Wind & Solar Rent-Seekers Rage Against Communities Saving the Environment

The wind industry’s social licence looks increasingly like a licence to destroy everything in its path, including prosperous rural communities and precious ecosystems.

Wiping out huge tracts of pristine forests – habitat to rare and endangered critters of all kinds – and slicing and dicing avian predators, like hawks, falcons and eagles and bats is also apparently included in their so-called ‘licence’. And, when they spear them into the ocean floor, the license is taken to extend to the lawful killing of whales, porpoises and dolphins, and an endless trail of mangled seabirds.

So, when local communities and the politicians that attempt to represent them seek to curb or limit the scope of their self-issued ‘licence’, the wind industry and its propaganda wing descend to their very own form of indignant apoplexy.

How dare anyone object to the pointless habitat destruction, community disruption and the mindless slaughter of birds, bats and whales?

Remember this is all about saving the planet, right?

Giles Parkinson from Ruin Economy heads up the wind and solar propaganda team for rent-seekers Downunder.

Here he is in unbridled outrage mode, railing against planning controls that seek to limit the destruction these things inevitably cause on all of the accounts identified above.

NSW blots out nearly entire state for wind projects – few areas deemed “desirable” for turbines
Renew Economy
Giles Parkinson
14 November 2023

The NSW government has blotted out nearly the entire state as “less suitable” for wind farms, with few if any areas deemed “desirable” for new projects under new draft planning guidelines issued on Tuesday.

The guidelines, which include hefty new fees for wind and solar projects to provide funds to local communities as a way of overcoming social licence issues, are ostensibly about fast-tracking the planning process for new projects.

Some developers, however, have deemed the new fees as a form of tax. But the maps published with the new guidelines present an even greater problem.

They highlight huge swathes of the state deemed “desirable” or suitable for solar farms – mostly on or close to existing or proposed transmission lines – but few or no areas deemed desirable for wind projects.

Particularly noticeable is the New England area, where federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has been leading a raucous campaign against wind farms in particular, but also solar projects and new transmission lines. There is no part of New England deemed “desirable” in the guidelines.

The new map provided by the state government (above) shows only a tiny amount of sites deemed “suitable” west of Goulburn – ironically in the Hume electorate of one of the most vocal anti-wind campaigners of all, former energy minister Angus Taylor – and near Dubbo.

The suitable sites are highlighted in yellow. “Desirable” areas are highlighted in red, and “less suitable” in green.

“It seems wrong … a tiny amount of sites near Goulburn and Dubbo. Ouch!” said one renewable energy developer. “It must be a mistake.”

But apparently not. The document notes that “it is challenging” to find any sites for wind turbines that do not have “significant conflicts”. Industrial wind farms have proved particularly problematic in the NSW planning pipeline, with only one project approved in the last four years, according to the industry.

More recently, apart from the Joyce-led campaign against onshore wind projects, local groups have been fuelling opposition to proposed new offshore wind zones in the Illawarra and Newcastle, including emphasising the threat to migrating whales.

The renewable energy industry has already had a set back with the delay to so-called “access rights” – which were to be offered to new projects hoping to secure a place on the grid that would not be constrained. The first tender for access rates has been cancelled and pushed back another six months.

The planning guidelines published by the state government say the map shows “the most desirable areas for wind energy development considering key commercial factors and high-level environmental constraints.”

It says these wind resource potential, the proximity to existing and planned transmission infrastructure, access to major energy users, available network capacity, development and land use, land value, land use zoning, areas of high biodiversity value, and distance to major towns and population centres, national parks and reserves.

The guidelines – the first since 2016 – also include more clarity about setbacks, including a 2km setback for homes with visibility of the turbines, and 500 metre setbacks for recreational areas and national parks.