Fifteen months of political deadlock over Australia's renewable energy policy has been broken, but what will a new deal and new target mean for the clean energy industry?
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Under its agreement with Labor, the government will reduce Australia's large scale renewable energy target from 41,000 gigawatt hours of annual renewable energy production by 2020 to 33,000.
The biggest beneficiaries of such a deal will be traditional polluting industries such as coal because their profits will increase as a result of lowering the renewable energy target.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance said on Tuesday that the cut to the target would lead to $6 billion in lost investment for the renewables sector by 2020.
But the industry, which has already seen investment plummet by $2 billion since the Abbott government launched a review of the target in 2014, will now see some finance begin to flow again as confidence returns with the bipartisan agreement.
The Clean Energy Council says between 30 and 50 new wind and solar projects will be built by the end of the decade and forecasts 6500 jobs will be created in large-scale wind and solar alone, with many of those in rural and regional parts of Australia.
This is good news when considered against the situation of the past 12 months, where projects had stalled entirely.
But under the original 41,000 gigawatt hour target, the council had expected 9700 new jobs in large scale renewables.
Clean Energy Council policy director Russell Marsh said about 40 major projects already had planning approval.
Some operations could progress within weeks, while other businesses will need several months to re-establish themselves.
Most, but not all, of the 40 projects are in wind power, which has been a key gripe of solar lobby the Australian Solar Council as it argued against a reduced RET.
The Solar Council has consistently said that cutting the target to a figure in the mid to low thirties would be most beneficial to the wind industry in the short term.
Chief executive John Grimes says this is because the costs of large-scale solar are not expected to fall rapidly until 2018, 2019 and 2020, by which point the target might have been saturated by wind projects.
But perhaps things are not so bleak for large scale solar. Renew Economy has reported analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that found one third of the new build renewables over the next five years could come from solar, mostly in Queensland.
The small scale solar PV industry is also a major winner from the deal after the government agreed to leave it untouched.
Middle to low income home owners, the income groups found most likely to take up solar, will continue to receive upfront rebates when they install solar power at home.
Likewise, the industry is predicting a boom in commercial solar if small businesses use tax breaks in the budget to switch their energy source.
Less clear is what effect the government's plan to include the burning of native timber in the RET will have.
Labor, the Greens and environment groups say it is a concession to the forestry industry, will drive destruction of native forests, and will restrict the uptake of real renewables under the scheme.
But the government has said the contribution that biomass will make to a reduced RET will be low and there are a number of crossbench senators who support the move – with conditions.
It is those conditions – a suggestion that the government reserve a portion of the target for solar and hydro only – that could bring some twists in the Senate yet.
