The country now has enough projects committed to meet the national 2020 renewable energy target
By Adam Morton, environmental editor for The Guardian
Thriving doesn’t quite cover it. New data released quietly late last week underscores the staggering pace of growth of renewable energy across Australia.
Nearly 3.5 gigawatts of large-scale clean energy projects were built in 2018. In capacity terms, this is more than twice the scale of Hazelwood, the giant Victorian brown coal plant that shut abruptly a couple of years ago, and it more than tripled the previous record for renewable energy installed in one year, set in 2017.
In generation terms, the amount of clean electricity being sent into Australian homes and businesses is expected to increase 36% this year and should grow another 25% next year.
The Clean Energy Regulator, which released the report, says this makes Australia the global leader in per capita renewable energy deployment.
In an outcome considered near impossible four years ago, the country already has enough projects committed to meet the national 2020 renewable energy target, roughly equivalent to about 23% of the electricity required. The regulator says Australia will go close to generating a level of clean power next year that the parliament legislated to avoid in 2015, after the Abbott government considered trying to abolish the 2020 target altogether before settling on reducing it by about a fifth.
With the target surpassed and the incentives associated with it no longer available for new developments, analysts say large clean energy plants are being built based more on commercial factors. While state targets are playing a role, notably in Victoria, the dramatic fall in the cost of clean energy has driven businesses to sign direct contracts with new renewable energy suppliers to avoid high market prices, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria.
Hugh Saddler, an energy consultant and honorary associate professor at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, says the pace of growth is equivalent to the electricity boom of the 1950s, when new coal and hydro plants transformed the electricity system. In a new report for the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, he says the most populous state, NSW, doubled the power it received from large-scale wind and solar plants in just 14 months.
