Willatook decision could block dozens of future wind farms in Victoria

Planning Minister Sonia Kilkenny released an assessment of the impact the wind farm could have on the surrounding environment, setting unprecedented restrictions on the construction of the project and buffer zones between the turbines.

The Clean Energy Council (CEC) said the proposal set "a disastrous precedent for future renewable energy development in Victoria" and it "would jeopardise the state's renewable energy and climate goals" if adopted by the government.

The CEC's energy generation and storage director Nicholas Aberle said the assessment also revealed the huge holes in Victoria's planning policy when it came to wind farms.

"The decision relies on draft brolga standards which have not been finalised or approved by government, and European standards developed for European bats," Dr Aberle said.

The assessment has proposed roughly 1km buffer zones around any wetlands that are within 2km of possible brolga breeding wetlands. Those distances were based largely on draft guidelines the state government attempted to implement in 2020 but subsequently abandoned.

The wind farm's developer, Wind Prospect, said the lack of clear policy left companies in the dark. Wind Prospect managing director Ben Purcell said the policy vacuum made would discourage renewables investment in Victoria, especially after the Willatook decision.

"The lack of clear policy... (means) that individual projects must establish their own method of addressing potential impacts, resulting in long delays to project development, increased costs and wasted resources," Mr Purcell said.

He argued Wind Prospect had already created large buffer zones between known brolga habitats and proposed turbine locations.

"Our assessments predict a worst case scenario of the brolga population being reduced by less than one bird over the 25 life of the project compared with baseline conditions," he said.

Mr Purcell said Wind Prospect's modelling showed the wind farm would not be the main issue for brolgas and bent-wing bats in the Willatook area. The main cause of brolga deaths would be fox predation, while the main issue for the bats was habitat loss.

But farmer and brolga enthusiast Hamish Cumming said even the increased buffers didn't go far enough. Mr Cumming has spent years fighting other wind farm developments throughout the south-west and argued any turbine within 5km of a brolga nesting site would disturb the birds.

Mr Purcell said perhaps the most concerning aspect of the Planning Minister's assessment was the way it suddenly moved the goalposts for environmental impact standards in Victoria.

The assessment followed a four-year environmental effects statement process and a 15-day planning inquiry and panel involving hundreds of hours of discussion with the government about what would be required for the project to be deemed environmentally compliant. Mr Purcell said at no stage in those hundreds of hours of discussions was anything proposed that even remotely approached the strict rules set out in the assessment.

"The Minister's assessment includes recommendations that go well beyond existing guidelines (in the case of brolga) and other topics that were not raised throughout our engagement with government or the subsequent panel inquiry (such as the construction moratorium)," he said.

"This represents an issue not only for Wind Prospect, but for all every proponent of any infrastructure project navigating the planning system in Victoria."

Mr Purcell said it was a shock to spend years and millions of dollars planning a billion-dollar project only for the goalposts to be moved at the last minute.

The Minister's assessment was heavily influenced by the recommendations of the Willatook planning panel and The Standard understands one member of the panel pushed particularly hard for the strict standards that ended up in the final proposal.

Dr Aberle said the resulting standards were unscientific and unworkable.

"The arbitrary requirement for a five-month window in which construction is not allowed to proceed has been imposed without being evaluated through an already time-intensive environmental effects statement process," he said.

"This is not supported by evidence and is simply not workable in practice for any wind farm."

Mr Purcell said a range of other projects being developed in the south-west could be affected by the assessment

He said ultimately the ecological threat to brolgas and bent-wing bats from climate change would need to be balanced against the potential dangers of a single wind farm if the Minister's assessment caused Victoria to miss its transition goals.

"Wind Prospect is considering the implications of the Minister's assessment and seeking constructive engagement with the government to fix this by finding a way to salvage the Willatook Wind Farm project and thereby send a clear message to the renewable energy industry that the government is serious about working with industry to meet its targets," he said.