Australia renewables boom rolls on, but NEG shadow looms

The scale of Australia’s large-scale renewable energy construction boom has been laid bare in a jaw-dropping new chart, unveiled at the Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday.

The Clean Energy Council chart, pictured below, details the 42 large-scale solar and wind power projects currently in construction – or due to start construction, having reached financial close – around Australia.

According to the CEC, these projects will deliver more than $A9.7 billion in investment, 6239MW of new renewable energy generating capacity and create 5354 direct jobs.

Divided along technology lines, solar and wind are neck and neck, with 3302MW of wind farms in the construction pipeline, compared to 3108MW of solar farms.

On a state by state basis, Queensland is well out in front, with 18 of the 42 projects within its borders, compared to eight for South Australia, seven each for Victoria and New South Wales, and one each for WA and Tasmania.

As for project completed and commissioned this year so far, the CEC data counts 24, amounting to a total of 1366MW, worth $2.9 billion of investment.

Of course, driving all this activity is the fact that – as CEC chief Kane Thornton reminded the conference on Tuesday morning – “wind and solar is now the lowest-cost generation it is possible to build.”

But Thornton has also used the Summit to warn that continued growth in the sector is not a given, particularly with the fate of the federal government’s proposed National Energy Guarantee still undecided.

“The industry has been in a record growth phase, but those who have been around for a while have not forgotten the lean years in the middle of the decade caused by chronic political and policy uncertainty,” Thornton said.

“Renewable energy like wind and solar is now the lowest-cost generation it is possible to build, but if we get the policy and regulatory settings wrong it will hurt economic activity across the sector.”

This sort of cautious and conditional optimism for the sector was mirrored in the results of the CEC’s inaugural Clean Energy Outlook survey, which was also released at the Summit on Tuesday.

The survey, which polled 100 CEOs and senior executives across the renewable energy and storage industries, returned an average ranking of 6.9/10 on “confidence to make investments over the next three years.”

And the two biggest and most common issues affecting businesses, the survey said, were policy uncertainty and regulatory change, particularly as the federal government’s Large-scale Renewable Energy Target comes to an end.

“This year’s Australian Clean Energy Summit comes after 18 months of extraordinary economic opportunities for the industry and regional parts of the country because of the Renewable Energy Target (RET),” said Thornton.

“We are confident this prosperity will continue over the next couple of years, but it’s essential that we can return secure bipartisan support to ensure the transition to clean energy continues at the lowest possible cost to consumers.”

But whether the Turnbull government’s NEG can deliver that bi-partisanship remains to be seen – the COAG Energy Council meets next on August 10, when state energy ministers will be expected to indicate their stance on the policy, one way or another.

Both the ACT and the Victorian governments have said they would not support the policy design as it stood, and have expressed concern that the NEG might be subject to influence by the Coalition party room, in particular its gaggle of hard-right, coal supporting climate deniers.

“The Greens won’t sign up to the policy until and unless it is signed up by Coalition party room,” di Natale said at ACES on Tuesday. “That is the only way to be sure we are not signing a blind cheque.”

As Giles Parkinson reports from the Summit, this position was echoed by Victoria’s energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio, who said the state Labor government “won’t rush into supporting a policy” just to appease the “coal ideologues” in Canberra

“Malcolm Turnbull is trying to get us to sign up to something that hasn’t gone to his own party room – a place full of climate sceptics,” D’Ambrosio said.

“Every time we get close to a national energy policy, the Coalition Party Room shoots it down. How can we have any confidence in what they’re asking from us if it hasn’t been through his party room first?”

“We won’t support a scheme that leaves the states in the dark and leaves us all hostage to the extremists in Turnbull’s party room.”

For its part, the CEC has broadly supported the NEG platform, despite its reservations about emissions, and on other matters such as transparency, offsets, and questions about the impact on rooftop solar and storage.