No More: Time to Stop the Wind Industry Wrecking Our Pristine Forests

Destroying pristine forests and wrecking critical wildlife habitats is all in a day’s work for the wind industry.

Whether it’s wiping out millions of trees across the Scottish Highlands, turning Germany’s Black Forest into sawdust and smoking ruins or ripping the Amazon basin apart to extract the millions of tonnes of balsa wood it needs to build hundreds of thousands of 50-80m turbine blades each year, the wind industry’s ‘couldn’t care less attitude’ is prone to rankle those with real affection for the natural order and the glorious world we live in.

One such character is Dominic Legoe. Dominic has over 30 years’ experience in engineering design, business development and project management, including designing ports and harbours and associated infrastructure.

Dominic has joined the growing chorus of outrage about the Queensland and Federal governments providing the ‘green’ light for the wind industry’s planned and obviously deliberate destruction of Queensland’s pristine dryland tropical forests.

In the following piece – which is an edited extract from a longer paper available in full here (PDF) – Dominic lays bare what’s in store for Queensland, its wild and rugged wilderness, and its peaceful rural communities, if the wind industry is not stopped dead in its tracks.

Queensland’s Renewable Energy Transition Madness
Dominic Legoe
5 September 2023

Now is the time to act to stop the Queensland government approving an environmental disaster!

The Department of Energy and Public Works (EPW) has released two papers:

• Energy & Jobs Plan (September 2022), and
• Renewable Energy Zone Roadmap (REZ) (July 2023).

which spell out a plan for the widespread destruction of huge regions of ancient rainforest for the purpose of installing swathes of wind turbines from Brisbane to Cairns. And it is all up to Tanya Plibersek now to make the final decision to proceed or amend or reject this proposal. We need to tell her no!

Extent of the Proposed Destruction
Currently there are only seven operating wind farms (utility scale) in the state, yet the plan calls for forty-eight wind farms more wind farms to be constructed. The nameplate capacity of the Proposed & ‘in Construction’ wind farms is over 33,000 MW whilst the current existing wind farm capacity is about 1,000 MW. For every turbine there needs to be an allowance of 200 hectares for each 4.5 MW (source SuperGrid Infrastructure Blueprint’- September 2022). Based on that rate, the land required for 33 GW of wind farms is 1.47 million hectares which is about the same as a quarter of Tasmania.

From Wilderness to Industrial Zones
These proposed wind farms will be built in pristine wilderness areas so they will be as close as possible to the main existing 275 kV transmission line that runs all the way up to Cairns. These steep and previously inaccessible areas of the coastal ranges that have escaped 200 years of agriculture will be cleared to make way for the turbines and their access roads.  For example, the Chalumbin region, which is a site of importance for Jirrbal cultural history, is now threatened with a major wind farm proposal

Most of the proposed wind farms (North of Gladstone) are located adjacent National Parks, conservation reserves and some in areas previously earmarked to be National Parks. For example, these areas have been identified as the site for the proposed Upper Burdekin wind farm complex and the Chalumbin wind farm.

You can get an idea of the degree of damage caused when you look at the Mount Emerald wind farm which became operational in 2018. The turbines are sited on top or near the top of the range. The turbines for Mt Emerald are small in height compared to the more recent projects and proposals.

Fast-Tracked Environmental Destruction