The announcement of Victoria’s new renewable energy target is ambitious and leaves many important technical details unanswered, the energy industry said today.

The Victorian Government target proposes 5400MW of new large-scale renewable generation to be built in Victoria by 2025.  This is more than the current total of large-scale renewable generation in the National Electricity Market (around 4300MW).

The Australian Energy Council’s Chief Executive, Matthew Warren, said “the energy industry is committed to the decarbonisation of electricity as quickly as possible, at the lowest cost whilst maintaining reliable energy supply.

“Energy systems are complex.  You cannot expect to build the equivalent of more than 50 new wind farms (1,400 turbines) in Victoria in 8 years without significant impacts on energy costs and reliability to consumers, and without a broader national plan for the sustainable transformation of the energy sector. To put this in context, there are currently 17 wind farms (comprising 596 turbines) in Victoria.

Victoria’s electricity system is interconnected to other states as part of a national grid.  Decisions made here affect other states.  That’s why major policy measures to reduce emissions should be implemented at a national level,” Mr Warren said.

“Australia has had a bi-partisan national renewable energy target in place since 2009.  Despite the best efforts of all stakeholders, we have seen that targets alone struggle to deliver the efficient and reliable transformation of energy supply.

“As the industry which will make the vast majority of investment and manage customer impacts we are concerned and disappointed that the Victorian Government has not consulted with the energy industry on the development of this policy.” Mr Warren said.