The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has announced an initiative to fund the adoption of rooftop solar PV within its borders, which could have a significant impact on the energy mix of the nation’s capital, Canberra.
The initiative is a A$3.6 million (US$2.4 million) scheme that will provide tax rebates to individuals who purchase and install solar panels on their rooftops, and “concessional loans” for body corporates, such as housing associations or other groups of individuals who own or manage property.
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These loans draw on other parts of legislation aimed at improving ACT citizens’ access to sustainable energy – specifically the Solar Banks projects and the Sustainable Household Scheme – and body corporates will be able to access A$50,000 from each project.
The Solar Banks project is a A$100 million project implemented by the Labor Party that will build 85 solar banks across the country to better improve Australians’ access to solar power, while the Sustainable Household Scheme is a A$150 million investment into domestic energy infrastructure, with citizens in the ACT able to borrow up to A$15,000 to build power facilities such as batteries and solar panels.
The ACT government announced that it expects 2,100 households to benefit from the tax rebates and the loans that make up this initiative, with the predicted solar installations set to cut the electricity bills of those using the panels by 35%. The new project will see the federal government commit an additional A$80 million to the Sustainable Household Scheme, but it did not disclose exactly how much would be spent on the initiative overall.
The project is the federal territory’s latest push to encourage solar adoption across its area. In 2020, the ACT achieved a target of generating 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, and the Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator reports that, in January this year, there were close to 47,000 small-scale solar power systems installed in the ACT.
However, the government is eager to expand this figure further, as the average capacity of rooftop solar power installed per person in the ACT is around 668W, below the Australian average of 732W.
The news is the latest solar power development in Australia, following SmartestEnergy and Mytilineos’s signing of a power purchase agreement for a new 40MW solar park in the state of Queensland.