The Australian government’s $10 billion clean-energy bank is set to announce a number of solar deals in the next week as it looks at investments in industries from mining to manufacturing.
“The interest in solar is across the board,” Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) Chief Operating Officer Meg McDonald said after a presentation in the New South Wales state capital, Sydney.
Bloomberg Newsagency, reporting the remarks said she declined to give more details.
The CEFC, created as part of the former Labor government’s legislation to reduce carbon emissions, invested more than $800 million in more than 50 projects in its first year, Ms McDonald said.
As Bloomberg reports the CEFC has been lobbying to stay in business amid efforts by the conservative Liberal-National government to dismantle a price on carbon emissions and related agencies.
The government, led by Prime Minister Tony has twice presented legislation to parliament to close down the CEFC but so far it has been rejected by the upper house Senate.
Lower house MP and mining billionaire Clive Palmer, whose Palmer United Party (PUP) senators hold the balance of power in Australia’s upper house starting this month, said last week his party would reject the government plan to get rid of the clean-energy bank.
Mr Palmer, joined by former United States Vice President Al Gore at a news conference in Canberra, also said he supports keeping Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), which requires that 20 per cent of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
However, Mr Palmer reiterated that his party would support the government’s bid to repeal the price on carbon emissions.
“There had been an acceptance that everything was going to go,” Ms McDonald said in her presentation, referring to Abbott’s plans.
Mr Gore’s “intervention allowed space for a rethink about what the future looks like,” she said.
