The staggering pace of growth of renewable energy across Australia has been underscored by new data that was quietly released late last week, and it shows nearly 3.5 gigawatts (GW) of large-scale clean energy projects were built in 2018.
In capacity terms, this is more than twice the scale of Hazelwood, the giant brown coal plant that shut abruptly a couple of years ago in the southern state of Victoria.
At the same time it more than tripled the previous record for renewable energy installed in one year, set in 2017.
The Guardian Online reports in generation terms, the amount of clean electricity being sent into Australian homes and businesses is expected to increase 36% this year, and should grow another 25% next year.
The Clean Energy Regulator, which released the report, said this made Australia the global leader in per capita renewable energy deployment.
In an outcome considered near impossible four years ago, the country already has enough projects committed to meet the national 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET), roughly equivalent to about 23 per cent of electricity required.
The regulator said Australia would go close to generating a level of clean power next year that the parliament legislated to avoid in 2015, after the conservative Liberal-National federal government considered trying to abolish the 2020 target altogether before settling on reducing it by about a fifth.
Guardian Online reports with the target surpassed and the incentives associated with it no longer available for new developments, analysts say large clean energy plants are being built based more on commercial factors.
While state targets are playing a role, notably in Victoria, the dramatic fall in the cost of clean energy has driven businesses to sign direct contracts with new renewable energy suppliers to avoid high market prices, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria.
Dr Hugh Saddler, an energy consultant and honorary associate professor at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, said the pace of growth was equivalent to the electricity boom of the 1950s, when new coal and hydro plants transformed the electricity system.
In a new report for the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, he said the most populous state, New South Wales, doubled the power it received from large-scale wind and solar plants in just 14 months.
“There are just heaps of projects in the pipeline,” Dr Saddler told Guardian Online.
“NSW has lagged behind South Australia and Victoria for wind farms in particular, and Queensland has been even worse, but that has changed.”
He said the new renewable projects in NSW should comfortably fill the gap that will arise when the Liddell coal-fired plant shuts in 2022.
That planned event was deemed so potentially disastrous a year ago that the Liberal-Nations government under then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attempted to put pressure on the plant’s owner, AGL, into reversing its decision.
The surge in clean generation is creating conditions that would have been unimaginable not so long ago.
For a brief period last weekend, so much energy was being captured from the wind and sun, and demand for electricity use dropped so low, that the spot price for wholesale electricity simultaneously fell to $0 in each of the five eastern states connected through the national grid.
At that moment, 44 per cent of the electricity being used across the market was from a renewable source, compared with 26 per cent across the week.
However, Tristan Edis, a director and analyst with consultants Green Energy Markets, told Guardian Online it was a significant moment for what it points to. “I was surprised it happened, but what it tells us is it could soon end up happening on days when demand is not low,” he said.
“We are adding so much solar on top of existing solar at the moment. It is making a real difference in the middle of the day.”
The transformation under way is posing serious questions for regulators and generating companies.
Coal-fired power plants, which still provide more than 60 per cent of grid electricity, have traditionally been considered inflexible and capable of operating around the clock.
Some black coal plants in NSW are being turned off during periods when it is not profitable to run them.
Others are coming under increasing pressure as the amount of renewable generation increases.
While the government now requires electricity generators to give three years’ notice before they shut a power plant down, an attempt to avoid a repeat of the abrupt closure of Hazelwood, analysts believe it is highly likely some will stop operating sooner than currently planned.
A big question for the clean energy industry is how long can the pace of investment last,
The Clean Energy Regulator said investment after 2020 remained uncertain.
However, the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) last year found that even a business-as-usual path, including Victoria’s target of 50 per cent renewable energy, was likely to lead to about 46% clean energy by 2030.
Analyses had found that Australia could and would need to do more to play its part in achieving the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement target of limiting global heating to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.
“To be honest, I expected the investment would have slowed a fair bit earlier,” Mr Edis told Guardian Online.
“My feeling is it should drop away over the next six months or so. Investors will then be looking for the next coal plant to cark it.”
Dr Saddler is less certain, and sees roadblocks to further investment, including the challenge of connecting clean energy plants on green-field sites to the grid and the need to “firm” variable renewable generation with increased between-state transmission cables and energy storage.
However, he said analysts and bureaucrats increasingly thought some spending may continue in a way that was not expected a year ago.
“It’s really just the commonwealth that’s a brake on things,” he said.
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