Investment dries up for Australia's large-scale RE

Share

With wide-open spaces, an aging coal-fired generation profile and strong public support for renewable energy, Australia would seem the perfect market for big PV and wind. How different reality can be. In new data from BNEF, the extent to which renewable investment has drawn to a standstill can be observed, with significantly less than $5 million going into projects in the last four months.

The only highlight was the innovative floating PV system being developed by Australian/Singaporean company Infratech in South Australia.

Year-on-year the result is even more startling with BNEF finding that investment for the 12 months to March 2015, large scale renewable investment fell 90%.

“Investment has been stifled by policy uncertainty for over 13 months since the Abbott government's [Renewable Energy Target] review was announced on 17 February 2014,” BNEF said. “The Australian large-scale clean energy industry has become practically uninvestable due to ongoing uncertainty caused by the government's review.”

There have been some hope that a compromise regarding the RET can be agreed to by the Abbott government and the Labor opposition in recent days. Labor has indicated it is willing to agree on a compromise figure of 33,500 GWh of new large scale renewable capacity to be mandated under a revised RET. This is down from the previously bipartisan figure of 41,000 GWh.

The government has, however, rejected the compromise position, saying that its suggestion of 32,00 GWh is a final offer.

The impact of the decimation of investment has been felt in the renewable sector, with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporting that 2,000 jobs have been lost over the past two years. 12,590 people are now employed in renewables, down from 15,000 two years ago.

The leading renewable investor Banco Santander recently exited Australia.

While the large-scale renewable sector has suffered, rooftop solar continues to perform strongly Down Under. BNEF figures find that 195 MW of rooftop PV was installed in Q1 2015, up 7% on the previous year. Australia’s small-scale solar subsidies have been excluded from government cuts, due to their widespread popularity. More than one if five Australian homes now feature a PV array.

While new investments in PV power plants have not been forthcoming, a number of PV power plant projects are currently being built out including FRV’s 56 MW Moree Solar Farm and First Solar’s Nyngan Solar Plant, the latter pv magazine understands is nearing completion.

Popular content

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.