Surge in solar, wind and battery investment sets pace for 82 pct target. Can Australia keep it up?

The year 2025 might have got off to a shaky start, politically speaking, for the renewable transition but if the data on investment in solar, wind and energy storage in the final quarter of 2024 is anything to go by, then Australia is right where it needs to be.

This is the hopeful message from the latest quarterly investment report from the Clean Energy Council, which tallies the total number and capacity of renewables projects financially committed in the last three months of 2024.

According to the report, the quarter saw a total of seven renewable energy generation projects totalling 1,589 megawatts (MW) reach financial close – a crucial indicator that projects are likely to proceed, having also ticked all the necessary approvals boxes and signed up contractors.

The result marks the second quarter in a row where financially committed new generation projects surpassed 1 gigawatt (GW) and the first time this has happened in consecutive quarters since 2021.

A big contributor to the bumper quarter was Lightsource bp’s 585 MW Goulburn River Solar Farm, which joined the financially committed category after winning a berth in the first round of federal government’s Capital Investment Scheme (CIS) tenders in December.

In dollar terms, the Q4 renewable energy projects add up to an estimated total of $2.4 billion, the report says, taking the 12-month quarterly average for investment in financially committed renewable generation to $2 billion – a first since Q2 2019.

For the year, the total amount of new renewable energy generation capacity to be committed reached a total of 4,346 MW, worth over $9 billion in capital value – the best annual investment figures since 2018.

Divided down technology lines, onshore wind had a total of 2,218 MW reach financial commitment for the year – a welcome recovery from the grim total of zero recorded in 2023.

For large-scale solar a total of 1,918 MW of new capacity was greenlit for construction in 2024, compared to 1,314 MW in 2023.

Large-scale storage for the quarter saw 870 MW / 1,936 MWh worth of projects reach financial commitment, the report says, capping off “another outstanding year” where 4,029 MW / 11,348 MWh of new projects were committed.

Some of the bigger contributors to the storage pipeline include Origin Energy’s Eraring Storage System – Stage 2, which will add 240 MW and four-hours of storage capacity to the New South Wales grid.

Eku Energy’s Williamsdale Battery Energy Storage System, in the ACT, is in the mix, too, adding a 250 MW, two-hour BESS to the mix.

All of these new megawatts, megawatt-hours, gigawatts and billions of dollars bode very well for the renewable energy industry and for Australia’s journey to 82 per cent renewables by 2030 – and net zero by 2050.

And they build on a strong legacy. A total of 223 generation and storage projects have been commissioned around the country since 2017, representing 17 GW of installed electricity generation capacity, 2.1 GW / 3.7 GWh of energy storage, and at least $33.5 billion of capital investment.

Onshore wind and utility-scale solar have reached financial commitment on 11,656 and 15,187 MW worth of capacity respectively since 2017.

In the broader current pipeline, according to the CEC’s data, there are 88 renewable electricity generation projects which have either reached financial commitment or are under construction, representing 13.2 GW of capacity.

There are also 52 committed storage projects currently in development, equivalent to 10.5 GW / 26.3 GWh in capacity / energy output. All together, the pipeline of projects represents at least $36.5 billion worth of capital investment, the report says.

But it is the final two quarterly results for 2024, in particular, that have set the pace required for Australia to maintain its timely transition to renewables, as the nation’s fleet of ageing and unreliable coal plants head for the exit.

And we need to keep it up. The CEC report stresses that this level of capacity is required each quarter to meet the 2030 target, or a range of of 6-7 GW of new generation needs to be committed annually – a feat that requires strict policy focus and not flights of nuclear fancy.

“We have now seen two consecutive quarters of very healthy investment activity in 2024, which is the best we’ve seen since the investment highs of 2018, when our sector was delivering on the bi-partisan Renewable Energy Target,” CEC chief Kane Thornton said on Thursday.

“These results show that clean energy investment is getting back on track and it’s critical that we don’t lose focus or change direction now on a strategy that is working.

“Investors need stable and predictable long-term policy settings to provide them with the confidence to invest their money in these critical infrastructure assets which Australia urgently needs,” Thornton says.

“Wind and solar combined with energy storage is the lowest cost form of electricity generation.

“We need more of these clean power stations in the system, together with gas in the interim, to reach our target of replacing unreliable and expensive coal power, before cheaper wholesale prices can start to flow through to peoples’ energy bills.” 

See Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia