Bubble pops: Australian renewables investment down 80% as RET subsidy ends

After billions of dollars of “gifts” to the renewables industry, and a doubling of the wholesale electricity price, wind and solar power are still so inefficient and uneconomic that investors can’t make a profit without getting more free money. After the wild bonanza of the last two years the RET scheme has completed the large scale targets that were set so long ago, and that’s it, ppft.

What was 4,300 MW of new projects per quarter is now just 800MW: 83% less

From the Clean Energy Council

After a record breaking two years of investment in large-scale wind and solar projects, the pace of projects reaching financial close has slowed dramatically over the past two quarters. The Clean Energy Regulator announced this month that the large-scale 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) has now been met. What happens next is unclear.

Quarterly investment commitments in new renewable energy projects reached a high of over 4500 MW in late 2018, but has since collapsed to less than 800MW in each of the first two quarters of 2019.

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All bad things are associated with Tony Abbott

This was the first line in the Clean Energy Council announcement:

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