‘It’s going to be messy’: advocates balance climate action and conservation amid Queensland’s green energy boom
A map of operating windfarms in Queensland does not take too long to survey – of the 100 or so across Australia, only six of them are in the sunshine state.
But this is about to change in a very big way. According to state government data, there are 46 separate proposals for windfarms in Queensland with four more already under construction.
Many of those plans target the winds that sweep across the spectacular mountains and ridge tops of the Great Dividing Range from central Queensland to the state’s far north.
While this wind-grab will help wrench the state away from its reliance on coal, the movement is taking turbines and access roads into critical habitat for threatened species.
“It’s going to be messy, and some negative projects will get up, but we have to keep our eyes on the broader goals,” the senior manager of energy transitions at WWF Australia, Rob Law, says.
By 2040, Queensland’s energy plan says wind will generate about 40% of the state’s power. In only eight years, the government wants to get from 27% renewable electricity to 70%.
Environment campaigners fought long and hard for this level of ambition and are now having to navigate difficult terrain – advocating for wind power while, at the same time, calling out bad projects and pushing others to make modifications to reduce their impact.
“We are in a position for the first time where we have to consider tradeoffs,” Law says, “and understanding climate change is a significant threat to our biodiversity and renewable energy is a solution to that, but renewable energy can also have impacts on habitats and biodiversity. We are seeing projects being put up that are not in the right place.”
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Clare Silcock, an energy strategist at the Queensland Conservation Council, is tracking the new developments.
Eighteen projects in the state – totalling 11.6GW of electricity generation capacity (the state’s entire coal fleet is 8GW) – are going through federal environment approvals. If they all went ahead, which is unlikely, Silcock says cumulatively about 15,500 hectares of vegetation would need to be cleared.
She said the conservation council wants to see state planning reforms that would better identify areas where projects should not be proposed, or where extreme care is needed.
“The reason we’ve been advocating for renewables is that we’re watching our ecosystems being pushed to the brink by climate change. We definitely believe it’s possible to have a renewable energy industry and to protect biodiversity,” she said.
Conservationists were relieved last month when the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, effectively blocked a windfarm close to the Wet Topics world heritage area because its effects on nature, including threatened spectacled flying-foxes and the northern greater glider, were “too great.”
The federal environment department said the minister was expected to make a decision on Windlab’s downsized Gawara Baya windfarm, about 5km away from the world heritage area and formerly known as the Upper Burdekin windfarm, before the end of this month.
Windlab wants to erect up to 69 turbines and has described efforts to reduce effects on several threatened species on the cattle property, including the Sharman’s rock wallaby, koala, greater glider and the red goshawk.
The director of the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre, Lucy Graham, said what’s driving biodiversity loss in Queensland is not renewable energy projects, but land clearing, mostly for cattle grazing. One study has found between 2016 and 2021 two million hectares of vegetation had been cleared in the state.
But Graham says while perspective is needed, there are real risks from the state’s windfarm developments. Threatened species habitat is precious and the hilltops being targeted by developers will be important refuges in the coming decades as species move up ranges to find cooler climates as global heating pushes up temperatures.
“There are going to be some losers here, but if we don’t have this transition then everyone loses,” she said.
The rush on windfarms is happening, Graham said, against the backdrop of stalled reforms of failing national environment laws and a state planning code for windfarms that needs strengthening. That code is under review.
“It’s not a reassuring situation,” said Graham. “We need the community to have a laser focus on pressuring governments to ensure the reforms happen quickly.”
In February clean energy advocacy group RE Alliance released a guide for the renewables industry in Queensland to collaborate with communities and conservationists to reduce impacts on biodiversity.
The guide said that business-asusual “presents risks, both to the Queensland environment and to social licence for a rapid rollout of renewable energy projects”, but collaboration could “greatly reduce, and in some cases eliminate, these risks”.
“We wanted to get that dialogue going so that industry understands what the environmental constraints are and how this looks from the environmental side,” the national director of RE-Alliance, Andrew Bray, said.
RE-Alliance accepts donations from the industry but donors sign an agreement Bray says allows his group to remain independent.
Bray said most projects in Queensland are targeting the hilly ranges because these are the closest points to high-voltage transmission network where the wind blows the strongest.
The wind in the northern parts of the state tends to blow later in the day and in the evenings, when wind and solar generation farther south is dropping away.
“Wind energy in Queensland is going to be a critical part of the overall energy supply on the eastern seaboard,” he said.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said renewable energy projects were assessed “in the same way as every other project under national environment law”.
“It’s important that we support renewable energy projects, but it has to be the right kind of development, in the right place, done in the right way.
“A decade of the Liberals and Nationals meant emissions were higher for longer. It put renewable energy projects years behind, but Labor is getting on with the job of transforming our energy grid.”
In a statement, the Queensland government’s Department of Housing, Local Government, Planning and Public Works said an amended planning code for windfarms was “currently being considered” and would ensure “areas of high ecological and biodiversity value are protected and construction impacts are better managed”.
The statement said: “In addition to state-level assessments and approvals, windfarms that affect matters of national environmental significance are also required to obtain approvals under the [federal] Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.”