Neoen gets green light for first WA wind project, despite local council opposition

Neoen Australia’s first wind project in Western Australia has been waved through its final approvals process, but it wasn’t without opposition on the day. 

The 200 megawatt (MW) Narrogin wind farm will potentially include a 100 MW, 200 MWh battery component in the future, but it skipped through environmental approvals with both state and federal bodies saying it didn’t need further review.

The $650 million project will see construction start from February 2026 and promises 15 ongoing jobs for the area. 

The approval is for 23 turbines with a tip height of 291 metres, a reduction of the original proposal last year for 28 turbines. 

During the hearing, opponents again raised concerns around noise and the way turbines will change the rural vista, while two shire councils continued to ask the development assessment panel (DAP) to give more weight to the locally-made renewable energy policies set up to ensure renewable energy projects are built in line with community wishes. 

But while DAP commissioner Ray Haeren was sympathetic to the fears, he said last week that change is coming and the emerging effects of climate change mean it’s in everyone’s interests to accept this particular form of change.

“There is a government position, both at a state and a national level, around the energy transition and it is in that backdrop that we need to be able to move forward,” he said during the hearing last week.

“Although there may be elements which we are having to deal with along the way, which are around change, and change is difficult, we are also dealing with the significant issues around the climate change issue and insurance companies not wishing to cover certain areas. 

“It’s in that macro backdrop that we need to understand that it is, in my view, both within our personal and also government prerogative to be seeking to enable this sort of development to occur.”

In terms of the visual impact of turbines on the landscape, Haeren said turbines “are going to become increasingly part of the landscape.”

If views and noise are concerns for individuals, the shire councils are still deeply distrustful of renewable energy developers.

The Williams shire deputation was still pushing hard to for the panel to “hard wire” a community benefits fund condition into the approval, preferably using the New South Wales (NSW) suggested fund payment rates of $1,050/MW pa for wind, $850/MW pa for solar and $150/MWh pa for batteries. 

The regional planning assessment again declined to include a community enhancement fund as a condition of the approval, saying that it didn’t have a “planning purpose” under the state’s regulations. 

The $225,000 community fund was instead recommended by the regional development panel outside the approval. 

The panel has so far rejected council moves to insert community funds and other community benefits such as public art into development approvals several times since the issue first came up earlier this year. 

Ace Power, TrinaSolar and South Energy have all defeated attempts to bind them to specific fund structures and payment values. 

Neoen has not had a smooth run in its first Wheatbelt project, with a Narrogin shire councillor accusing the developer last year of ignoring a new local planning policy set up to make sure renewable energy projects are built in line with community expectations. 

Narrogin and the surrounding Wheatbelt shires have been struggling with the influx of renewable energy projects on their patches.

In 2023 Narrogin put in place draft policies guiding how renewable energy should be implemented, and earlier this year released a set of guidelines on how renewables should be handled, in the absence of any guide from the state. 

But in its environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Narrogin wind project, Neoen claimed that the 2023 policy “would make most wind projects unviable while being very conservative and not evidence based.”

Neoen says it has been engaging with local stakeholders since 2022 and has promised to “go above and beyond” what the state requires when it comes to benefits sharing schemes.

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