Spanish enegy giant flags 330MW wind farm plans for Victoria region with a history

A new 330MW wind farm is being proposed for development near Ballarat in Victoria, with developer Acciona Energía unveiling plans to install 58 turbines outside the towns of Evansford and Waubra – home to one of the state’s earliest wind projects, also owned by Acciona.

Acciona said on Tuesday it was ready to start revealing more details of the proposed Nyaninyuk wind farm, after several years of planning – and ahead of submitting the project for Environmental Effects Statement referral later this year.

Acciona spokesperson Melanie Sutton says that at this early stage in the development process, the company will meet with community to discuss the wind farm’s proposed location as well as how best to ensure its benefits are shared as broadly as possible.

Sutton says that formal consultations on the project will take place next year as part of preparing an EES – “a long and thorough process to engage with everyone formally to collect feedback.

“What we’re sharing today are initial details of the proposed project as it stands now,” Sutton said.

“We have identified an area of interest and have a detailed boundary that we’re working within and want to share this with the community for feedback.

“This early in the process we’re not just looking at the wind farm’s location but also how to design a community program around it that ensures income from the site is shared broadly around the community.

“We want to hear ideas and suggestions from the community about how we can craft this program to meet local needs.”

The wind farm, named in the local language of the Dja Dja Wurrung People for Mt Beckworth, is expected to inject around $700 million of investment into the area and to create long term jobs and career opportunities for the local community.

A windy legacy

The proposed Nyaninyuk Wind Farm is Acciona’s fourth project in Victoria following the Waubra, Mt Gellibrand and Mortlake South wind farms.

“We have a long history developing projects in Victoria and understand the landscape well, Sutton says. “What we want to do now is engage with the community early so we can gather initial impressions.”

This experience will be invaluable, particularly in the early stages of community consultation on the project, with meaningful social engagement by developers becoming ever more crucial as the push to renewables starts to really scale up.

At the same time, anti-wind sentiment is being stirred up by certain politicians, aided by certain media outlets, and targeting certain communities and projects, in a last-ditch bid to prolong the lives of Australia’s remaining fossil fuel assets.

The small Victorian town of ​Waubra, which will be a neighbour to the Nyaninyuk project if it is built, has long been linked, at least by name, to Australia’s anti-wind movement through the Waubra Foundation, one of the nation’s first lobby groups dedicated to fighting wind farm development.

That’s despite, in 2013, 300 of the town’s residents signing a petition asking the Waubra Foundation to change its name, arguing that it is dragging the township’s name through the mud by associating it with anti-wind propaganda.

The Waubra Foundation, as this Conversation article explains, was founded in 2010 by a small group of mostly wealthy landowners who opposed wind farms being established near their country homes.

None of the directors of the foundation lived within 125km of Waubra. Yet in 2013 they voted unanimously to reject the town’s request for a name change, arguing that the group had “brought the name of a small Victorian town to the attention of many people.”

This was not the sort of attention the small country town wanted, however; particularly when – as 2013 short film The way the wind blows depicts – the majority of the town was very happy with the wind farm built there by Acciona in 2009.

For the proposed Nyaninyuk project, Acciona says interested community members are encouraged to visit the dedicated community page and register for updates on progress and consultation events: community.acciona.com.au/nyaninyuk