Federal decision on contested Hunter Valley wind farm with state approval delayed again

A 335 MW wind farm cleared for development by the New South Wales government in February is now waiting on federal environmental approval, after a decision on the project was delayed for a second time.

The Bowman’s Creek wind farm was approved for development near Muswellbrook in the NSW Hunter region after developer Ark Energy agreed to a reduction in turbine numbers and other “strict conditions” – making it just the second wind project to gain full state approvals in NSW since early 2021.

The former Epuron project has been in the queue for assessment and approval under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act since 2020.

Federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek was due to make a decision at the end of May on whether or not to give the project the green tick, but delayed that decision to June 24 – likely allowing for consideration of the changes made to the project’s design as part of the NSW decision.

An update posted on the EPBC portal on Monday notified of a further delay, extending the decision making period by another nine working days to July 05.

It is not the first time that a project put forward by Ark Energy has faced delays in the EPBC process.

In April, it withdrew its application for another contested wind project – the Wooroora Station project in north Queensland, after five delays and finally being warned that it was likely to be rejected, despite the plan being cut in half to 294 MW.

The state approval of Bowman’s Creek in February, as Renew Economy wrote at the time, was notable not only for being a rarity in that state, but also for coinciding with an anti-wind rally staged outside federal parliament and led by former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce. Ark Energy has since announced plans for a second stage of the project.

Joyce has been tireless in his opposition to wind energy and has painted his efforts as part of a battle being waged against renewables on behalf of NSW farmers. “These wind farms, swindle factories… they’re just killing us out in the country,” Joyce said recently on 2GB radio.

This does not gel with polling by Farmers for Climate Action, however, which found renewable energy projects to be near the bottom of the list of concerns held by regional Australians.

Rather, those polled said the biggest threats to farming in their local regions were “increased fires and floods driven by climate change” (39.2%), “commercial conduct by big supermarket chains” (18.7%) and “increasing cost of insurance and fertiliser and other inputs” (17.5%).

Just 5.3% nominated the construction of transmission lines on farmland and 7.6% said renewable energy projects.

On the other hand, the poll found that regional people believed tourism (28.9%) to be the biggest opportunity for their community in the next 20 years, followed by renewable energy (21.6%) and healthcare employment (15.8%).

The Bowman’s Creek project is proposed for half way between Sydney and Joyce’s electorate of Tamworth, in the Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone (REZ).

Its approval in NSW was delivered by the state’s Independent Planning Commission, to which the state significant project was referred last year after at least 50 people objected to its development.

In its Statement of Reasons, the Commission said the proposed site is “is suitable for renewable energy development given its location within the Hunter-Central Coast REZ, proximity to existing electricity transmission networks, topography, wind resources, access to the regional road network, and avoidance of major environmental constraints.”