Australia Boosts Solar Financing To Scalable Levels
As reported by the Clean Energy Finance Commission (CEFC) in Australia, its recently launched solar financing program has attracted a substantial amount of interest – enough to boost the country’s large-scale PV capacity 10-fold.
According to pv-tech, the program has received over 40 expressions of interest for loans under an AU$250 million (US$177.5 million) lending facility it launched earlier this year.
Funding program has attracted 2GW of large-scale PV proposals
“We have received very strong interest from project developers clearly looking to further develop Australia’s large-scale solar capacity,” CEFC chief executive Oliver Yates said.
“The total capacity of the proposed projects is more than 2,000MW. If all these projects proceeded to development, we would see a 10-fold increase in Australia’s large-scale solar capacity. There is clearly strong investor interest in the potential of Australia’s renewable energy sector.”
Project proposals range in size from 15 MW to 200 MW. Queensland has attracted the largest number of projects bids, totaling 980 MW, followed by New South Wales with 620 MW. The CEFC program will offer loans of AU$15 million and above, for projects over 10 MW.
Financing Australia’s development of large-scale solar
According to Yates, Australia currently has only four large-scale solar PV developments larger than 10 MW. “Through this financing program, we are looking to accelerate the development of large-scale solar as an important part of our renewable energy capacity,” he said.
Last July,Greg Bourne, chairman of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (AREA) announced planning another round of funding for large-scale solar plants. Such endeavors will enhance financing capacity in this country’s bid to bridge the gap between the cost of large-scale solar plants in Australia and the US and elsewhere in the world.
Image: Solar-powered lighthouse at Kangaroo Island, Australia via Shutterstock
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Imagine that a government had spotted some funding and then after a lot of hard work by a large number of dedicated people a cure for cancer was finally found. And then, after the cure was found, the government ignored it, damaged production of the cure by a sudden cancelling of subsidies, and said, “Okay, now do that again, but this time using a method that is less effective and much more expensive.”
You’d think the government was completely bonkers, wouldn’t you? Well, welcome to Australia where instead of celebrating the development of the world’s cheapest point of use solar installation industry, the government just wants it to go away because it has the massive flaw of making everybody in the country a little bit richer instead of making a small number of already rich people much richer.
Instead of the government using money it will need to pay 2% interest on and using it to install point of use solar on any government building where the return will be higher than say 3%, which would cut pollution, save lives, and save taxpayers money starting immediately; we instead apparently have to wait for utility scale solar to come down in price. Meanwhile, climate change is killing people while we delay.
“One… One unnecessary death! Two! Two unnecessary deaths! Three! Three unnecessary deaths! Ha Ha Ha-Ha!”
Sorry, that was just Australia’s head statician counting. (He’s originally from New York.)
Now I am used to the goverment trying to kill me, but they could at least have the decency to buy me a ticket to a land war in Asia like they usually do first.