Gippsland to get priority assessment for first offshore wind projects

The Morrison government has designated a region of the Bass Strait, off the Victorian Gippsland Coast, as the first priority area for the development of offshore wind projects.

The designation is the first step towards potential projects being issued a licence for the development of massive wind projects off the Victorian coast, including some of Australia’s first ever offshore wind developments.

The Bass Strait-Gippsland region attracted signficant attention from prospective offshore wind developers, hoping to build Australia’s first offshore project, with more than 6,000MW of potential projects already in the development pipeline.

These include Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, looking to build a 1,000MW Great Southern wind project, Energy Estate and BlueFloat Energy’s 1,300MW Greater Gippsland project, and the massive 2,200MW Star of the South project. Alinta is also proposing a significant offshore wind project.

Offshore wind projects, while more complex to construct and operate, are often able to tap into stronger and more consistent winds – including allowing for larger capacity turbines to be deployed – yielding much higher outputs than can generally be achieved by onshore projects.

Locating projects around the Gippsland region – traditionally home to most of Victoria’s large coal fired power stations – could allow offshore wind projects to utilise network and grid connection infrastructure following the closure of the coal plants.

Until recently, the development of offshore wind farms had effectively been unlawed under federal environmental laws, but amendments were sucessfully passed by federal parliament lifting the prohibition late last year.

The new legislation will come into effect in June, and the priority declaration issued on Tuesday will faciliate an assessment of the Bass Strait-Gippsland region for its suitability to host offshore projects.

Federal assistant energy minister, Tim Wilson, said that he anticipated further declarations of priority areas for offshore wind development would be issued for other regions in the future, and that the declaration of the region within Bass Strait could unlock thousands of jobs.

“We’re pressing down on the accelerator and delivering a pathway to decarbonisation,” Wilson said.

“Our government understands that a strong offshore energy sector can help provide clean and affordable power to households, businesses, and industrial consumers.”

“An offshore electricity industry could create thousands of new jobs and drive the economic growth of our regional and coastal economies,” Wilson added.

Energy Estate, which is co-developing a 1.3GW offshore wind farm with BlueFloat Energy in the proposed region, welcomed the announcement, saying it hoped that other priority regions would follow.

“The Bass Strait off Gippsland has world leading qualities for offshore wind – abundant wind resources, skilled workforce, opportunities to complement the existing oil and gas industry and good infrastructure including ports and transmission,” Energy Estate principal Simon Currie told RenewEconomy.

“At the same time we hope that the federal government moves quickly to announce additional areas for assessment in other States to ensure that the momentum for the offshore wind industry across Australia is maintained.”