Policy

Does renewable electricity raise or lower electricity prices? There is more to this question than meets the eye: are prices lower before or after renewable subsidies are recovered, how has variability been accounted for, how have changes in network costs been accounted for, and so on and on. Bruce Mountain, the Director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre and Steven Percy, a research fellow at Victoria University set out new findings.

That would mean a market increase of around 25% on this year. Demand is predicted to become particularly strong in the second half of the year. Australia is forecast to see lower demand than usual in the first quarter, but also be among 16 nations worldwide that will add over 1 GW of solar capacity in 2019.

Renewable generation in the National Energy Market has set the fifth consecutive monthly record high in November, due to eight new solar farms coming online over the last two months. The National Energy Emissions Audit released by The Australia Institute tallied the figures. Despite solar’s growth, evidence coming from the Federal Government reveals a continuing upward trend in emissions since 2013.

If maintained, Australia’s current rate of installs would deliver 78% renewables by 2030, find Green Energy Markets in its latest edition of RE Index. The 50% renewables target proposed by the the Federal Labor Party and several state Labor governments would thus deliver a sharp market decline, with installations falling to a third of recent rates and workforce shrinking by three quarters.

The renewable sector has responded warmly to the reappointment of Lily D’Ambrosio as Energy and Environment Minister. Her title has been expanded to take into account the growing responsibility of running the re-elected state government’s expansive solar and storage initiatives.

The Philippines’ Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has said the removal of the 100 kW cap for solar installations under net metering would be difficult for the nation’s grid to accomodate. Meanwhile, a proposal to raise the treshhold is being discussed in the country’s Senate.

The German energy storage provider has begun assembling batteries at the former Holden site at Elizabeth in Adelaide’s north. The company has already hired 50 full-time employees.

With the Coalition in Victoria punished by voters and the Federal Government slipping further into minority, the muddled energy policy agenda of the conservative Liberal and National parties is starting to receive an electoral backlash. Long-reported public support for renewables can no longer be ignored.

The French government has devised three possible scenarios for the planned phasing out of part of its nuclear power generation assets. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the target to reduce the share of nuclear power from around 75% to 50% by 2025, which had been set by the previous government, will only be reached in 2035. The most pessimistic scenario envisages the construction of four new nuclear reactors by 2040.

Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten unveiled the party’s ‘all of the above’ plan for Australia’s energy sector, which it will take to the 2019 election. A ramped-up NEG, project auctions under a CfD structure, grid infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and a boost to battery storage all feature and were welcomed by the clean energy sector.