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Australia signs rooftop solar pledge as it expands solar subsidy
13/10/2026
News
In an official pre-COP meeting, Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen endorsed the Global Rooftop Solar Declaration, making Australia the first country to join the solar industry’s ‘300 Million Solar Homes’ campaign to expand rooftop solar.
The declaration calls for making rooftop solar a mainstream national energy priority and, it says, ‘not a niche programme, not an aspirational product, and not an afterthought in electricity planning’. Specifically, it calls for reducing regulation, improving financing, grid modernisation, offering solar to low-income households and improvements in workforce development.
The 300 Million Solar Homes campaign is organised by the Global Solar Council, Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, Smart Energy Council Australia and Solar Citizens, an Australian solar non-governmental organisation.
Although rooftop solar is not tracked globally in a single official register, the organisers estimate that the world will reach 150 million installations of between 0.3–100kW DC capacity in 2026, and is on track to reach about 225 million installations by 2030 under the current growth trajectory. With 300 million installations, rooftop solar capacity would reach 2TW, the campaign estimates.
In a related development, the Australian government has increased the scope of an energy subsidy to facilitate an expansion of rooftop solar. From 1 October, it has extended the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) subsidy to systems between 100kW and 1MW in capacity, from systems under 100kW.
The government predicted that the scheme would reduce installation costs for customers by 20%. The SRES, in place since 2011 for solar, is administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. Every installation generates certificates which are traded on the open market.
It quotes figures from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis saying that the installed capacity of Australia’s residential solar is 22GW. Of that, businesses make up around 5.6GW, most of which is rooftop solar systems below 100kW in size.
Bowen said: ‘One in three Australian homes have rooftop solar, but larger energy users have been locked out because the existing solar rebate only supports systems up to 100kW. We’re fixing that by expanding support to systems up to 1MW, unlocking the potential of commercial rooftops and helping businesses cut power bills, invest in growth and create jobs.’
