Last week the Victorian Government indicated it would review the Victorian Climate Change Act if a national carbon price was introduced, including the target of cutting emissions to 20 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Now wind farm opponents have been handed victory on a plate. The Government’s new policy has three main elements:
the government will amend planning laws to give households power to veto wind turbines within two kilometres of their homes.
Turbines will also be banned in the Macedon and McHarg ranges, in the Yarra Valley, on the Mornington and Bellarine peninsulas, and within five kilometres of the Great Ocean Road and the Bass Coast.
And in changes that go further than the Coalition flagged in the policy it took to last year’s state election, turbines will also be prohibited within five kilometres of 21 Victorian regional centres.
Wind farms approved by Labor and not yet built will not be affected.
The Government claims that 92% of the state is still available for wind farm development, but the people who build them have a different view. Pacific Hydro say that they will be pursuing opportunities elsewhere after completing current projects. The Clean Energy Council estimated prior to the election that $3.6 billion worth of investments would not go ahead under the Coalition’s policy.
Make that up to $10 billion according to Giles Parkinson at Climate Spectator. Earlier Parkinson had written about the negativity coming from right-wing governments on climate change policy. Barry O’Farrell is on record saying he doesn’t want any more wind farms built. The wind doesn’t blow so consistently in Queensland, so theoretically there should be opportunities in South Australia. But:
South Australia is nearing its capacity for wind farms, unless money can be found to unlock the massive resources on the Eyre Peninsula. This would need more grid infrastructure as well as a bigger interconnector to Victoria to distribute the surplus energy.
Also this has been fiercely resisted by the big coal generators because “it will lower wholesale energy prices and cause their profits to diminish.”
Parkinson sees major potential implications for the federal government’s 20 per cent renewable energy target. Indeed:
Little has been constructed in recent years because the RET has failed to provide the price signal intended, and utilities have felt under no obligation to offer power purchase agreements needed to finance the projects.
Mathew Warren, CEO of the Clean Energy Council, told Bush Telegraph that wind farms are always viewed favourably when they do surveys in rural areas. But the opposition, always from a minority, is quite rabid (my term). Many of the anti-wind groups’ compliants have been dismissed in a recent Senate inquiry.
Parkinson ends on a pessimistic note:
To some, it is yet another dark chapter in the story of renewables development in a country that continues to have the best resources and R&D in the world, but one of the lowest levels of deployment, thanks to policies which have either been poorly conceived or dropped once they prove too successful. As one industry insider muttered darkly on Monday: “It’s like they take the wheels off your car, and take out the engine. And then they stand back and say ‘look, it doesn’t work’.”
Elsewhere The Age reports that the Feds will look elsewhere with a lucrative deal to host the Commonwealth’s $10 billion Clean Energy Fund because of the Baillieu government’s negativity. Ditto with locating the Climate Change Authority.
See also the ABC for an article about South Australia and the SMH has an opinion.
I just came across this
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/global-warming-clock-unveiled-in-nyc-co2-364-trillion-tons-highest-in-800000-years.html
as I was collecting information for the manager of the business that Toxic Tony featured in yesterday’s poison blab fest.
After phoning Greg Combet’s office to find out what figure they use as the Carbon Price cost to each kilowatt hour of electricity, my assessment based on DOE figures 1.6 cents and generous at 10% of retail price, nobody had a clue except the first guy who picked up the phone by accident and with whom I spent over half an hour grilling (nice guy who was on the same page but had to apologise for his department’s failure).
Why is this information not at the fingertips of every Government MP. Why are they not able to spiel out all of the key features of this critical policy.
I then spent over an hour on the phone to the manager of the business that said that their electricity bill would increase by 30%. This turned out to be reasonably fairly reported due to the volume and method of electricity delivery. But the conclusions drawn were not correct. The real threats to this business are entirely due to the dollar exchange rate and other factors, not the Carbon Price.
I also spent half an hour bending the ear of someone in Mark Dreyfus’ office where again no-one had a clue as to what the the factor for the key element of the one big environmental issue for this government.
Did anyone actually unblock their mind and listen. I doubt it…but I live in hope.
Also, in case it was missed there is this article on a report for the IEA
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-29/solar-may-produce-most-of-world-s-power-by-2060-iea-says.html
As it happens, we live near the McHarg ranges. When the wind farm was mooted there was the predicted reaction by some. Don’t know what proportion but it’s a lightly populated area.
If constructed we would have had a good view of it. We decided that we were ambivalent about it. (about 3km from it) We don’t subscribe to the bullsh*t reasons people don’t want wind farms. (get sick, kill birds, destroy landscape, blah blah). They’re not our hills. The owners of the hills should be able to make a living off them. It’s not like it’s a piggery or an asbestos mine where the neighbours would be measurably impacted. I would respect the dissenters if they were honest and said they just didn’t want them without making stuff up.
Great. Now how about they give everybody living within two kilometers of proposed roads the same right of veto?
After all, a road is a hell of a lot more nasty and dangerous than a wind turbine…
For what it’s worth, I don’t like the look of wind farms either, particularly on hilltops or anywhere near the coast. But this holds wind farms to a planning standard that no other development is held to.
OK. So let me get this straight. If some farmer near you can make some money sticking some propellers on their land you can veto it.
However if you’re a farmer and some mining company wants to frack your property to bits and only offer a paltry sum then that’s a-ok?
Sometimes I wish the Greens would oppose wind farms on some crap premise “oh noes it will destroy teh birds” in order for the usual suspects to try and get as many bird killers up as possible just to spite them.
Wind farming seems to bring out the worst NIMBYs. I remember a case in NZ where a ‘wind farm expert’ challenged a developer every step of the way through the development process. His reason? He wasn’t hired by the developer to consult.
I suspect that most of the objections to wind turbines stem from similar greed, and note that the people who get ‘sick from turbine noise’ are usually not the ones with them on their property.
What a ridiculous and inconsistent policy. I’d much prefer the right to veto poker machines within 2 kms of my house.
Yet another straw on the camel of science in today’s world. The Four Corners report a few weeks ago was infuriating. This and solar are the most benign methods of energy generation that I can think of and yet wind somehow poses a grave enough threat to warrant the kind of bogus legislation the the LNP in Victoria are bent on enacting. The craziness of the right is reaching a level that endangers all of us. I mean Ballieu was supposed to be a moderate!
Perhaps vastness makes a difference, but the Blayney Wind Farm wasn’t unattractive when I visited it last year. Fifteen white turbines, slowly turning, with cows and sheep not suffering Wind Turbine Syndrome AFAICT. Rather graceful, I thought, and certainly less of a blot on the landscape than Eraring Power Station, which is run by the same company. Of course Eraring produces 4×660 MW and Blayney about 10 MW.
Robert said:
Indeed it does. [sotto voce]Wind turbines aren’t the only energy technology caught by that approach of course.
Fran – I think I’ll start a LP Nuclear Thread Of Doom drinking game. I’ll be under the table by lunchtime.
Brian – there was an announcement today of a $1.3bn 600MW wind farm on the Yorke Perninsula, and they’re also upgrading the interconnect to Victoria.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/bn-turbine-deal-to-power-225000-homes/story-fn6bqphm-1226125999240
Re: health problems from wind turbines. There have been some people who suffer enough from that they have abandoned their properties. So I suspect its more than just simple NIMBY’ism. It may well be that its on a minority of people that are susceptible to the effect. Given the huge amounts of money involved in investment it wouldn’t hurt for the government health bodies to do some more research. If its a very small number of people, simply compensating them to relocate might be sufficient (like is done when they need to reclaim land for roads for example).
Brian, you are absolutely right. Rampant nimby-ism is no reason to tilt planning laws against windfarms.
They should be tilted because windfarms are an absurdly inexpensive and ineffective form of energy generation, viable only because of huge public subsidy, and impact on everyone, not just those within 2km, economically and in terms of reduced energy security.
That’s absurdly expensive of course – obvious but someone will do a gotcha if I ndon’t correct it.
Patrickb:
“This and solar are the most benign methods of energy generation that I can think of and yet wind somehow poses a grave enough threat to warrant the kind of bogus legislation the the LNP in Victoria are bent on enacting. ”
Actually, that is not necessarily correct. Birds Australia, of which I am a member, has raised concerns about how many wedge tailed eagles of the endangered Tasmanian subspecies have been killed by windfarms. Moreover some American bat populations have been practically decimated by windfarms and this translates into billions of dolars in crop losses due to suppressed insect predation. The same process may well occur elsewhere, including in Australia.
@12
The Four Corners programme gave a good run to the proponents of theories claiming deleterious effect from wind turbines but in the end the research that has been conducted shows no link between the location of wind farms and incidents of disease. One researcher diplomatically pointed out that there may be a link between financial gain (or lack thereof) and some of the reported health complaints.
An engineer also tried to measure these allegedly detrimental sub aural effects be again there was no evidence for their existence. As I said, these unscientific claims are actually leading to punitive legislation, it’s the dark ages in more ways than one.
@15
I note that the linked articles says:
“Statistics show more birds are killed by cats and windows, to the tune of hundreds of millions”
Which is not the same to say it’s OK to kill birds with wind turbines however I think you lack perspective. In addition I would still maintain that wind power generation is benign when compared to fossil fuels or nuclear if viewed on a risk assessment basis. You need to be careful of making hysterical claims without evidence.
Start: I have no problems about siting turbines away from significant bird or bat populations (provided it can be shown that there is a significant bykill – I’d be genuinely interested in a link to a scientific study which shows this).
I do have a problem with being forced to site them away from NIMBYs, which is what this legislation is designed to do.
Wozza said:
Windfarms aren’t absurdly expensive to erect and operate, but expressed in terms of firm output they are. When you include reasonable measures to “firm” output, the cost goes up quite a bit, unless you use something like OCGT/CCGT, in which case it doesn’t (because these have separate utility), but then the cost per tonne of abatement starts to climb, raising the question of purpose.
I’d prefer a no-subsidy regime, with the proviso that all other energy generation get treated the same way — i.e. they also have to internalise all of their current externalities. (i.e not just scope 2,3 CO2e, but other effluent (e.g mercury, actinides) as well.)
As to local objections to siting of windfarms, these should be based on good evidence, and likewise, no site should be selected unless there is good historic data suggesting capacity factors of not less than 35% are the norm.
There have been some people who suffer enough from that they have abandoned their properties..
And they suffer such a baffling wide variety of symptoms, too, with no geographical weighting or proposed causal mechanism. It’s almost as if they’re psychosomatic.
Start, concerns are one thing, evidence sadly is entirely another and I’m yet to see any evidence – not estimations, future predictions, etc – that actually points to actual large numbers of avian deaths from actual windfarms.
The article you link to points out that it should not be an issue outside of migratory bird areas, and there is absolutely nothing in there at all saying that “some American bat populations have been practically decimated by windfarms”.
Very much agree Jess … It’s worth noting that the by-kill from roads and habitat destruction from human occupation, release of domestic animals (such as cats and dogs) is generally orders of magnitude tougher on local fauna than windfarms. If we ignore this then it is clear a trade-off (rather than an absolute principle) is in play.
The questions then become:
1. what is the net effect of a wind farm on local or migratory fauna?
2. Is the gain from the windfarm greater then hazards to fauna?
3. To what extent is this balance of by-kill/fauna loss comparable to the other usages with comparable by-kill fauna loss?
4. Are the savings resultant upon a bar of the proposal likely to be wiped out by other permitted usages there or elsewhere?
Fran, there isn’t a tradeoff against other uses, however all uses should be subject to an assessment of their likely environmental impact as part of the planning process. The “gain” from the wind farm isn’t necessarily a relevant consideration. It can be taken as a given that the wind farm (or any other proposal, for that matter) is considered suitably beneficial by whatever party is proposing it. The real question is whether the relevant impact on the wildlife is acceptable. That depends on a number of factors, including the conservation status of the species and the nature of existing threats.
Maybe it is, still it would be good to have enough research into the cases to establish that this is the probable cause. An extremely small portion of a $1.3 billion dollar investment would easily fund the research.
Tim Macknay@20:
The problem is that that analysis is so rarely done for anything, let alone wind farms. I’d settle for simply the same standard being used. So the new “2km NIMBY zone” would apply to wind turbines, roads, houses, fences, coal mines, whatever you want.
Tim Macknay said:
I suspect we are on the same page here, though your terminology is different. Plainly, we treat endangered species (and especially critically endangered species) with especial sensitivity, though even here triage applies. If there’s no saving a species then pouring resources into a futile effort is controversial.
My broader point though is that human land usages always harm habitat, so this is always a piece of calculus, which is in part subjective.
@21
Studies have been done. There is no effect.
No disagreement there, Fran.
@moz;
Of course. The 2km wind farm NIMBY zone is ridiculous, irrational policy.
Any policy that limits windfarms is a good one based purely on the net-economic loss from the stupid things.
Wind power is good in remote locations like on boats and islands but as a supplement to base load grid power it is economic madness.
I agree: why can’t we veto poker machines?
And destroying the environment through climate change is economic sanity? Not on this planet.
And destroying the environment through climate change is economic sanity? Not on this planet.
that’s not what our blunt razor is saying.
I’m all for wind farms…however I think what Blunt Razor and Wozza are looking for is this.
Is the energy expended on manufacturing building and maintaining wind farms less than the energy generated?
And are wind farms as efficient as the worst coal plant or nuke plant?
If not then why bother?
tssk asked:
I’m not a fan of windfarms, but they easily pass this test. The problem is with intermittency and unpredictability of output. What you want is predictable output on a schedule so you don’t need as much redundant capacity.
I love the Bush, I’ve lived here for years – two, at least. In fact I love it so much that I choose to live here even though I’ve gotta drive every day into Melbourne. I’d work out here but there isn’t a lot of call for
bullsh_t artistsbusiness an_lysts. I’m a bit of a greenie, mate – there’s birds and trees and all kinds of sh_t on my block – but I’ve been talking to my neighbour who’s beenr_ping the landfarming for generations (ever since his peopledrove off the blackfellasestablished the town) and he reckons windfarms might stop him from subdividing his land and selling it to overcashed d_ckheads like me. And that’d be a shame, yeah?@29
Ah, the unsubstantiated assertion. The last refuge of the … clueless?
I’m willing to accept that very low frequency oscillations in some locations can cause some people problems but that the research will be hard to show (possible resonance with some landscape profiles, for example). Not a reason to bring in planning controls, but compensation mechanisms with set evidence of impairment levels would be fair.
On the other hand, is it now easier to get a brown coal plant approved in Victoria?
The carbon offset payoff for a wind turbine manufacture and install is about three months.
And intelligent grids can manage the intermittency of supply up to quite high levels in a multi-source grid, so you base load wankers can just slope off.
Bugger, the comment box doesn’t accept all the keystrokes it’s given – proles is profiles
[Corrected - Brian]
Mods: Amusing note:
Crikey link spells LP as “Larvartus” then “Larvatus” (Prodeo)
You clearly have no idea of the suffering and economic loss imposed on rural people by 140 metre wind turbines. We are not affected ourselves, but for the past seven years we’ve investigated the effects on others, as well as the economic and class aspects of industrial wind in Victoria.
The most appalling thing is the lack of compassion from progressives. We’ve voted for the Greens since they were founded, but Greens hypocrisy (echoed by many in the ALP) is sickening. They’ve woken up to coal seam gas, but are blind to industrial wind- also an extractive, intrusive process.
Why do you think governments are rolling back domestic solar rorts? Because it’s a class-biased subsidy which generates miniscule amounts of electricity. Wind is a much bigger rort: wind cannot displace a single fossil fuel power station nor power a single light bulb 24/7. Capacity factors struggle to reach 20%. The impact on the environment of thousands of km of ridge-top roads, transmission lines, bird and bat kill etc is severe.
Prodeo’s complacent myopia is an example of why progressive politics is in such a shambles.
Frank, I for one knew very little about the impact of wind turbines on rural people. As a result of this thread I now know more.
There is certainly a case for more investigation, in my view.
You should note Brian, that on Crikey and its related blog sites, Frank Campbell describes mitigation of climate change as a diversion from real environmental issues, and as a “millenarian obsession”.
This doesn’t affect his claims about the deleterious impact of windfarms, which ought to be considered on merit, but it does offer context for him raising the claims. As he hasn’t offered a disclaimer, I thought I’d step in.
There was a few news stories a couple of days ago about a plan to put in wind farms that would cause power bills to rise.
I can’t see many people understanding that.