ANZ boss Shayne Elliott slams slow pace of green energy planning approvals

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott has lashed the slow pace of planning approvals for Australia’s rollout of renewable energy projects.

Shayne Elliott says faster approval of green energy projects and greater certainty are needed to meet Australia’s climate ambitions. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott has lashed the slow pace of planning approvals for Australia’s rollout of renewable energy projects and indicated the economy is at a “turning point” as expectations grow for interest rate cuts later in 2024.

The bank boss told a Queensland energy forum that approvals were slowing down at a time when the nation faced pressure to speed up a critical transition to green ­energy.

Approval processes “are just too long and they seem to be getting longer and that imposes cost – and that cost isn’t just money,” Mr Elliott said.

Labor has set an aggressive energy transition target of having renewable energy generate 82 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2030.

However, state approvals for large-scale wind and solar projects plunged by 75 per cent in the past four years, according to consultancy Rystad Energy.

Up to five gigawatts of renewable projects are required annually in NSW, Victoria and Queensland until 2050 but project approvals last year were less than 3GW, ratcheting up pressure to build more over this decade to reach green goals.

ANZ’s direct lending to renewables projects grew by 49 per cent in the 2023 financial year, with Mr Elliott saying slow planning decisions acted as a handbrake across the economy.

“There’s a cost of uncertainty on the people who are involved – people in the companies who have an uncertainty about their future, who’s going to own them, what their job’s going to be, which I think as a society we need to work harder on,” Mr Elliott told the Queensland Energy Club in Brisbane last week.

“I know these things have to go through due process. I understand we should be subject to scrutiny. Whether you’re building an energy plant or buying a bank, that’s fair, but we really need to work hard on making this as efficient as possible. And at the moment it would seem it’s going the other way. Things seem to be slowing down rather than speeding up.”

Project approvals had taken a hit because state government planning departments required excess information, often cancelled necessary site tours, rejected development applications to meet internal metrics and pushed project operators to more complex sites, Rystad Energy said.

The Queensland Renewable Energy Council said industry needed certainty of investment through the assessment and approval process. Just two large-scale renewable energy generation projects secured final investment commitments during the three months to September 30, according to the Clean Energy Council.

“This means certainty of the process, certainty of the pace as well as the certainty of the regulatory goalposts once projects are operating,” QREC chief executive Katie-Anne Mulder said.

“We need robust assessment processes of course, yet there is room to streamline processes as well as provide more clarity of pace.”

While green spending has momentum, the current 50GW of planned and committed renewable energy generation falls well short of the 230GW estimated to be needed by 2035. Experts say an enormous acceleration of both onshore and offshore wind developments is still needed to provide future power.

The ANZ chief executive was also quizzed on the outlook for the economy as uncertainty grows over the prospect of rate cuts later this year, with inflation remaining above the Reserve Bank’s target range.

Mr Elliott told the energy forum it was a finely balanced equation, while conceding Australia had probably hit a rate peak and may now be at a turning point after 13 hikes since May 2022.

“Most economists are saying our interest rates have peaked: they’re at the top. Most commentators are saying just a matter of time until rates will start to fall again, because that slowdown and spending will start to slow the economy and inflation will come down and so that’s potentially a turning point,” Mr Elliott said.

“The risk – putting our banking hat on – is there is still a lot of stuff happening in the world that’s unpredictable … There are things that can just randomly go horribly wrong.”

Ian Harper, a member of the RBA’s policy-setting board, told the Wall Street Journal on Friday it would not wait until inflation was back in the desired target band before it started to cut interest rates.

Originally published as ANZ boss Shayne Elliott slams slow pace of green energy planning approvals