Australia’s clean energy investments up 17% YoY in 2022

However, more is needed to be done to achieve the RE target on the NEM.

Clean energy investments in Australia increased by 17% year-on-year (YoY) in 2022 to reach $6.2b, but more would be needed to achieve the country’s goal of 82% renewable energy on the electricity market.

In a report, the Clean Energy Council said that investments in the fourth quarter of 2022 for large-scale generation and storage projects were at $4.3b, the highest since the third quarter of 2018.

This is on the back of six generation and storage projects with installed capacities of 1,923 megawatts (MW), and 800 MW-hour, respectively.

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"While the uptick is encouraging, one quarter doesn't mean a trend. Australia is deploying new large-scale generation – wind and solar farms – more slowly than needed to reach the 82 per cent target for renewable energy on the National Electricity Market,” said Chief Executive Kane Thorton.

"The fact remains that the rolling quarterly average investment over 12 months has not risen above $2 billion since the second quarter of 2019," he said, adding that the country needs to do more as significant shifts in capital overseas were implemented such as the US Inflation Reduction Act.

New South Wales has the highest financially committed projects in the years with its five generation projects with a total capacity of 1,559 MW, and 5,700 MWh storage spread across six projects.