Acciona urges Albanese government to set ambitious renewable energy target

Acciona, Spain’s largest renewable energy operator, will kick off construction on Thursday on the largest wind farm ever to be built in Australia.

Acciona is building Australia’s largest wind farm, worth $2bn, southeast of Warwick in Queensland.

The developers of the nation’s largest wind farm believes the Albanese government can pull off an ambitious renewable energy target by 2030 but said developers need to “push the button” on projects immediately while an outdated investment test for building transmission needs to be dumped.

Acciona, Spain’s largest renewables operator, will kick off construction on Thursday on the largest wind farm ever to be built in Australia, worth $2bn, and capable of producing 1026MW of energy, enough to power 700,000 homes each year.

The Macintyre Wind Precinct, southeast of Warwick in Queensland, will house 180 turbines across two wind farms with operations due to start in 2024.

Korea Zinc will take a 30 per cent stake with supplies from the project powering its Sun Metals refinery, while the Queensland government-owned CleanCo has agreed a decade-long 400MW power purchase agreement with the developers.

Acciona Energia managing director Brett Wickham told The Australian the giant wind farm was a big statement of intent for the company.

With Labor setting a goal of boosting the share of renewables in the national electricity market to 82 per cent by 2030, nearly triple current levels, rival developers now need to step up and start delivering mega projects to fast-track the renewable transition.

Acciona managing director Brett Wickham.

“I think that 82 per cent target is achievable, but it is going to be tough,” Mr Wickham said. “It means that the signals need to be sent almost immediately to push the button on a lot of projects.

“If we don’t set the targets high, we’re never going to achieve them. We’ve got the International Panel on Climate Change now saying we’ve got to act faster to try and stay below the 1.5 degrees. So it’s achievable but it’s going to take a lot of effort.

“We’ve got to set the targets high and it will be done as well through rooftop solar and work that needs to be done on the grid to unlock new renewable energy zones.”

Acciona joined energy executives in criticising the regulatory investment test which governs electricity transmission for being too slow and cumbersome, as the industry frets over delivering a major rewiring of the power grid over the next decade.

The nation’s new Energy Minister Chris Bowen has slammed the regulatory investment test for transmission, called RIT-T, saying it could delay projects unreasonably and calling for a major reworking of the scheme.

Mr Wickham agreed it was out of date.

“It’s just not fit for purpose as it takes too long. I don’t believe that the RIT-T would ever hand you an outcome that would, say, give a Snowy Mountains-type investment, where we build a massive project which is going to serve the country for the next 100 years.

“That’s the kind of investment we need. The RIT-T will see these incremental improvements, because it was never designed to have generation all over the place. It was designed to have another 220KV line from Latrobe Valley to Melbourne or some more transformers put in place.

“The reason for that was to stop gold plating. It was probably a good model but the model is now not fit for purpose. That’s why I think Chris Bowen is right on the money.”

Labor has proposed a $20bn Rewiring the Nation fund to ensure the grid is rebuilt to accommodate growing sources of solar and wind.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has said there may be incremental changes to the RIT-T as part of a review of the transmission system, but a bigger issue was understanding how the test interacts with the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 20-year energy blueprint, known as the integrated system plan.

Acciona has a big pipeline of projects in the wings and said conditions were good for signing off on new investments.

“Australia has such an abundance of renewable energy resources. All across the country, projects like MacIntyre can harness and capitalise on this opportunity to realise a new golden age,” Mr Wickham said.

Commitments for new large-scale renewable energy projects fell 17 per cent last year to $3.7bn due to policy uncertainty and grid connection issues.

But investors say Anthony Albanese’s pledge to make Australia a renewables “superpower” may spark a spending surge.