ANZ boss demands energy urgency
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 last four years, according to consultancy Rystad Energy. Up to 5GW of renewable projects are required annually in NSW, Victoria and Queensland until 2050 but project approvals last year were less than 3GW.
ANZ’s direct lending to renewables projects grew by 49 per cent in 2022-23, 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,” Mr Elliott told the Queensland Energy Club in Brisbane last week.
“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.”