Nepal account for 33.7%, 37.5%, and 6.1% of the total energy supply respectively.
This is significant since other forms of energy like transportation can significantly impact the environment. For instance, Foreign Policy Magazine explains for Nepal “a surge in diesel and petrol-run vehicles, along with growing fossil fuel imports, has worsened the country’s air quality.” The most recent data from 2019 shows “air pollution was directly linked to at least 42,100 deaths in Nepal,” and “60 percent of Kathmandu’s air pollution is related to the transportation sector.”
While ABC News may have changed its initial fact-check to clarify that its initial “figures for [the] four countries only include energy generation connected to the grid,” the article ignored direct evidence of fossil fuel usage in several of the cited countries.
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