> "Without providing price detail, which companies say is commercially sensitive, Clarke said Carlton had struggled to finance the planned gas plant in part because of uncertainty over the revenues it would generate and the number of hours it would run."
This is the crucial point. Political uncertainty about the future energy system is jacking up the rate of return investors are demanding of gas plant projects without contracted revenues. This is the main reason why gas projects are falling through. At the same time, there is currently no scalable storage system for time-shifting surplus renewable generation over weeks-to-months, so that it can offset renewable troughs. This means surplus renewable generation is simply being wasted, and for that reason, is so low cost that even hours-to-days battery storage - which is a mature storage system - is economical. It's far less clear this is a long-term proposition for at-scale storage, as the longer you can store energy for the higher the efficiency of matching surplus to deficit. Hydrogen and pumped hydro can store energy for far longer.
This is the crucial point. Political uncertainty about the future energy system is jacking up the rate of return investors are demanding of gas plant projects without contracted revenues. This is the main reason why gas projects are falling through. At the same time, there is currently no scalable storage system for time-shifting surplus renewable generation over weeks-to-months, so that it can offset renewable troughs. This means surplus renewable generation is simply being wasted, and for that reason, is so low cost that even hours-to-days battery storage - which is a mature storage system - is economical. It's far less clear this is a long-term proposition for at-scale storage, as the longer you can store energy for the higher the efficiency of matching surplus to deficit. Hydrogen and pumped hydro can store energy for far longer.