Australia Is Quitting Coal in Record Time Thanks to Tesla

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 neighboring region. When an unprecedented blackout caused much of the country to question the state’s dependence on clean power, Tesla boasted — on Twitter, of course — that it had a solution: It could build the world’s biggest battery, and fast.

“@Elonmusk, how serious are you about this,” replied Australian software billionaire and climate activist ...