Australia’s Clean Energy Council (CEC) has said that 2024 was the best year for large-scale renewable energy investment in the country since 2018, with AU$9 billion (US$5.65 billion) in total capital committed.
The organisation’s latest ‘Quarterly Clean Energy Investment Report’ found that, in Q4 2024, commitments were made to seven new large-scale renewable energy projects, representing 1,598MW of new generation capacity and AU$2.4 billion of capital investment.
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This means that in 2024, investment was greenlit for 4,346MW of new renewable energy generation capacity, while energy storage also saw strong growth, with 4,029MW/11,348MWh of new projects committed. In Q4 alone, investments were made into 870MW/1,936MWh of new energy storage.
According to the CEC, Lightsource bp’s 450MW Goulburn River solar-plus-storage plant in New South Wales was the largest project to have been financially committed in the last quarter. The plant entered construction on 16 December after receiving development consent from the Australian government in early October. It also received the largest investment share in this quarter, with AU$880 million.
The project is expected to be operational by the end of 2026, and its plans include installing an on-site 49MW/392MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) with an 8-hour duration. DT Infrastructure (DTI) is behind its construction, while Lumea, the commercial arm of Australian transmission system operator Transgrid, will connect it to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
It is worth noting that the 450MW Goulburn River solar PV plant was one of several projects owned by Lightsource bp that succeeded in the first tender round of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), which saw solar PV awarded 2.8GW.
After Goulburn River, Queensland’s Wambo Wind Farm stages one and two, with a capacity of 252MW and 254MW, respectively, were the next largest. Both of these projects had already begun construction prior to receiving financial close in December.
‘Two consecutive quarters of very healthy investment’
Kane Thornton, CEO of the Clean Energy Council and a previous guest on PV Talk, said the strong quarterly result was in line with the pace required for Australia to hit its target of 82% renewables by 2030.
“Clean energy already powers around half of our national energy needs. We have now seen two consecutive quarters of very healthy investment activity in 2024, which is the best we’ve seen since the investment highs of 2018, when our sector was delivering on the bi-partisan Renewable Energy Target,” Thornton said.
Solar PV dominated the list of projects reaching financial close in Q4 2024. After the Goulburn plant, Recurrent Energy’s 171MW Carwarp Energy Park in Victoria, Cleanpeak Energy’s 8MW Hay solar PV plant in New South Wales, the State Electricity Commission’s 119MW Horsham Renewable Energy Park in Victoria, and EDPR Australia’s hybrid 5MW Orange Community Renewable Energy Park rounded off the list.
Currently, 88 renewable energy generation projects have either reached financial commitment or are under construction, totalling 13,187MW of capacity. Additionally, 52 committed energy storage projects are in development, equated to 10,531MW and 26,285MWh of capacity and energy output, respectively.
Since 2017, 223 energy generation and storage projects have been commissioned, resulting in 17,019MW of installed electricity generation capacity and 2,112MW or 3,669MWh of energy storage.
The majority of these projects are in New South Wales, with 33. Victoria and Queensland are joint second with 29 each, while Western Australia ranks third with 27 projects.
In terms of capacity, Queensland tops the list with 4,460MW. New South Wales comes in second with 3,749MW, and Victoria with 3,270MW.
“These results show that clean energy investment is getting back on track and it’s critical that we don’t lose focus or change direction now on a strategy that is working. Investors need stable and predictable long-term policy settings to provide them with the confidence to invest their money in these critical infrastructure assets which Australia urgently needs,” Thornton added.
11,348MWh of energy storage reaches financial commitment
Energy storage saw a strong year in 2024 and the same can be said for Q4 of the year. Indeed, 870MW/1,936MWh of new energy storage was committed in Q4 2024 alone.
This was spread across five projects. The largest of these was Lightsource bp’s 222MW/640MWh Woolooga BESS in Queensland. The developer has tapped Chinese battery manufacturer Hithium Energy who will supply the BESS.
Hithium said the deal marks the first deployment in Australia of the company’s 5MWh containerised standard 20-foot BESS solution, using Hithium’s own prismatic 314Ah lithium iron phosphate (LFP) lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells.
More recently, battery recycling firm Livium, via its wholly owned subsidiary, Envirostream Australia, has partnered with Hithium to recycle lithium-ion batteries from Lightsource bp’s Woolooga solar-plus-storage site. The BESS will be co-located with a 214MW solar PV power plant spread across three sites.
Four of the five projects that reached financial commitment in Q4 2024 are hybrid storage assets. This means they integrate energy storage with another form of generation, such as solar PV or wind power. In the fourth quarter, the average combined capacity of these hybrid projects was 174MW/387MWh.
Across 2024, 25 energy storage projects with a capacity of 4,029MW/11,348MWh reached financial commitment. This figure is slightly lower than the record set in 2023, which was 4,663MW/11,509MWh.
The total investment for these projects amounted to at least AU$3.9 billion for the year. Additionally, five battery energy storage projects began construction during this quarter, totalling 867MW/2,475MWh. Three of these projects are co-located with an accompanying generation project.
