Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest continues to make good on his commitment to transform Australia into a world-class green energy titan, with the announcement of what could become the southern hemisphere’s largest solar, wind, and battery hub.
Forrest-owned Squadron Energy Orders has issued contracts to immediately start construction for the $3 billion (US$2.2 billion) Clarke Creek energy precinct located in the northeast of Queensland.
Stage two of the Clarke Creek project has received approval to build up to 195 wind turbines for a total capacity of 800 MW (megawatts) and up to 400 MW of solar, along with battery storage to store the energy when required.
Squadron Energy estimated the project could power 660,000 homes, equivalent to 40 percent of all of Queensland’s households—or nearly 8 percent of all households in Australia.
Forrest noted that with other green energy projects in the pipeline, the title of largest green energy hub in the southern hemisphere would not be permanent.
“But I am delighted to say that we will not hold this record for long, with other renewable energy projects under development that will surpass our project in scale. We intend to bring on other projects which will be larger than today’s record.”
One such project includes Squadron Energy’s 15 percent stake in Sun Cable, a monolithic 20,000 MW solar farm in the Northern Territory that expects to power Singapore and parts of Asia through intercontinental transmission lines.
Energy hubs—areas where solar, wind, and storage are centralised—have been lauded as a gateway to the shift away from coal by shaving costs through economies of scale and cutting down on transmission cabling.
“We are investing in Clarke Creek not only to harness the renewable power of the wind and sun to energise our homes, our factories and our cities but as a critical step towards breaking our reliance on fossil fuels,” Forrest said.
“Climate change is the single greatest threat to our existence, and we must meet this global challenge with tenacity and speed. This announcement is a signal that Australia is prepared to act with purpose to realise our 100 percent, green, renewable, zero-emissions energy future.”
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk welcomed the commitment and its contribution to the state’s emissions reduction targets.
“Delivering such a huge renewable energy boost takes Queensland closer to achieving our targets of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050,” she said.
Slave Labour Concerns of Rapid Energy Transition
However, Australia’s accelerated switch to more solar and wind generation has brought with it concerns of slave labour and human rights violations embedded in renewable energy supply chains.A report released by the Australian Human Rights Commission highlighted reports of adults, and sometimes children, operating in poor or harmful conditions or working for little to no financial return.
This included the use of child slave labour in dangerous conditions for the mining of cobalt, a mineral used in some batteries, along with the use of forced labour in global solar supply chains originating in China—the world’s biggest solar supplier.
Australia, with a world-record adoption of rooftop solar energy, has no domestic capability to create solar cells and instead imports 90 percent of its solar panels from China.
Federal Independent MP Craig Kelly has expressed fears that Australia’s switch to renewables could see the transfer of billions of dollars in wealth from Australia to China.
Kelly raised further concerns that the purchase of solar and wind components entailed a transfer of wealth from Australia to the CCP that went towards continuing the forced labour of Uyghurs.
“The Chinese are very clever: move the production out to use the cheap labour of the Uyghurs to keep the solar panels at a price that will dominate the market and will wipe out all the competition.”
