Australia’s first major tender for wind and solar has received more than enough bids from developers to meet the country’s 82% renewables by 2030 target, a federal minister said late last month.
“The first auction of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), which will support 6 gigawatts of new power, has received more than 40 GW of project registrations, showing there is a strong pipeline of renewables ready to go with the right policy settings,” wrote federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen, in a June 24 opinion column for the Australian Financial Review.
The CIS is Australia’s scheme to underwrite new renewable energy generation and storage projects to offset the risks to developers. The country aims to secure 32 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity, 23 GW of which would come from large-scale wind and solar projects and 9 GW from dispatchable sources that can be turned on or off depending upon demand, writes RenewEconomy.
Bowen said the high level of interest in the first tender will help Australia’s Labor government deliver on its commitment to reach 82% renewable energy by 2030. It also shows that other parties’ opposition to renewables is not founded on valid concerns about renewable technology’s reliability, he added.
“What drives the Liberal Party’s push towards nuclear energy is not a concern that Australia’s renewable energy transformation is happening too slowly,” Bowen wrote.
“The opposite is true. The Liberal and National parties are concerned that our energy policies are too effective for their comfort, given their ideological opposition to renewables.”
Bowen said renewables have brought wholesale electricity prices down from A$375 to $76 per megawatt/hour since the Labor government took office in May, 2022.
Though wholesale energy prices have fallen, retail prices for ratepayers have actually risen because of high price volatility, the impacts of extreme weather, and aging coal plants, reports ABC Australia.
In his Australian Financial Review post, Bowen warned that the centre-right National Party’s leader David Littleproud has vowed to “tear up” CIS contracts if the National-Liberal Coalition comes to power in the next election, planning instead to install nuclear reactors and keep coal-fired power plants open.
Littlefield’s position on renewables has caused a rupture in the coalition’s energy and climate policies, with other members expressing support for renewables, the Guardian reports.
“It’s hard to think of a bigger potential act of economic self-harm,” Bowen wrote.
“Stopping the rollout of renewables will have one impact: It will keep coal-fired power in our grid for longer. Much longer. Of course, this is bad news for emissions.”
