SOLAR energy company Silex Systems has pulled the plug on further development of its 100-megawatt power station at Carwarp, just south of Mildura.
The company blamed low wholesale electricity prices, and uncertainty over the future of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), for its joint decision with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to suspend the project.
Silex’s announcement yesterday means the $100 million in federal and state grants earmarked for the project, and a similar amount of private capital the project could have attracted, will be lost to Sunraysia’s economy.
Silex suspended the Carwarp project because there was virtually no hope it could attract the necessary private investment to complete it.
The Abbott Coalition Government has been sceptical about human-induced global warming while displaying its obvious distaste for the RET set by the Rudd Labor Government in 2010.
If the Abbott Government does away with the RET, or weakens the scheme, it would also cast a pall over the future of the even larger project to build a power station fuelled by waste almond hulls and shells from the Olam almond-processing plant at Carwarp.
