NSW puts out call for wind farms to be located in pine plantations

The New South Wales Forestry Corp, which manages more than two million hectares of State forests, has put out a call for renewable energy projects to be built alongside its state-run pine plantations.

“Producing renewable energy and renewable timber side-by-side on the softwood plantation estate is an exciting prospect and one that we are very interested in exploring,” said Forestry Corporation CEO Anshul Chaudhary.

The launch of the first Registration of Interest (RoI) process follows the passage of legislation last year that allows the development of renewable energy projects, such as wind farm, in State pine plantations.

“Wind farms successfully operate in softwood forests overseas and we have received a number of unsolicited proposals for a range of renewable technologies here in NSW, so anecdotally we believe there is strong interest,” said Chaudhary.

“We are now commencing a formal process to identify who might submit a proposal and where renewable energy projects might be feasible.”

The Forestry Corp estimates that around 225,000 hectares of state forest pine plantations in NSW are located near existing energy infrastructure.

However, the corporation is interested in projects that might combine wind energy, for instance, with the “renewable timber” that can also be used for energy projects.

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.