Dry year for renewables, as generation goes backwards for first time in 7 years

While interminable policy uncertainty drove a serious drought in renewable energy investment in 2014, a new report has revealed that a dry year for hydro also led to a fall in the share of electricity generated by renewable energy sources for the year – the nation’s first such backwards step since 2008.

The Clean Energy Australia 2014 report, released on Wednesday by the Clean Energy Council, found that despite the addition of an extra 187,000 extra solar systems nationwide, and the completion of three new wind farms, a total of just 13.47 per cent of Australia’s electricity came from renewable sources for the year, down from 14.76 per cent of in 2013.

The report, published just 24 hours after legislation to slash the RET made its way through federal Parliament’s lower house, described 2014 as a tough one for most forms of renewable energy in Australia, particularly large-scale and emerging technologies.

It said that in 2014, 16,000GWh of new large-scale renewable energy generation was produced under the RET, taking Australia about half way to the revised 33,000GWh target.

CEC chief Kane Thornton said 2014 was one of the toughest years for the renewables sector for more than a decade, but said that the future looked brighter, with a bipartisan agreement finally agreed upon.

“The review of the RET stalled investment in large-scale renewable energy such as wind and solar power in 2014, with investment falling by 88 per cent,” Thornton said.

“In large-scale renewable energy, three new wind farms completed construction during 2014, along with the Royalla Solar Farm, which was built with the help of the ACT Government.

“Rooftop solar power continued to grow, and the commercial solar sector saw the strongest growth of any form of renewable energy in 2014, as it was less affected by the RET review,” he said.

The fall in renewable energy generation levels was largely attributed to a dry year for rainfall in the nation’s big hydro catchments, which meant that hydro generation – still the largest renewables contributor to Australia’s total power generation, at 6.2 per cent in 2014 – was down.

Wind farms were the second-biggest renewables contributor to the grid, generating a total of 4.2 per cent of its electricity for the year – an increase on 2013. Solar generation also continued to grow, contributing 2.1 per cent of total generation in 2014.

And while rooftop solar power continued to grow, the rate of small-scale PV installation was down in 2014, with the total number of new systems installed for the year 8.5 per cent lower than the year before.

In total, Australia had 1.4 million solar PV systems installed on households and businesses at the end of 2014, along with more than 900,000 solar hot water systems, the report said.

Queensland remained Australia’s solar star, with the state home to eight of the nation’s top 10 solar power regions, including Bundaberg at number 1, and Hervey Bay at number 3.

Western Australian’s Mandurah ranked as number 2 in the solar top 10.

Around the states, about 40 per cent of South Australia’s power came from renewable energy during 2014, while about 95 per cent of Tasmania’s electricity came from renewables – big hydro. WA was the next best renewables performer, at 13 per cent of generation.

As we have reported here before, investment in new large-scale renewable energy fell 88 per cent in 2014 compared to the year before, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance – a massive drop broadly attributed to policy uncertainty, caused by the Abbott government’s review of the RET.

Just over 20,000 people were employed in the renewable energy industry in 2014. Approximately 900 jobs were lost during the year, with the review of the RET leading to redundancies in some businesses.