Turbine shut-downs back on the table as contested Tasmania wind farm gets federal green light

Plans to build a 900 megawatt wind farm on Robbins Island off the coast of North West Tasmania have been given the green light by federal environment minister Murray Watt, clearing the way for the highly contested and long-stalled project to go ahead.

Watt announced the decision on Friday morning, along with a list of “significant additional environmental conditions” to the approval, including the curtailment or shutdown of “all or some” of the project’s up to 100 wind turbines under an adaptive management framework.

The approved proposal includes the construction and operation of associated infrastructure including a bridge between Robbins Island and mainland Tasmania, a wharf and four quarries.

The deadline for a decision on the project had been pushed out seven times by respective environment ministers, amid various legal challenges to the project and appeals by its developers, with the most recent date – August 29 – set by minister Watt in June.

Critics of the Acen Australia project say Robbins Island is the wrong place to build a wind farm due to its role as a habitat for the critically endangered orange bellied parrot and other wildlife, including wedge-tailed eagles and Tasmanian devils.

They also argue that also a project of that size is superfluous to the needs the majority hydro-powered state – and question whether it is economically viable, given the grid and other infrastructure needed to support it.

“The suggestion that we wipe out biodiversity for the sake of renewable energy that goes to the mainland, that will need to be subsidised to be produced, is ridiculous,” the Bob Brown Foundation’s Christine Milne, said on Friday morning, ahead of a press conference.

In his statement on Friday, Watt stressed that the huge project’s approval hinges on a list of “comprehensive conditions,” beyond those previously imposed by the state government’s environmental approvals.

The additional conditions include steps to mitigate and manage risks to the Orange-bellied Parrot, including funding support for a dedicated conservation program, to continue rebuilding the endangered bird’s population.

Acen Australia must also conduct a “comprehensive survey for three years prior to construction” on the species, recording information such as how the parrot uses and flies over the island, to inform ongoing risk management during operations.

Acen Australia must also develop and implement a Bird and Bat Management Plan to evaluate, mitigate and manage the risks of turbine collision for threatened birds.

Crucially, Watt says that the wind farm may be required to curtail or shut down “all or some turbines” under an adaptive management framework, pending the results of an evaluation of the risk of turbine collision for threatened birds.

This looks a lot like a potential return to the “significant mitigation measures” imposed in 2022 by the Tasmania EPA, which effectively required the wind farm’s turbines to shut down for five months of each year to accommodate the movements of the Orange-bellied Parrot.

At the time, Acen Australia chief operations officer David Pollington described the Tasmania EPA decision as “disappointing” and “confusing” and said it “just simply meant the project could not proceed.”

“I’ve been in the industry more than 30 years now and I’ve never seen anything like that,” Pollington said.

The decision was overturned after Acen Australia successfully appealed to the Tasmanian Civil Administrative Tribunal, only for TasCAT’s decision to be appealed in the Supreme Court by the EPA. That appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in February.

Watt says his department has also endorsed conditions set by the Tasmanian government requiring the installation of barriers to protect the island’s disease-free population of Tasmania Devils, as well as measures to protect migratory waterbird species using the East Asian Australasian Flyway.

Conditions have also been added to protect Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagles nesting on the island, including a 1 km buffer zone between turbines and eagle nests.

An Eagle Monitoring and Management Plan will be implemented to provide a framework to detect, report and mitigate any impacts to the eagle population on the island, Watt says.

The conditions have not impressed the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF), which on Friday afternoon released a formal statement saying the EPBC approval was a “death warrant” for the island’s ecosystem.

“Robbins Island should never have been accepted as the site for a mega-windfarm of 100 turbines because it is at the southern end of the East Asian Australian flyway. Migratory birds flying from Arctic Siberia will hit the turbines,” said Milne.

“Murray Watt’s assurances that he will set strict conditions are a joke.

“The Tasmanian EPA set conditions that the turbines shut down for five months of the year to protect the Orange-bellied Parrot and migratory species. However, when the multinational Philippine corporation Acen objected, the decision was overturned.

“When corporations tell this Albanese government to jump, it asks ‘how high?’ From Murujuga with Woodside to Macquarie Harbour with JBS and Cooke, to Robbins Island with Acen, anything the company wants, it gets.” 

Acen Australia managing director David Pollington said the EPBC approval was a key achievement for the company, as well as for the Tasmanian economy and the national renewables industry, more broadly. 

“The decision shows that large, complex projects can be delivered responsibly, balancing overall impacts and conserving biodiversity, with the need for clean energy to address climate change,” he said.  

“It comes at a time when Australia faces a stalling energy transition and looming power shortages as coal exits the system. 

“It also reflects the depth and rigour of Acen’s work to address the assessment criteria and scrutiny applied through the approvals process.” 

Pollington says Robbins Island has an “exceptional” wind resource, generating 30 per cent more power than the average Australian wind project of comparable size.  

He says Acen will now work through the EPBC approval conditions to understand their implications for project design and ongoing environmental monitoring while continuing preparations for the project’s transmission proposal, scheduled for assessment in 2026. 

EPBC approval of Robbins Island wind farm follows closely on minister Watt’s decision to approve the development of the first stage of the huge Marinus Link, a $5 billion undersea power cable linking northern Tasmania with Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

The progress of Marinus Link has been closely connected to the fate of major new renewable energy projects like Robbins Island, as part of big picture plans to make Tasmania the Battery of the Nation, able to pipe plentiful green electrons to the mainland.

Much of the Tasmania-based opposition to Marinus Link has been linked to the belief that it will lead to wind farms being developed “all over Tasmania,” as independent MP Craig Garland put it recently, “including in locations that will have massive impacts on the environment, the community, and our Aboriginal heritage.”

“The Robbins Island wind farm decision is just the beginning of the industrialisation of northern Tasmania, enabled by Marinus Link and the northwest transmission line paid for by the public,” said BBF’s Milne on Friday.

“It is neither ecologically sound nor economically viable, and Bob Brown Foundation will continue to oppose Robbins Island wind farm, Marinus and its transmission lines in the defence of nature.”

Construction of Robbins island is expected to commence in 2031, with the project to support up to 350 direct jobs in construction and up to 50 ongoing operational jobs, Watt says.