Tasmania has a new controversial wind project: A 3 GW behemoth proposed for Tarkine wilderness

A massive 3 gigawatt (GW) wind proposed proposed for the Tarkine wilderness in north western Tasmania is shaping up to be the state’s most controversial renewable energy project to date.

The developer, Westcoast Renewable Energy ,wants to use some 40,000 hectares of public reserve land, as well as private land, and install 500 turbines at an estimated cost of about $6 billion.  

But conservationists are lining up to oppose what has been dubbed the Whaleback Ridge wind farm – and bringing data with them.

The northern section of the proposed site is in the Takayna/Tarkine, area wilderness that many environmentalists say should have already been declared to be a World Heritage Area, but has not been because of broken promises by federal Labor.

The region is celebrated for its biodiversity, and it includes a known habitat for the EPBC-listed blue-winged parrot, says Bob Brown Foundation Takayna campaigner Scott Jordan. 

“We are recording particularly blue winged parrot [sightings]. We know they exist and they breed [there], it’s an important place for them on their migration,” Jordan told Renew Economy.

He says his team are currently taking sightings of threatened birds in the area and have uploaded about half of the data collected so far to Tasmania’s Natural Values Atlas.  

The current listed sightings on Tasmania’s Natural Values Atlas of blue winged parrots in the area Westcoast Renewable Energy is keen to build a wind farm. Image: Natural Values Atlas.

The southern section of the site includes existing conservation reserves and areas marked for reservation in the now-defunct Tasmanian Forest Agreement.

“We’re waiting for the company to put its information out for public comment,” Jordan says. 

“Each of the proposed 500 turbines requires new access roads, massive concrete footings, cable trenches and extensive drainage systems, completely changing this landscape and destroying the heritage values.”

Little information is available about the project yet, aside from that revealed during the state process to determine whether it would have major project status, which it gained in August last year. 

Those documents show plans for turbines with a tip height of up to 250m, with stage one being a 288MW project in its own right.

New transmission lines are likely to be needed as the documents suggest the existing Reece-Farrell line only has capacity for about 10 per cent of the proposed project’s output — a factor that Jordan says will likely mean new lines through Tarkine rainforests.

Westcoast Renewable Energy says stage one would take about two years to build and 170 jobs — although on its website it claims stage one could create up to 1000 jobs. 

Renew Economy has contacted the developer for comment, but the company’s website says the area isn’t used much by threatened birds and that environmental surveys it’s already done “confirm a low likelihood of impact on threatened species with “exclusion zones” established to avoid impacts”.

In the major project status documents, the developer suggests the enormous amount of electricity generated by the project could go towards Tasmania’s increasingly faint dream of becoming a green hydrogen producer.

But indicating just how challenging a project of this size and scope might be to get through the different federal and local planning processes, is Tasmania’s other very controversial wind farm on Robbins Island. 

The 900 MW Robbins Island wind project is up to its seventh delay under two different ministers in the federal environmental process, indicating how tough the going may be for Westcoast Renewable Energy. 

The developer itself is very local, growing out of a 2006 idea between farmer Royce Smith and entrepreneur Alex Simpson who built the Granville Harbour wind farm, which is at the western tip of where the new project is proposed. 

Earlier, the Bob Brown Foundation criticised a social media post by an independent candidate in the upcoming state election, Craig Garland, which championed the proposal.

“This monstrous proposed project is 5 times as large as the controversial Robbins Island proposal, with a proposed 500 turbines,” the foundation said.

“Each of the proposed 500 turbines requires new access roads, massive concrete footings, cable trenches and extensive drainage systems, completely changing this landscape and destroying the heritage values. It will be mass industrial destruction of an intact landscape,” Jordan said in the statement.

“Craig and the major parties have misjudged this terribly. Takayna deserves World Heritage nomination, not to be carved up by private developers for private profits.”

The Australian Heritage Council recommended Takayna for National Heritage listing in 2013. The Tasmanian Forest Agreement Independent Verification Group Reports found that Takayna met multiple criteria for World Heritage Listing. Both assessments included Whaleback Ridge.