Solar isn't the problem, but the renewables situation is related. We had a Labor government with the Greens holding a balance of power from ~2010 to ~2013. The Labor party had, I believe, been opposed to a carbon tax up until that point. Then, likely because of pressure from the Greens, introduced a carbon tax.

The lesson there will not have been lost on big investors. If anyone invests in fossil fuel generation (ie, the economic option) then the Greens will find a way to destroy their profit margins at some point in the next decade.

And so, little serious investment in the energy sector seems to be taking place. I'm not aware of any big developments planned except an interesting hydropower project by the current government and creeping smaller-scale wind and solar as prices rise and justify their existence.

Following your reasonning, there is no reason why investors should shy away from renewables. The Greens would not harm any project of additional large scale batteries, for example.

I think there are two main reasons whu investors would shy away from renewables in Australia:

1) Firstly there are no large well-known actors, so there is uncertainty around renewable energy companies are going to "win".

2) Secondly, Australia currently has a government that is hostile towards renewables. It could at any time introduce legislation that would make renewables economically untennable.

These are both true, furthermore a lot of the bigger players became big as a result of the initial round of solar rebate schemes - where a lot of low quality solar installations were put up. Now a lot of these companies are doing much larger jobs without the necessary skillsets. There's a bit of a minefield of shoddy installers still out there - look at the Crap Solar Facebook page for an insider look (there are some horrific installations).

Despite all this, I've seen a huge amount of interest in investors wanting large scale commercial and utility scale solar projects. From what I know, solar engineering consultancies are turning jobs away due to the demand being so great.

Even with the evilest scheme, it seems unlikely to come up with something harming the rentability of renewables, or of solar in particular. It's basically free electricity from sun, which is plenty in Australian deserts. You pay only the installation, which price is determined by the tech market.

Yes but the Coalition will because solar gives you cancer.

> solar gives you cancer

Is that hyperbole or are they seriously saying that?

Hyperbole in that specific case, but they did have an enquiry into wind turbines partly examining alleged health effects...

Okay, that's not as outlandish as health hazards from solar. We have a lot of wind turbines in Northern Germany, and some people complain that they emit low-frequency sounds and thus cause noise pollution. I don't know about the research on this topic, though; I never noticed any adverse effects when staying near wind turbines.