Australia’s Clean Energy Council have stated that momentum continues to build for Australia’s energy sector as it proceeds toward its 2020 Renewable Energy Target according to a report by Clean Technica.
According to a new analysis of the progress of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target that was published by the CEC, major projects under construction and legislation revising the large scale Renewable Energy Target in mid-2015 have created strong momentum and confidence across the industry.
According to Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton, there are about 450 megawatts of projects that have been committed in the past three months, thus providing help and much-needed push for the energy sector. The flow on benefits of these projects in terms of investment and jobs into rural Australian communities are important. Australia is currently placed at just above the halfway mark towards the legislated RET target. Last year, 15,200 gigawatts of renewable energy was generated above the pre-1997 baseline levels established as part of the legislation. To achieve the 2020 target of 33,000 gigawatts-hours, another 18,000 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy is needed.
This equates to around 6 gigawatts of new generation capacity that results to around $10B in new investments and creating thousands of jobs across the country. Kane Thornton also said that there is already about 10,600 of projects that already have approval and another 6600 megawatts are being processed towards approval.
The Clean Energy Council published its report called “Clean Energy Australia Report 2016 last month. In their annual update on the country’s renewable energy sector, in their report, 2015 was described as a challenging year for the renewable energy industry but the year ended with high optimism. Even though hydropower was down due to low rainfall in Tasmania, the proportion of Australia’s electricity provided by renewable energy increased in 2015 because of a good boost from solar and wind power. Renewables delivered 14.6% of the country’s electricity which is enough to light up the equivalent of approximately 6.7 million average homes according to Thornton.
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Solar Trust Centre Team
