Rewiring Australia has strongly endorsed the federal government’s decision to expand the capacity investment scheme to smooth the clean energy transition, urging it to incentivise households to generate and use more solar to wean themselves off fossil fuels.
Household electrification is the fastest, cheapest way to accelerate progress to emission reduction targets. It relies on existing, off-the-shelf technology such as rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles, and hot water heat pumps meaning it can be swiftly deployed.
As an illustration of the potential, once the nation’s cars are fully electric they will be able to store and supply four times more energy than Snowy Hydro 2.0.
"This significant expansion of the Capacity Investment Scheme will accelerate the transition to cleaner, cheaper renewable energy and help Australia hit its 2030 emissions target. This is a strong step in the right direction,” said Dan Cass, executive director of Rewiring Australia.
"It addresses risk and price volatility for developers and this will bring more projects to financial close, faster.
"We urge governments to work on extending the Capacity Investment Scheme to include consumer energy resources such as rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles, and hot water heat pumps. Australia cannot deliver credible emissions reductions without doubling-down on its love for rooftop solar and investing heavily in household electrification.
"The reason the National Electricity Market has such barriers and risks for clean energy is that the system was designed around coal. If the federal and state governments want to reduce cost and delay further then they should continue to write new rules for the NEM that sort out transmission and pricing risks for large scale projects and level the playing field for all distributed energy installed as Australian consumers electrify their households.
"Rewiring Australia was pleased to see that when the Australian and NSW governments announced NSW-specific projects under the Capacity Investment Scheme this week it included demand response as well as battery storage. Demand response from factories, businesses, consumer batteries and EVs can provide the cheapest and most efficient capacity because it uses existing energy consuming machines to balance demand and supply in the grid."
Contact details:
Charlie Moore: 0452 606 171
