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Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy has acquired Australian renewables developer CWP for more than $4 billion.

However,power companies and the Australian Energy Market Operator are increasingly nervous about the lagging pace of the rollout of new generation,storage and transmission projects required to compensate for coal plants’ withdrawals and meet the federal government’s 2030 renewable energy targets.

The head of Squadron Energy,which is part of the Forrest family’s private Tattarang Group and has become Australia’s largest owner of renewable energy projects,on Tuesday said he was still optimistic.

“It’s important to note that we aren’t starting from zero,we aren’t starting today,” Squadron chief executive Jason Willoughby told the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne.

“There have been a lot of companies,not just ours,who have been developing projects for a very long period.”

Willoughby said a wind farm typically took about five years to develop and predicted that many projects across Australia were approaching the “tail end” of that five-year period.

“I think what we are going to see is a relatively flat build-out of renewables,then a steep trajectory at the back of the decade,” he said.

Squadron struck a multibillion-dollar deal to buy CWP Renewables last year and is now aiming to provide 30 per cent of the build-out required to reach Labor’s 82 per cent target by 2030. The company has a portfolio of five operating wind farms in Victoria and NSW,is building another in Queensland,and is developing what could become Australia’s first shipping terminal capable of importing cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from other parts of the country or overseas. It intends to use the gas as a source of “firming”,to back up the renewable energy it will supply to industrial customers when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

“We are not saying we need to use a lot of gas;what we are saying is we need to use it in the right periods,” Willoughby said. Squadron eventually intends for its gas generators to run on green hydrogen once it is economical to do so.

Daniel Westerman,the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator,on Tuesday said he was worried by the slow rollout of new “firming” generation,such as fast-start gas plants,long-duration batteries and pumped hydro.

There are also concerns that the build-out of more than 10,000 kilometres of high-voltage transmission lines,which will be needed to link up new renewable energy zones and facilitate the flow of clean electrons from one part of the country to another,is happening too slowly,amid funding issues and local community opposition.

Westerman told the conference there was a strong pipeline of new generation projects totalling about 200 gigawatts proposed across the country – equivalent to dozens of large coal-fired power stations – and 40 gigawatts of proposed grid-scale batteries. However,not enough had been committed with firm investment decisions,he said.

“The crucial word here is ‘proposed’,” he said. “Bringing these new projects to market and connecting them into the grid urgently is critical to ensure consumers continue to have reliable power when they need it.”

Modelling by consulting giant McKinsey&Co,presented to Tuesday’s conference,suggested that Australia was on track to fall short of the government’s target of 82 per cent renewable penetration in the grid by 2030,and would likely only reach 65 per cent to 70 per cent unless the rollout of new projects markedly accelerated.

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