Australia installed almost 1 gigawatt of new solar capacity last year but was easily eclipsed by cloudy nations such as the United Kingdom, which installed about four times as much, according to the REN21 Global Status report on renewable energy.
Investment in new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs rose to a record $US286 billion ($396 billion) even as prices for most technologies, such as solar and wind energy, fell. Growth also came despite falling prices for rival fuel sources, such as coal and oil.
"Renewables are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels in many markets and are established around the world as mainstream sources of energy," Arthouros Zervos, chairman of REN21, said in the report.
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| Signs of an improving outlook for renewable energy in Australia. Photo: Matthew Staver |
Globally solar PV capacity added 50 gigawatts to reach 227 GW of capacity. New wind power capacity rose even more, adding 63 GW of new capacity to reach 433 GW.
Australia added 900 MW of new solar PV last year – the eighth-most in the world – to reach 5.1 GW of capacity.
That total, though, ranked Australia 10th in the world, trailing nations not known for their sunshine, such as the UK, South Korea and Germany. The UK added 3.7 GW alone last year to reach 9.1 GW of capacity, or almost twice Australia's tally.
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| Solar PV capacity in Australia lags that of less sunny nations such as the UK and South Korea. |
"Solar power is an area where we should be giving the British an absolute whipping and, with investment confidence returning, we're hopeful that we'll give them a much better run for their money in 2016," Mr Thornton said.
Australia's investment in large-scale renewable energy all but halted in the past three years after the Abbott government began a review of the industry and later cut the Renewable Energy Target for 2020 of 41,000 GW-hours to 33,000 GW-hours with Labor's support.
Without support for the industry from the ACT government , and programs such as the Clean Energy Finance Corp and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – both facing the axe for most of Abbott-Turnbull government – investment in new projects would have shrunk further.
Renewables delivered 14.6 per cent of our electricity [in 2015], enough to light up the equivalent of approximately 6.7 million average homes," Mr Thornton said in launching the Clean Energy Australia Report 2015.
Eight major solar farms and five new wind farms became operational last year, including large solar power plants at Nyngan and Broken Hill in NSW.
The industry is just under halfway towards meeting the 2020 RET goal, which will require some $40 billion in new investment and has the potential to create more than 15,000 jobs, Mr Thornton said.
"The good news is that investment confidence continues to grow in 2016, and there are more than enough projects either under construction or with development approvals to meet the target," he said.
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