The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has confirmed that its investment commitments in Australia’s wind energy sector have reached almost $1 billion with the sector delivering 2GW (two gigawatts) of renewable wind energy across the nation.
The announcement came as the CEFC allocated $180 million to a wind farm in Collector in south-eastern NSW.
Wind Sector Lead at CEFC, Andrew Gardner said the Corporation’s investments in large-scale wind developments had tracked a remarkable level of innovation and change in the sector.
“While our earliest finance supported projects which had secured only partial off-take agreements, we are now working on hybrid projects that bring together wind, solar and storage, as well as projects that are seeking new style off-take agreements with large corporates,” Mr Gardner said.
“These developments have driven considerable infrastructure investment in regional areas, while creating long-term assets that capitalise on Australia’s natural wind resources.”
He said wind developers were also contributing significant additional investment to local communities through long-term community development funds.
“In the case of Collector, this will see $240,000 injected into the local community each year,” Mr Gardner said.
He said the Collector Wind Farm was located along the Cullerin Range south-west of Goulburn, which has some of the windiest conditions in NSW.
With 54 wind turbines, the project is expected to generate in the order of 528GW of energy annually, enough to meet the needs of around 80,000 average homes.
