CEFC invests $1.9bn in 2022 as renewable energy spend grows
Australia’s green bank invested a record $1.9bn in the 2023 financial year to accelerate the country’s push to renewable energy.
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The Clean Energy Finance Corporation – Australia’s green bank – invested $1.9bn in the 2023 financial year.
The record investment should help Australia meet its ambitious energy transition goals.
The nation has set an aggressive target of having renewable energy generate more than 80 per cent of the country’s electricity by the end of the decade, but it is struggling to build capacity quickly enough to compensate for the loss of coal.
CEFC said it invested $1.2bn alongside private corporations to advance 14 large-scale solar, wind and storage projects, with a total transaction value of $5.7 bn.
CEFC chief executive Ian Learmonth said: “The renewable energy milestone was important to the country and reflected the green bank’s unique advantages.
“Investment of this scale is critical to our national goal of reaching 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“With Australia’s renewables sector responding to complex global economic and supply chain pressures, we have confirmed our important role in using our capital to fill market gaps in the face of a difficult market for investors and developers.”
Mr Learmonth said the CEFC funding had unlocked private capital and leverage for the green bank’s investment during the 2022-23 year.
The CEFC said each $1 it invested attracted an additional $5.02 in private sector capital.
It said the strong leverage reflected its investments in large-scale transformational investments, including a $100m commitment to the NSW Waratah Super Battery, one of the largest standby network batteries in the world.
The CEFC also made its single largest investment in a wind project, committing up to $222.5m to Victoria’s 756MW Golden Plains Wind Farm.
The CEFC is a critical player in Australia’s energy transition.
The federal Labor government approved an additional $20.5bn capital allocation to the CEFC, the first increase since the corporation was established in 2012.
The new capital includes $19bn to transform the Australian energy transmission grid through Rewiring the Nation, $1bn to help householders reshape their energy use, and $500m to back the ongoing growth and development of projects and companies in the climate technology sector.
The CEFC expects to make investments drawing on the additional capital allocation from the 2023-24 year.
“We are using that capital to invest in transition in transmission in the big transmission projects, because of course, you know, without a build-out of transmission we are not going to reach 80 per cent renewables by 2030,” Mr Learmonth said.
Originally published as CEFC invests $1.9bn in 2022 as renewable energy spend grows
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