From JoNova

By Jo Nova

“No wind project, not a single one, was signed off financially in the first half of 2025.”

There is a bit of paralysis of green investment Downunder.

BloombergNEF  sells itself as the analysts of the energy transition for investors. According to them, Australia’s rapid transition is “seen as a global test case”  and if so, the green wish-fairy needs an ambulance full of money. This year investments in grid-scale solar shrank to just 30% of what they were a year ago, and no wind project at all was committed in the first half of 2025.

This is a fall that is accelerating. 2023 was the boom year and in 2024 investment “fell 48%” which sounds pretty drastic. But this year is even worse.

Renewables investment falls off cliff as no new wind projects reach financial close in first half of 2025

By Sophie Vorrath, RenewEconomy

Investment in new wind and solar projects dropped by 64 per cent in the first half of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, underscoring concerns that Australia’s energy transition is not attracting nearly enough capital.

“In the first half of 2025, Australia saw $556 million of investment in utility-scale solar, falling sharply from $1.6 billion in the same period in 2024,” the report says. No wind projects at all reached financial close over the period.

This is a far cry from the roughly $US59 billion ($A92 billion) BloombergNEF has said that Australia needs to invest some (sic) every year between now and 2030 to meet its economy wide net zero target – currently set for 2050.

At Bloomberg, they know this is serious: “the slowdown in wind farm development has come despite government support for wind being at an all-time high” they say wistfully.  A month ago they surveyed investors who managed as much as $38b in renewable “assets” so the Bloomberg team already knew from investors that the transmission lines are delayed, the communities hate the projects, and the costs have reached escape velocity.

Australia’s transition is “sluggish” and “slow” and new projects are “stranded”:

Renewables Investors Say Australia’s Grid Delays Hamper Outlays

By Keira Wright, Bloomberg

Australia’s rapid energy transition to replace aging coal-fired plants is seen as a global test case, but its sluggish build out of transmission infrastructure has left new solar and wind projects stranded, and helped make its power market one of the most volatile in the world.

Transmission delays and slow planning processes are the biggest barriers to deploying capital, closely followed by costly and slow grid connections, according to the survey of members of the Clean Energy Investor Group.

To be fair, part of the slowdown this year was also the uncertainty over the recent Australian election, not that the opposition opposed NetZero, or even mentioned it much. But it’s a dire statement anyway — if an industry depends on the outcome of an election in a life-and-death kind of way, it only proves they are not and never were competitive, needed, or popular products. To that end, the Labor government has tried to make up for that by  dropping money from helicopters with a boost to the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS)” which will “support” another 3GW of unreliable generation.

But even Ross Garnaut, perpetual fan of green energy, says this is not enough, and he is long past mincing his words:

“The renewable energy transition is sick,” he said. “We are, for the time being, on a path to comprehensive failure.”

If the quote above from Sophie Vorrath is accurate, then according to Bloomberg, Australia needs to spend $92 billion every year for the next five years to meet it’s Net Zero Target. (Just $460 billion!) Where was that price tag in the Australian election when we needed it?