Australia eyes USD 2.8bn of US clean energy investments from CEDI deal

Australia expects to receive up to USD 2.8 billion (EUR 2.86bn) of clean energy infrastructure investment from major US corporations, among them Google and Amazon, under a deal signed on Thursday by the governments of the two countries.

Australia’s Climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen has signed a Letter of Intent with his US counterpart Special Climate Envoy John Kerry and a group of nine US conglomerates, seeking to support the clean energy transition. The pact makes Australia a member of the Clean Energy Demand Initiative (CEDI), a global platform that connects countries with corporations seeking to rapidly deploy clean energy to offset electricity demand in their sectors.

The nine companies taking part in the initiative are Akamai, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Iron Mountain, Lululemon, PepsiCo, Salesforce, and Unilever.

By investing in clean energy projects in the Commonwealth, the companies, most of which already working with supply chain partners in Australia, are expected to unlock between USD 2.2 billion and AUD 2.8 billion of investments.

Australia’s participation in the CEDI initiative is seen to showcase the Aussie government’s active engagement on regional energy security. “Australia’s policy actions – including large-scale generation credits, corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs), and renewable retail contracts – may serve as a model for other countries working to expand corporate procurement of renewable energy,” the US Department of State said.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 1.022)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!