Sydney might be known as the Emerald City, but when it comes to actually being “green”, how well are we getting on? It turns out, not that well – a new study has identified the greenest suburbs in Australia according to solar power installation rates, and only two of the top ten suburbs are located in NSW.
Renewable energy provider Solar Run analysed publicly available data from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) to calculate the number of solar installations per suburb between January 2020 and December 2023. The findings paint a picture of the adoption of clean energy at a community level across all Australian suburbs, and Sydney isn’t doing great. In the list of Australia’s greenest suburbs (according to Solar Run's analysis), NSW is lagging behind Victoria and Queensland, with five of the ten leading suburbs located in Queensland, and Victorian suburbs taking first, sixth and tenth place.
The Victorian suburb of Tarneit led the charge with an impressive 2,177 solar installations implemented between January 2020 and December 2023. The Sydney suburb of Box Hill came in second place, with 2,152 installations in the three-year period. The only other NSW suburb to make the list was Kellyville in Sydney’s north-west, which ranked as the eighth greenest suburb in Australia with 1,442 solar installations in the three-year period.
NSW didn’t fare too well when it came to solar installations – with Victoria and Queensland both out-ranking us. And despite the fact that NSW didn’t do too well comparatively, it’s still promising to know that so many homes made the switch to fossil fuel-free power.
"These findings are a testament to the growing momentum of renewable energy across Australia," says Anthony Kurta, Managing Director and CEO of Solar Run.
The installation rate might not be an entirely accurate reflection of solar energy use – since it doesn’t take into account the number of solar energy systems already installed before January 2020 – but it says something that thousands of solar energy systems have been installed in some Sydney suburbs over the past few years, and we can only hope that the switch to solar will keep on going.
These are the top ten greenest suburbs in Australia (based on recent solar installation):
- Tarneit (Victoria)
- Box Hill (NSW)
- Bundaberg (Queensland)
- Caloundra (Queensland)
- Mackay (Queensland)
- Roxburgh Park (Victoria)
- Maryborough (Queensland)
- Kellyville (NSW)
- Toowoomba (Queensland)
- Werribee (Victoria)
You can read the full report over here.