Spanish energy giant sends first of two forest-based wind farms into federal green queue

A decade ago the concept of mixing wind turbines with tree plantations was unheard of in Australia, but a new addition to the federal EPBC queue now brings the current total of such project proposals to at least eight.

Spanish energy giant Iberdrola is seeking approval for 33 turbines in the Mullions Range softwood pine plantation in New South Wales (NSW), which deliver 248 megawatts (MW) of capacity, and which is one of two forestry projects it’s pitching in the state.

The project is located about 20 km north of Orange and is one of five solicited by the state’s Forestry Corporation in 2023. 

Forestry Corp issued an “investigation permit” in 2024, and if the project proves feasible Iberdrola expects it to take around six years to deliver.

The EPBC referral shows Iberdrola is planning to install turbines with a tip height of up to 250 metres above ground level and a hub height of 150m above ground level.

The developer is looking at an area slightly more than 2,000 hectares, with an actual disturbance area of about 400 hectares at this stage.

Plantations are seen as an ideal location for wind turbines. 

They’re already a monoculture, and have existing roads made for heavy trucks. And they’re also harvested as well, meaning that any trees cut down to make way for turbines would one day have been cut down anyway. 

Or, as Iberdrola’s EPBC referral puts it, the “forestry land use has resulted in a highly modified landscape and a generally degraded ecological condition across the majority of the site.”

Native vegetation is limited to areas set aside for existing transmission corridors through the plantation, and while there may be some hollow-bearing habitat trees, “fauna habitat quality is generally low, reflecting the dominance of [pine] plantation forest.”

While several endangered and threatened flora and fauna were noted in the wider area, just koalas and white throated needletails were spotted inside the 2000 hectare footprint.

Forest wind all the rage, except in Queensland

The NSW Forestry Corp is going all in on wind projects for its softwood plantations, the only ones that state law allow renewable energy to operate in. 

There are four other projects with permits in the state’s commercial plantations, the 158 MW Four Mile Creek project, also owned by Iberdrola, Someva Renewables’ and Mainstream Renewable Power’s 500 MW Sunny Corner, Neoen’s 1.2 gigawatt (GW) Bondo, and TagEnergy’s 2 gigawatt proposal The Pines. 

Other states have also considered plantation renewables.  The first was the Delburn project in Gippsland, Victoria, which was first proposed in 2019 and was recently sold to the Victoria SEC. 

The 600 MW Kentbruck project, on the other side of the state, received a state planning nod in January, much to the disappointment of conservationists concerned about nearby wetlands. 

Queensland had one forestry wind project, the 1.2 GW Forest Wind, but planning minister Jarrod Bleijie convinced colleagues to cancel the law allowing renewables in state-owned forests, effectively killing the project – pending an appeal.

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