UK-based infrastructure heavyweight John Laing has confirmed plans to offload its Australian solar and wind energy assets and quit the market entirely, after a year of project delays and transmission losses put further investment in the sector firmly in the too-hard basket.
The news delivers a fresh blow to the Australian large-scale renewable energy market, already reeling from a combination of zero federal government policy support, major development delays around grid congestion and connection hurdles, and revenue compromised by changes to marginal loss factors – calculations of how much of a generator’s output is credited by the market operator.
These MLFs, or “transmission losses,” were highlighted as a major deciding factor behind John Laing’s decision to pull up stumps on wind and solar investment in Australia, and are just one of a number of rules and regulations that are considered no longer “fit for purpose” in the rapidly transitioning energy market.
In the company’s full-year results announcement on Tuesday morning (UK time) the owner of the recently completed 57MW Cherry Tree wind farm in Victoria, and various other much larger projects, said it had decided to quit stand-alone solar and wind generation development “across all geographies” including Europe because the ‘returns no longer reflected the risks.’
John Laing Australian generating assets include 170Mw Finley Solar, 255Mw Sunraysia Solar, 112Mw Granville Harbour WF and 31Mw Kiata WF plus a shareholding in Hornsdale WF.
For me, pass on the solar and Hornsdale. Granville and Kiata could be repurposed with a battery each.
Ash
IFN Price at posting:
62.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
