Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen says the surge in interest in data centre development in Australia could be the key to ensuring the viability of wind projects that have been struggling to land power purchase agreements and have been left at the starting gate, despite government underwriting.
The federal government has selected 31 wind projects through tenders under its Capacity Investment Scheme to receive a form of underwriting scheme, including 10 announced just last weekend, but only three have so far reached financial close.
That’s mainly because of the shortage of corporate or utility buyers. But Bowen thinks that the surge in interest from data centres, and new government “principles” that they bring their own additional renewables to the grid could break the deadlock.
“A few weeks ago, I put those principles to state and territory ministers and got almost unanimous agreement that we would apply those principles, and those principles are that data centres should bring their own additional renewable energy,” Bowen told journalists on Tuesday.
“So they’ve got to bring new renewable energy to the grid, which is important and actually could be useful, for example, in helping some of the wind farms that are under development with PPAs, for example, to actually make those wind farms more viable and get them to a final investment decision.”
