NSW Forestry gets 2.5GW of wind project proposals for state pine forests

The New South Wales Forestry Corporation is now seeking formal proposals for large scale renewables and storage in its state-owned pine forests after receiving more than 2.5GW of proposals for wind farms alone.

Forestry Corp launched a registration of interest (RoI) process earlier this year, as we reported here, to determine if renewable energy developers would be interested in building projects in some of its 2 million hectares of pine plantations.

They were, possibly because of the attraction of dealing with a single landowner, and also because of the sheer scale of the projects that could be built there.

Forestry Corp says it received nearly 50 responses to the RoI, identifying significant renewable energy production potential that could power over 1.5 million homes annually. It said just five sites identified by developers could host up to 2.5GW of wind capacity.

The réponse has prompted Forestry Corp to take the next step and put out a call for Expressions of Interest (EoI) to develop renewable energy generation and storage projects in its plantations near Oberon, Sunny Corner, Bondo, Orange, and Laurel Hill.

“We see co-locating renewable energy developments within timber plantations as an innovative opportunity to boost renewable energy production in NSW and the renewable energy market agrees, with 47 providers registering their interest,” said Gavin Jeffries, Forestry Corporation’s strategy and risk manager.

“Wind farms successfully operate in softwood forests overseas and in Australia, state forest pine plantations are ideal locations because they are often remote from local communities and homes but have good connections to the existing high voltage transmission network,” said Jeffries.

“They are located in windy areas and have an existing road network.”

Forestry Corp says that the capacity in pine forest hosted wind farms could be more than the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, and the forests could also host other technologies such as pumped hydro and battery storage.

“We will only ever consider a renewable energy project that is compatible with our activities to produce renewable timber, provide community access, manage fire and maintain sustainable forest management,” Jeffries concluded.

“We also have strict requirements limiting the footprint of developments and ensuring we maintain an ongoing supply of renewable timber from plantations.”

Other state governments have already been looking at opening up parts of their state pine plantations to wind energy projects.

In Queensland in early 2020, the state government gave development approval for a massive wind project of up to 1,200MW that will be located in state pine forest in the Wide Bay-Burnett region.

The $2 billion project put forward by Forest Wind would comprise up to 226 turbines and would be located in state forest used as pine plantations between the towns of Gympie and Maryborough.

A similar project has been proposed by French renewable energy developer Neoen, which is looking at a 900MW wind project and battery hub in western Victoria.