Wind, solar boom beats Renewable Energy Target in Australia by a "Hazelwood Coal Power Station"
The boom in wind and solar energy investment has brought forward enough projects to beat the Renewable Energy Target by the capacity of the shuttered Hazelwood coal power station.
The Clean Energy Regulator said yesterday that 8000 megawatts of wind, solar and hydropower capacity has been built since January 2016, or is under construction now or underwritten by long-term power purchase agreements and expected to be under construction by the end of the year.
This exceeds the 6400 MW the regulator calculates is needed to meet the Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 33,000 gigawatt hours of clean energy generation by 2020 by 1600 MW.
That's equivalent to the capacity of the Hazelwood brown coal power station in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, which was closed last year sparking a surge in wholesale electricity prices in Victoria and South Australia, and greater than the effective capacity of AGL Energy's Liddell coal power station in the NSW Hunter Valley.
See http://www.afr.com/news/wind-and-solar-boom-beats-renewable-energy-target-20180511-h0zy6u
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Wind, solar boom beats Renewable Energy Target by a Hazelwood | |