Huge Top End solar and battery project drops court bid to remove native title claims

TE H2 has dropped its bid to remove any native title claims to land where it wants to build the Wak Wak solar project in the Northern Territory.

The subsidiary of French energy giant Totalenergies withdrew the Federal Court application on February 12, a move it said last year was to find the rightful owners as opposed to cancelling all native title over the property.

The Wak Wak solar project is a 2.7 gigawatt (GW) solar farm and 6 gigawatt hour (GWh) battery on the Koolpinyah station, a pastoral lease near Humpty Doo and about 48km south of Darwin.

TE H2 hopes to start construction in 2028 and has a longer term plan to use it to power a hydrogen facility in Darwin’s Middle Arm industrial precinct.

The withdrawal was due to working with the Northern Land Council (NLC) to find the native title party, the ABC is reporting TE H2 managing director Kam Ho as saying.

“We are very pleased to be working with the NLC, and establishing relationships with traditional owners is a genuine partnership that we want to demonstrate through future collaboration through heritage assessments as part of the journey to entering ILUAs [Indigenous Land Use Agreement],” Ho told Renew Economy.

An NLC spokesperson reiterated to Renew Economy that it represents all native title holders in the Top End of the Northern Territory, and those in the area where the Wak Wak project is planned.

“The NLC strongly opposes the use of non-claimant applications to determine the Native Title Holders for any area, as the this is not the purpose of a non-claimant application. A non-claimant application seeks to establish that no native title exists in an area,” they said.

The court application in late November turned TE H2 into a lightning rod for local anger, who didn’t believe a major corporation could not find the right people to speak to after two and a half years in the area. 

The NLC was “disappointed” while local Nigel Brown, a Wulna and Larrakia man and CEO of Aboriginal Investment NT, said the move took them by surprise. 

TE H2 head of H2 development Rontheo van Zyl told Renew Economy it was a procedural step to ensure they spoke with the correct entity. 

Brown commented on LinkedIn that “now the work begins”.

The $2.8 billion Wak Wak project will sit almost on top of the proposed AAPowerlink transmission line, set to take electricity from Suncable’s 20 GW solar project deep in the Northern Territory to Darwin, and from there to Asia.

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