Why Gippsland is key to Australia’s COP27 promise

THE rollout of Gippsland’s offshore wind industry is expected to be supercharged after Australia joined a growing number of countries in signing on to the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA).

GOWA’s objective is to act as a global driving force for an ambitious uptake of offshore wind and contribute to achieving a total offshore wind capacity of a minimum of 380 GW by 2030 and an installed capacity increase of at least 70 GW per year from 2030.

Australia presently has no offshore wind facilities.

The most advanced of the projects, the Star of the South, is proposing to locate 200 turbines off the Gippsland coast, between Woodside Beach and McLoughlin’s Beach, with a generating capacity of 2.2 GW.

Other international companies are scoping out declared development zones, some within 5km of the Bass Coast and South Gippsland foreshore, that will see 300 metre-high turbines clearly visible from the Penguin Parade beach, Cape Woolamai, Kilcunda, Inverloch and Wilsons Promontory.

Members of GOWA:

• Will form a global multi-stakeholder community of practice, collaborating to drive national, regional, and global ambitions and remove barriers to the deployment of offshore wind in new and existing markets.
• Will make individual commitments on how to contribute to GOWA’s objectives, be it as governments, investors, financial institutions, project developers, technology providers, off-takers, international organisations, knowledge institutions, or civil society organisations.

The Australian Government is yet to commit to an overall target for wind energy but may do so “in the coming weeks” according to Australia's Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, while addressing the COP27 general assembly in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

“Australia wants to be a renewable energy superpower and in coming weeks, I'll be delivering Australia's first annual climate change statement to our Parliament, a comprehensive and transparent stocktake of how we're tracking against these indices, and how we'll make further progress,” Minister Bowen said.

“Because of the urgency with which we must act it requires frank conversations about where we are now where we're going, and how we're going to get there. Collectively, we now have just 85 months to achieve our 2030 targets. We all know this is the critical decade. And that means national action, but it also means multilateral action, and action by every single one of our institutions.”

The Australian Parliament sits a further eight days in 2022; from November 21 to November 24 and November 28 to December 1, so it may be that a binding offshore wind energy target will be announced then, and we'll hear more of Gippsland's role.

However, while Australia hasn’t announced its “individual commitment” in joining the GOWA, private companies have already offered to develop a collective capacity of 40GW in Australia.

And, in the run up to the State Election the Andrews Government committed Victoria to the ambitious targets of 2 GW of offshore generation by 2032, 4 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2035 and 9 GW by 2040 – that would amount to four or five projects of the scale of the Star of the South, or almost 1000 turbines, many of them to be located off the Gippsland coast, easily visible from some of our most iconic beach locations.

Star of the South say they could have turbines spinning off Victoria’s coast by 2028, others have a minimum six to 10-year lead time.

A sticking point could be the rollout of high-voltage transmission lines to connect these projects to the east-coast electricity grid, hence the preference for a Gippsland location, close to the Latrobe Valley's electricity infrastructure.

Expressing local fears

Whilst offering in principle support, the Bass Coast Shire Council recently expressed concerns about the proposal to declare “an area off the coast of Gippsland, Victoria” as a preferred location for the development of wind energy infrastructure under the ‘Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act 2021 (Proposed Area) Gippsland, Victoria’

Here are some of the concerns and comments the Bass Coast Shire expressed in its submission about the proposal in October 2022:

• The proposed area identified is extensive and given the size of current and possible future turbines, too close to the shore,
• The proposed area would have a significant impact on several nationally iconic views including the globally recognised Phillip Island Penguin Parade,
• The area is an environmentally vulnerable and sensitive marine environment,
• The impact on whale migration, the iconic penguin parade and mass shearwater migration requires independent investigation,
• The aggregated impact of multiple environmental issues would affect the visitor economy of the region,
• Local Government has limited resources to effectively play its role in the planning and approval of projects,
• Developing new industries such as off-shore wind in Australia will generate significant opportunities for economic prosperity in region and careful consideration and planning is required to maximise local participation and benefit while mitigating negative impacts,
• Consideration of construction and servicing infrastructure particularly waterside is required when determining most appropriate areas,
• There is no detail regarding onshore location of works including the need for underground transmission and project consolidation of shared infrastructure and easements.

“Bass Coast is fortunate to have a unique and precious natural landscape, and we are grateful to the Victorian Government for declaring Bass Coast a Distinctive Area and Landscape. The entire Westernport region forms a critical part of our unique environment, supported by the international recognition under the RAMSAT Convention on Wetlands of International Importance in 1982. It is also recognised as a UNESCO biosphere reserve, due to the instance of threatened species, ecological communities and migratory species. These elements should be the starting point for any consideration of off-shore renewable energy industries.

“In Bass Coast our environment is our economy. This statement reflects the inextricable link between the community and visitor experience and the natural world. The Phillip Island region is the second most dependent economy on tourism in Australia after Uluru.

“We encourage Commonwealth, State and Local governments to work collaboratively to streamline the approval process for such applications. Since the recent announcement by the Federal Government, Council has been approached by several potential offshore wind proponents. Council is concerned about how it will be able to contribute effectively to any approval processes which includes Commonwealth approval, State (EES) approval, and local land use planning approval, all of which will require significant resourcing.

“Council would welcome the opportunity to directly discuss how the approval process may be structured to reduce the burden on our community and enable us to effectively review and comment on the numerous applications we are likely to receive.

“Finally, given the limited information in the current Notice to Declare an Area proposal, it is difficult for Council and the Bass Coast community to form a final position on this matter. We would encourage the Federal and State governments to continue to engage collaboratively and in a coordinated approach to avoid engagement fatigue, given the number of potential applications Council is aware of.

“Council and the community are passionate about protecting our unique environment. We would like to emphasise that Bass Coast is supportive of the transition to renewable energy and the considerable benefits it may bring, however it cannot be at the expense of our environment.”

Minister Bowen's COP27 address

Here’s what Minister Bowen said at COP27, starting with some Torres Strait Islander words about what a privilege it was to speak to the conference.

“The people of the Torres Strait have inhabited their lands for 70,000 years, for them, for our brothers and sisters in the Pacific family, for our farmers paying the price of climate change, for Australians facing ever-increasing risk of flood and bushfire, for everyone around the world facing natural disasters that are increasingly unnatural, Australia is acting, and for them, the world must act.

“Australia is back as a constructive, positive and willing climate collaborator. One of our first acts on coming to government was to increase our emissions reduction target to 43% by 2030. In a nationally determined contribution and to enshrine that law in the law of the land.

Within this decade, 82% of Australia's energy supply will be renewable. The future of energy is renewable, not just for Australia, but it must be for the world. And it's urgent that we accelerate the renewables transformation this decade. Such a transformation is both a challenge and an opportunity. But mostly it is fundamentally necessary, if we are to have any hope of success in mitigating climate change.

That's why it's so important. We send the message from this COP, loud and clear. We remain committed to last year's commitment to hold the world as close as possible to 1.5 degrees of warming and that we must embrace a faster and more orderly transition to renewable energy as part of these efforts.

The cost of letting these priorities fall to the wayside is too great. Climate change is the primary economic and security challenge for our region and an existential threat to the blue Pacific continent. That's why we're boosting assistance to the region with an additional $900 million to support the Pacific families developing and resilience in dealing with the climate emergency. And that's why along with Pacific nations we are seeking to host COP 31 in 2026. Pacific voices have led this debate for decades and they must be heard.

Unfortunately, we know the story of our region. The story that we will tell if the world fails to act, from island communities facing the fight for their existence, to towns and cities battling evermore frequent bushfires and floods. Our co-hosting will seek to accelerate global action and harness the economic opportunities for the clean energy transition.

While Australia has increased our ambition, we know there is much more to do. That's why just as this COP is focusing on ambition, and implementation, Australia's government is focusing on real emissions reductions as well through our $20 billion fund to transform our energy grid and many other policies. Because, while we talk about the risks of climate change, we also need to think about the immense economic opportunities that come with action, and Australia wants to be a renewable energy superpower.

In coming weeks, I'll be delivering Australia's first annual climate change statement to our Parliament, a comprehensive and transparent stocktake of how we're tracking against their indices, and how we'll make further progress. Because the urgency with which we must act requires frank conversations about where we are now, where we're going, and how we're going to get there. Collectively, we now have just 85 months to achieve our 2030 targets.

We all know this is the critical decade. And that means national action, but it also means multilateral action, and action by every single one of our institutions. Our international financial architecture was built for a different time and different challenges. Some of our financial institutions are stepping up to this task, our most important global job, but others are not.

Just as we commit to this agenda as individual nations our multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, must help be wholeheartedly committed to this task from their purpose and their actions. We have a moral imperative and a driving need for institutions to work with countries across the developed and developing world, not only to reduce emissions, but respond to a changing climate and its economic impact on nations.

That will mean increasing the proportion of funding spent on climate but also ensuring that such funding doesn't saddle developing countries with unsustainable debt. This fight cannot be done by one notion. All emitters past, present and future have a responsibility to act. We must drive an inclusive climate agenda. I reaffirm Australia's commitment to ambitious and necessary change and pledge to be a strong and constructive partner along the way. Thank you.