“Cheaper, cleaner power:” Consultation opens for new Victoria offshore wind zone

The federal and state Labor governments have released plans and opened community consultations for a massive new offshore wind zone off souther Australia, one of at least six planned for the country.

The Southern Ocean zone will include Portland, home to one of Australia’s biggest smelters and energy users, and will stretch across 5,100 square kilometres from Warrnambool in Victoria to Port MacDonnell in South Australia.

The zone has a potential to host up to 14GW of offshore wind capacity, and federal climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen says it can support 3,000 jobs in construction and 3,000 jobs ongoing.

“Powering these South Australian and Victorian communities with cheaper, cleaner energy will support them to unlock new regional job opportunities in energy and manufacturing,” Bowen said in a statement.

He later said that the first power could be generated from the zone by 2030, or even earlier.

“I would envisage we would have first power by 2030. Ideally it would be ahead of that, but, you know, let’s say 2030. Gippsland is a bit of ahead of that,” Bowen told journalists in Portland.

Australia plans at least six offshore wind zones – in Gippsland and the Southern Ocean, along with Newcastle, the Illawarra in NSW, northern Tasmania, and around Bunbury in Western Australia.

So far only one zone has been officially declared – Gippsland in south-east Victoria. It has attracted dozens of groups bidding for the right to conduct detailed feasibility studies, including many of the biggest offshore wind developers in the world.

“Every single offshore wind renewable energy company in the world is looking at Australia now as their key market,” Bowen said.

“Absolutely all of them – looking at Gippsland, looking at Portland, looking at Hunter, Illawarra as the key market in the world.

“The world’s largest island, no offshore wind. We are where the action is at. Now, we are having to compete with the rest of the world in terms of supply chain and getting things built, getting things to Australia.

“But I meet with the chief executives of large renewable companies across the world. They tell me Australia’s offshore wind market is one of the most exciting.”

Skyborn Renewables was one of those welcoming the proposed zone.

“We are excited about this announcement as our Cape Winds Offshore wind farm project is ideally placed within the proposed declared area,” it said in a LinkedIn post.

Cape Winds has proposed capacity of 2GW and is one of more than half a dozen projects already proposed for the area. See RenewEconomy’s Offshore Wind Farm Map of Australia

Victoria sees offshore wind as an essential part of its plans to reach 95 per cent renewables by 2035 and close its remaining brown coal generators. It aims to have the first offshore wind production by 2028, with 2GW of capacity of 2032, 4GW of capacity by 2035, and 9GW by 2040.

State energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio says she is confident that 95 per cent target will be met by 2035.

“We’ll get there absolutely, and we’ll do it in a way that really optimises all of the economic and job opportunities, and regional Victorians are going to be the ones benefitting most from these types of projects,” she said.

Offshore wind in Victoria is expected to fixed to the ocean floor because of the extent of the Continental Shelf, but projects in NSW are expected to use floating wind technology because of the depth of waters in that area.

Submissions will be open from June 28 to August 31, with community sessions to be held in local centres in early August.

Among the topics to be addressed at these sessions will be job and industry opportunities, visual amenity, impact on areas of cultural significance, and common use infrastructure.

Some local opposition groups have also emerged, including one – Love Norah Head – that organised a “paddle out” of surfers last weekend and claimed support from 400 locals protesting against the proposed offshore wind zone from Port Stephens to Norah Head.