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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/09/australia-invests-429bn-in-renewable-energy-in-december-quarter-10-times-the-previous-three-months>
"Investment in large-scale renewable energy and storage accelerated in the
final three months of 2022, creating the largest quarterly investments for more
than four years, but the pace remains inadequate, the Clean Energy Council
says.
Developers made financial commitments to renewables and storage totalling
$4.29bn in the December quarter, a 10-fold increase on the previous three
months.
The year-end spurt lifted investment commitments to $6.2bn for 2022, a 17%
increase on the previous year.
“While the uptick is encouraging, one quarter doesn’t mean a trend,” said the
council’s chief executive, Kane Thornton. “Australia is deploying new
large-scale generation – wind and solar farms – more slowly than needed to
reach the 82% target for renewable energy on the National Electricity Market”
by 2030.
“The fact remains that the rolling quarterly average investment over 12 months
has not risen above $2bn since the second quarter of 2019,” Thornton said.
The investment details come a fortnight after the Australian Energy Market
Operator warned of potential “reliability gaps” in the national power grid
without “urgent” action in coming years to encourage more clean energy capacity
and storage.
An indication of how pressure on the grid can spike came on Monday when the
first major heatwave for eastern New South Wales for more than a year broke
electricity demand records for March by almost a 1,000 megawatts, Aemo said.
Thornton said the jump in investment was a response to the “more positive
political and policy environment” and greater coordination by governments."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
