In 2022, the Australian renewable energy industry commenced construction on over 5000MW of large-scale wind and solar farms — making it a record year for new renewable construction commitments.

This is one of several positive findings for the sector in the latest edition of the Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Australia Report, released on 18 April.

The report found that investors are also responding to the need for more energy storage, with 19 large-scale battery projects under construction. The combined capacity of these projects (1,380MW/2,004MWh) is significantly higher than the previous year (921MW/1,169MWh).

Renewable energy accounted for 35.9% of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2022, up from 32.5% in 2021. Australia has more than doubled the amount of renewable energy it uses since 2017 when renewable energy accounted for just 16.9% of generation.

“There’s a significant cause for optimism at a time when aging fossil fuel-based generators are retiring,” Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton says.

“Large-scale clean energy investment reached $6.2 billion in 2022, a 17% increase from 2021. The final quarter of 2022 saw investment in financially committed large-scale generation and storage projects reach $4.29 billion, the second-highest quarterly result since data collection began in 2017.”

He adds that Australia’s energy mix will undoubtedly now be the beneficiary of greater policy clarity, with climate change and the clean energy transition areas of genuine focus federally, with sensible and ambitious policies.

“To reach the federal government’s renewable energy generation target of 82% by 2030, the pace of deployment for new large-scale projects needs to at least double,” Kane adds.