Acen scores second EPBC approval in a week, as biggest CIS tender winner given federal green tick

The Philippines-based renewable and energy storage developer Acen Australia has scored its second major win in under a week, after receiving federal environmental approval for its 943 megawatt (MW) Valley of the Winds project in New South Wales. 

The wind project, which will likely come with a 320 MW, two-hour big battery, has been awarded approval under the federal EPBC Ac t, albeit with conditions forbidding land clearing outside the development corridor.

It follows the announcement earlier this week that Acen Australia’s giant but highly contested Robbins Island wind project in north-west Tasmania had been approved by federal environment minister Murray Watt.

Acen Australia has been working on the Valley of the Winds project since at least 2018, according to the original scoping report. It has since reduced turbine numbers from 175 to 131 to get it through state planning processes, and try to accommodate community feedback. 

It was the biggest of the 19 projects that won the federal government’s first generation auction under the new Capacity Investment Scheme in 2024, and won final state approval for development by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) this year.

Although the project now has all of its planning approvals in place, it’s still facing a lawsuit from old-moneyed Marshall Baillieu, who owns a property immediately next to the proposed site. 

In July, Baillieu’s lawyers asked for fellow objectors to join the legal cause, and the suit is currently working its way through the NSW Land and Environment Court with the next hearing on 15 September. 

The 88-year-old is a cousin to former Victoria premier Ted Baillieu. He’s objecting to the project on grounds that it includes turbines too close to a long-demolished home he says he plans to rebuild. 

Acen Australia’s other win under the federal EPBC process, for Robbins Island, which was approved on the eighth try.

The deadline for the decision was pushed out seven times by respective environment ministers, amid various legal challenges to the project and appeals by its developers, with the most recent date – August 29 – set by minister Watt in June.

It comes with conditions however that hark back to the original state requirements that would have shut down turbines for five months of the year to protect extremely endangered orange-bellied parrots. 

The conditions include the curtailment or shutdown of “all or some” of the project’s up to 100 wind turbines under an adaptive management framework.

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