The Australian Government has announced the expansion of its existing Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) and National Energy Transformation Partnership (NTEP) to deliver more reliable energy.
The investment aims to enhance the energy grid’s power availability, ensuring a long-term, reliable, affordable, and low-emissions energy system for Australians.
The Federal Government’s CIS is expanding renewable generation and storage, providing certainty for investors and cleaner energy for households and businesses. The expansion will increase the CIS from 9 GW of dispatchable capacity to 32 GW nationally, equivalent to half the current National Electricity Market (NEM) with nearly 11 million customers.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth will also establish bilateral agreements with states and territories under the existing NETP to ensure the rollout is orderly and coordinated.
States will be urged to collaborate with the Commonwealth to guarantee that renewables are deployed, and reliability is improved through objective criteria, a smooth transition, and potential strategic reserves.
The expanded CIS will offer 18 out of 32 GW of capacity, with capacity potentially re-allocated from non-agreement jurisdictions to agreements-making ones.
The Federal Government will also assess impediments to renewable investment, such as workforce and supply chain bottlenecks.
