IBERDROLA IN AUSTRALIA

Iberdrola to invest nearly EUR 3 billion in Australia to lead the energy transition

#business #Iberdrola International

As part of its strategy against climate change, Iberdrola continues to consolidate its position as the world's largest renewable energy company, adding new projects to its portfolio. Along this context, in 2020 it successfully completed in record time a friendly takeover bid for the Australian renewables company Infigen Energy, an operation that reinforced its entry into this new priority market, where it has just acquired its largest onshore wind farm in the world: the 1,000 MW Mount James wind farm.

Planning and feasibility studies have already been completed on the 50,000 hectares comprising the future Mount James project, which will allow the wind farm to be designed without affecting environmentally and heritage sensitive areas. In this sense, the project is an example of the group's commitment to the Queensland market, which has an important role to play in meeting the goal of decarbonising the country's economy. Iberdrola Australia. Find out about all our projects.

Iberdrola has thus become one of the leaders in the Australian market, currently with 1,062 MW of installed capacity, as well as a portfolio of projects with more than 2 GW of various technologies and at different stages of development.

In addition, the company has, through various proprietary, leased and capital-lite assets, power obtained through four PPAs (245 MW) and energy storage batteries (75 MW). Those 75 MW include the 25 from the battery which it already manages in the Lake Bonney wind farm in Southern Australia and a further 50 which it is to operate in the Wallgrove substation in New South Wales, through an agreement signed with the local distributor TransGrid [PDF] External link, opens in new window..

In 2021, Iberdrola completed the assembly of the last wind turbine at the Port Augusta complex in South Australia, its first solar-wind hybrid plant in the world. It is a renewable facility which combines a wind farm with an installed capacity of 210 MW and a 107 MW photovoltaic plant and, once in operation, it will generates, by integrating 50 turbines and 250,000 solar panels, enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 180,000 Australian homes per year.

1,122 MW

of installed capacity

331 MW

under construction

+ 2.200 MW

in the pipeline

Data at the close of the nine months of 2022.

AUSTRALIA: A GROWING MARKET

Ignacio Galán was very positive about the purchase of Infigen and stated that, "with our experience as a world leader in clean energy and Infigen's talent and knowledge of the Australian market, we are prepared to successfully deal with the future growth of renewable energy in the country, which has very good prospects."

Renewable energy in Australia continues to increase its market share and is expected to accelerate its growth over the next 10 years. Electricity demand in 2021 reached 267 TWh, including industrial demand, residential solar PV and off-grid generation.

Renewable energy production increased by 20 % in 2021, contributing 29.1 % of total generation. Solar and wind contributed 11.7 % and 10 % of total generation, respectively, with hydro and biomass making up the remainder. However, electricity generation remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels, mainly coal and gas, of which Australia is a major producer and exporter.

Annual electricity generation (2021)

Renewable generation (by technology type)

By 2030, emissions from the power sector in Australia are projected to fall by 30 % and the share of renewable energy in the generation mix are projected to reach 69 %, according to the latest reports published by the Australian government's Department of Industry, Science and Resources. This favourable outlook is based on plans to upgrade the country's transmission and distribution network, as well as to reduce the cost of storage technologies.

Australia renewable energy

Large scale solar: cumulative installed capacity (MW)

Wind: cumulative installed capacity (MW)

The share of renewable energy from total electricity generation in Australia was 29 % in 2021 and it is expected to increase to 50 % in 2025 and to 69 % in 2030, according to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (AATSE).  Key challenges to ensuring continued strong growth in new renewable capacity are grid updates and driving down the cost of storage.

Source: Clean Energy Council (Australia); Australian Government (projections)