Why Australia's most attractive renewables state is almost $1b behind
NSW needs to dramatically increase the amount of renewables projects it commissions in order to meet its legislated 2030 targets.
In 2020, the New South Wales Coalition government unveiled a plan to power the state with renewable energy, transforming regional areas into power stations through renewable energy zones. However, six years later, the state is struggling to keep up with its own targets. The agency in charge of the rollout, EnergyCo, has spent more than a third of its budget and almost $1 billion less than planned over the past two years.
New England, the largest zone, is lagging behind, with construction yet to begin and an initial capacity of 6GW now split between 2.4GW by 2032 and 3.6GW by 2034. The government introduced legislation to fast-track approvals for priority clean energy projects, but many projects are still not being built or are taking longer than expected.
Only 8% of investors believe Australia is on track to achieve its target of 82% of electricity coming from renewables by 2030.
Written by urgent.news from ABC News AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
