Renewable energy rollout too slow, warns AEMO boss Daniel Westerman
Australia is not building renewable energy developments quickly enough to compensate for the loss of coal-fired power generation, the head of the country’s energy market operator warns.
Australia is not building renewable energy developments quickly enough to compensate for the loss of coal-fired power generation, the head of the country’s energy market operator warns, as major projects continue to be beset by problems.
The slow progress could intensify pressure on prices and stoke concern about energy security, Daniel Westerman – the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator – will say in a speech on Tuesday.
Australia has set an aggressive target of having renewable energy account for more than 80 per cent of the country’s electricity generation by the end of the decade, a target that has intensified pressure on existing coal-fired power stations, which already face social, economic and reliability questions, he says.
Senior Australian energy executives have warned the build- out of renewable energy developments is too slow, a view Mr Westerman shares.
He joins a chorus of industry executives expressing concern that the massive renewable energy pipeline is currently failing to materialise.
Ian Learmonth, the head of Clean Energy Financial Corporation – the country’s green bank – in May said Australia was not on course to meet its target of having renewable energy account for more than 80 per cent of the electricity generation by the end of the decade.
Energy executives have said the lack of transmission – high voltage wires and poles – is discouraging new developments.
About 10,000km of new lines must be built before 2030, but their development has been hampered by funding constraints and community opposition.
A growing number of Australia’s most influential figures, including Origin Energy CEO Frank Calabria, have warned of the risk of not making progress in building the high-voltage wires and poles needed for renewable energy developers to push ahead with new projects.
The importance of new projects materialising is growing as several major projects currently in development suffer delays.
CleanCo, a Queensland state-owned entity, on Monday said it had cancelled plans to build a wind farm in what would have been Australia’s biggest wind energy precinct due to delays over connection agreements and rising costs.
CleanCo had planned to build the 103 megawatt Karara wind farm in the MacIntyre precinct, which had been earmarked for projects producing more than a gigawatt of power.
But CleanCo said it had pulled the pin on the project.
“As a result of significant delays to the connection process for the Karara Wind Farm, and subsequent impact to costs, CleanCo is pausing the development of the project,” a CleanCo spokesperson said.
States and territories are increasingly aware of the transmission roadblock.
Victoria and NSW have offered landowners affected by new transmission lines $200,000 for every kilometre of their land crossed by a major infrastructure project.
Queensland has gone even further.
The Queensland state government in May said it would offer landowners who agreed to allow high-voltage transmission cables across their properties an average $300,000 per kilometre.
Still, progress remains slow, and authorities are increasingly alarmed.
AEMO has called for faster work on five projects worth nearly $13bn, but Australia has a long history of transmission project delays.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen in May urged infrastructure developers to work quickly but to be conscious of their social licence, an issue that has caused delays to NSW’s transition roadmap.
NSW earlier this month said work on two renewable energy precincts, known as renewable energy zones, would be delayed by two years and cost more, after a failure to properly consult the local community.
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