There are 85 operating wind farms that are due to retire by 2045, and Australia needs to do some legwork to prepare, according to a report into renewables decommissioning that is due to be released soon.
The data collated in a Re-Alliance report on “retirement age renewables” finds that there are more than 8 gigawatts (GW) of wind projects will hit the end of their lives within the next two decades, covering 3,068 turbines.
The largest number of retiring wind farms is in Victoria, where the owners of 29 sites with 1,025 turbines and a total capacity of 2.7 gigawatts (GW) will need to make decisions around decommissioning, or re-powering.Â
That state is followed by South Australia (20 sites with 746 turbines), New South Wales (14 sites with 584 turbines), Western Australia (17 sites with 443 turbines), Queensland (3 sites with 196 turbines), and lastly Tasmania with just 73 turbines on two sites coming to the end of their lives.Â
When adding the smaller volumes of solar and battery sites that will also come to retirement age, the total capacity of end-of-life renewables in the coming 20 years punches up past 11 gigawatts.
“When you think about it from a cumulative perspective, we see that it’s not just wind that starts to retire in this time frame,” Re-Alliance policy and industry engagement director Bridget Ryan said during a conference this week.
“Obviously, wind is the majority even out to 2045 but we start to see large scale solar and battery assets retiring as well.
“Time is of the essence. We know that the oldest grid-connected projects will start to be decommissioned in the next year or two, and we’re going to learn a lot from the companies that are doing those decommissioning projects.”
A need for more rules
Decommissioning is an extremely sensitive topic, for wind farms in particular.
It is one of the newest arguments deployed by long distance objectors who are trying to thwart renewables projects in NSW, and it’s an issue that makes landowners nervous.
The renewable energy company Pacific Blue is planning to decommission its 18.2 megawatt (MW) Codrington wind farm in Victoria in 2027, and it will be the biggest such project in Australia to date.
The company is extremely aware of the laser-focused attention on it in the lead up to and decommissioning of the site, already firmly rejecting Internet rumours of burying blades in sand dunes and taking its time to set a bar for industry best practice.
“We need to acknowledge and address the gaps, particularly in information, but also… in parallel to addressing policy and practice,” Ryan told the Wind Industry Forum this week.
“A lack of information that communities and landholders can access enables misinformed stories to grow and be weaponised.
“There are a lot of stories… flying around about land holders being left with a decommissioning burden.
“In addition to what lands in the media and in the public realm, we still hear to this day a lot of questions from local councils, environment groups, community and consumer advocates about decommissioning.”
The problem for Pacific Blue, and those which follow, is that best practice doesn’t exist in Australia yet, nor are there any targeted regulations to guide the process.
Earlier this year the Narrogin shire council begged the Western Australia government to create state-wide guidelines, akin to those in NSW, but also give deep thought to decommissioning.
The NSW Wind Energy Guideline devoted just four pages of 59 to outline broad expectations around decommissioning, but also added the worrying rider that if a wind farm owner goes bust the cost of decommissioning falls to the landholder.
One risk the renewables industry could face is a mandated bond paid to governments to cover that risk.
Companies in the mining sector must leave a security deposit with state governments to cover the cost of an operator going bust and leaving the cleanup for taxpayers to cover.
NSW alone now holds just over $4 billion, from about $500,000 in 2005, against public liabilities at 146 mines, or an average of $27.9 million per mine.
If the renewables industry doesn’t act and governments impose mining-like bonds on new projects, it’ll be very expensive, says Umwelt consultant Luke Bettidge.
He recommends developing a decommissioning plan early and making sure the data is understandable over time, so different companies can understand it as projects change hands over time.
Who will carry the cost
Stories of landowners being comfortable with what they’ve negotiated exist, such as sheep and cattle breeder Thomas Gunthorpe who leases land to Squadron Energy for the Bango wind farm.
But stories also abound of people who felt pressured into a deal or didn’t get what they wanted, “Leaving them hoping that their site owner decades into the future, will do the right thing”, Ryan says.
“Developers that we talk to around these concerns say, ‘but we’d never leave the land holders with the decommissioning burden’, and for those companies that is quite likely.
“But trusting or hoping that other companies outside of your business will do the right thing as you would isn’t enough.”
Ryan says governments and industry must start work on the issue now, because communities expect both “to adult this stuff.”
Urgent issues include creating a framework of financial assurance for landowners so they aren’t on the hook for the cost, creating good practice guidelines, addressing recycling, and putting repowering on policy agendas to make it easier to do.
