Record-breaking year for renewable energy

In 2022, the Australian renewable energy industry commenced construction on over 5000 MW of large-scale wind and solar farms — making it the biggest year for new renewable construction commitments on record.

This is one of several positive findings for the sector in the latest edition of the Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Australia Report, released on 18 April.

The report found that investors are also responding to the need for more energy storage, with 19 large-scale battery projects under construction. The combined capacity of these projects (1380 MW/2004 MWh) is significantly higher than the previous year (921 MW/1169 MWh).

Renewable energy accounted for 35.9% of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2022, up from 32.5% in 2021. Australia has more than doubled the amount of renewable energy it uses since 2017, when renewable energy accounted for just 16.9% of generation.

In light of events like the impending closure of AGL’s coal-fired Liddell Power Station on 28 April, these are promising figures.

“There’s significant cause for optimism at a time when aging fossil fuel-based generators are retiring,” said Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton.

“Large-scale clean energy investment reached $6.2 billion in 2022, a 17% increase from 2021. The final quarter of 2022 saw investment in financially committed large-scale generation and storage projects reach $4.29 billion, the second-highest quarterly result since data collection began in 2017.

“Australia’s energy mix will undoubtedly now be the beneficiary of greater policy clarity, with climate change and the clean energy transition areas of genuine focus federally, with sensible and ambitious policies. However, we cannot take the sustained growth of renewable energy for granted,” Thornton said.

“To reach the federal government’s renewable energy generation target of 82% by 2030, the pace of deployment for new large-scale projects needs to at least double.”

The report is available here.

Image credit: iStock.com/Sam Gregory