What Australia needs to boost large-scale renewable energy projects

They overall generated a total of 509 MW, mainly from financially committed projects.

Financial Year 2023 has been a challenging year for the development of grid-scale renewable energy projects, which attained an overall 509 megawatts (MW) from consistently funded projects.

A report from the Clean Energy Council has shown that delays in financial commitments led to the slow development of projects, resulting in two new generation projects with a total of 161 MW capacity. It is the fourth lowest result since 2017 when Clean Energy started tracking overall project data.

For its pipeline, large-scale storage projects have seen a decline in financial commitments during Q3, with only 13 MW added. Additionally, three projects have started construction, with all projected to add 86 MW and one generating a capacity of 75 MW. And both energy and storage projects accumulated a total of AU$150m during Q3 2023.

It takes a concerted effort from financial commitments and a governmental push to achieve large-scale renewable developments. With competition from overseas producers, incentive packages and rebates can attract investors. But that would take the government and the influential players in the sector to promote a healthy environment and system for investments.

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“These numbers are a clarion call for strong and decisive action, and we welcome the Federal Government’s commitment to bringing forward the necessary generation in order to make sure that we can deliver the low-cost, clean electricity we need to replace ageing coal-fired generation,” Kane Thornton, CEO of Clean Energy Council, said.