Offshore wind farms end of life

You raise a very good point when it comes to offshore wind farms. Given the difficulty of the terrain and the unseen unknowns below water level, rehabilitating these sites at the end of their (suggested 30 year) lives is an issue which needs to be well thought through before any license is issued.

In the case of the brown coal mines feeding power stations, the owner of each license has a legal responsibility to rehabilitate the mine site on closure of the power plant. While this is a condition of their license, there was apparently very little spelled out as to what the final result was to look like. Accordingly, early suggestions seemed to centre on creating lakes. In other words, leave the hole and fill it with water without consideration for what impact that might have on local hydrology.

Obviously this can’t be the situation with offshore wind farms but, if there wasn’t a lot of thought put into how a site you can see was to be left, how little thought might go into the underwater condition of a site you can’t see?

No matter where they are placed offshore, a proper plan for their end of life should be written into any Wind Farm license agreement for it to operate. It’s exactly because this issue will be out of sight that it should not be out of mind.

And as for impact on birds, I took the advice of letter writer Adrian Fyfe, Sandy Point Gippsland wind farm proposal and did an online search on the topic. I found theconversation.com/wind-farms-are-hardly-the-bird-slayers-theyre-made-out-to-be-heres-why-79567 to be particularly useful.

Laurie Martin, Leongatha