Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 3:27:11 to 3:30:53
Examination of the number of projects announced, contracted, and withdrawn under the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), including reasons for project withdrawals.
Topics: Capacity Investment Scheme, Renewable energy
Speakers: Speaker 21, Speaker 13, Hon Sarah Henderson, Hon Tim Ayres, Unknown Speaker, Interjection
>> I just want to turn to the capacity investment scheme. Uh, over all the tender runs to date, how many projects
>> Can we just make sure we've got the right team at the table? Senator,
>> um, Senator Miranda Lello, division head of the capacity uh, clean energy investment division. Um, would you be able to repeat the question?
O over the tender rounds to date, how many projects have been announced?
>> Um, Miss Wiltshire, can you run through
>> 109 projects have been announced, >> And how many of those projects have been contracted, >> 46 have active contracts. >> Uh, if we could have the list of both the announced projects and also the contracted projects on notice. there are more clearly many more announced projects than there are those which are being contracted. Why is that? Uh that there's a few reasons um senator. Some of them we are still negotiating with. So um we're still negotiating 36 contracts as of right now. Um and uh there has been some a number of projects that have withdrawn over the over the time for various reasons. So 27 projects have withdrawn so they were 27 out of the 109 that are now not proceeding. >> That's correct. >> And what are the mix of reasons that they're not proceeding?
>> If you can just summarize that for me and then provide the details on notice
>> Yes.
>> For each of those projects.
Uh so uh Senator in in talking in general terms the projects that uh have have withdrawn uh quite a number of reasons. There's been a material change in capital and construction costs for some of those projects. Some have had difficulty obtaining network connection or access rights to the network. Uh delays with planning uh and or environmental approvals. Um some have difficulties securing power purchase agreements. Uh projects change their investment strategies sometimes as well. uh projects may have withdrawn to to uh seek other other sorts of support. Um and at times ownership of those projects um may change which means they may no longer either wish to contract with us or they are not fit to contract with us.
>> So that's a very significant number of projects which have collapsed around a quarter of the 109 projects announced.
So some of those projects will proceed without at the end uh capacity investment scheme senator and we also expect and some have um rebid uh again into our tenders.
>> If I can help senator it's a proponent driven scheme in a sense that the proponents choose the technology the location and then choose a level of financial support that they come to the commonwealth with. Some of them will later reassess either the design of their scheme or the level of support. They haven't bid in enough support. So a number of them the project hasn't collapsed. It's just that they can't meet the milestones we put in place for the level of support they've bid in. So they need to either rebid into a later process or proceed without financial support or bid into one of the state schemes like the uh New South Wales Elsa