8 September 2014

Strong bidding in wind auction is good news for Canberra

| Canfan
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Eighteen proposals have been received for the ACT’s first wind power auction, reflecting keen industry interest, Minister for the Environment, Simon Corbell said today.

“The reverse auction for 200 MW of capacity to support wind energy generation closed on Wednesday 3 September with more than 1000 MW of capacity nominated for consideration,” Mr Corbell said.

“The strong competition for the feed-in tariff is partly caused by the uncertainty created by the Commonwealth’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) review which has hindered other investment in the industry.

“Wind is currently a buyer’s market and because of this the ACT can expect lower prices now than if the required investments were deferred to a later time,” Mr Corbell said.

The auction process is being conducted based on the solar auction model used during 2012 and 2013, with the successful proponents granted a feed-in tariff at a fixed rate for 20 years.

As the costs of energy supplied by fossil-fuelled power plants will rise, the feed-in tariff mechanism will mean the costs to ACT electricity customers will decline from the first day of generation in real terms.

200 MW of wind power is expected to provide about 24% of the ACT’s electricity consumption in 2020 and is key to the Government’s 90% renewable energy target.
Once operational from 2016, the new wind capacity will reduce the ACT’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 8.5 million tonnes over the first 20 years of operation.

“To put that in context, that figure is about half the emissions associated with electricity usage in each and every Canberra household,” Mr Corbell said.

(Simon Corbell Media Release)

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