A new investment plan has been launched by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) outlining its priorities for about $800m in funding for the coming years.
The funding for renewable projects will be provided under the plan called Innovating Energy, helping the country to shift to a low emission economy.
Under the new plan, the agency outlined four new priorities such as the delivery of secure and stable electricity system, expansion of solar PV innovation, in addition to improving energy productivity and exporting renewable energy.
The new plan was based on the success of ARENA’s earlier work, which enabled to reduce the costs through 12 new solar farms.
In addition, ARENA has launched A-Lab, a series of innovation and collaboration laboratories that can gather energy players ranging from start-ups to major grid companies and energy providers to develop the renewable projects.
ARENA said that it will concentrate more on the research and development of solar PV, in a bid to reduce costs.
The agency is working to help the country to exceed the national energy productivity plan goal to through increasing energy productivity by 40% by 2030.
ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said: “As Australia shifts from fossil fuel generation to a low emission energy system with more renewables and more distributed energy resources, we need to make sure energy is secure, reliable and affordable.”
“We are looking for new ways to adapt our electricity grid to increase productivity, make the grid more flexible and better integrate renewable energy so it can be stored and shared when and where it is needed.