The Clean Energy Council has released a report that reveals that while investment in large-scale energy storage remained strong in Q2 2024, investment in new renewable energy generation will be critical to maintaining energy security.
The report found that:
- New large-scale energy storage projects continue to lead the way in investment, with four of the last five quarters adding more than 2GWh of newly financially committed projects.
- The capacity of financially committed renewable electricity generation projects in 2024 (1.6GW) surpassed the total for 2023 (1.3GW).
- Commitments to new onshore wind energy projects increased, with another 577MW reaching financial commitment in Q2 2024. This comes after no onshore wind projects reached financial commitment in 2023.
- An acceleration in financial commitments for generation projects will be required in the second half of the 2024 calendar year in order to achieve an annual run rate of 6–7GW per annum of financial commitments for large-scale generation projects – the rate required to set Australia on the path to the Federal Government’s target of 82 per cent renewable energy generation by the end of 2030.
Clean Energy Council Chief Executive, Kane Thornton, said that large-scale storage continued its remarkable run, demonstrating that a record-breaking 2023 was not a one-off.
“It is pleasing to see investment in large-scale generation continuing to move in the right direction, but we are not yet at the levels we need to see,” Mr Thornton said.
“Strong investment in new renewable energy generation is critical to driving down power prices and ensuring energy security for Australia.
“With governments, regulators and industry working to overcome the barriers to new investment, we remain confident that this will deliver the certainty necessary for further uptick in new investment in the near future.”
Image credit: Miha Creative/Shutterstock.com.
