Bid to block wind farm blown away
MINISTER: CORRECT PROCEDURE FOLLOWED
Department ‘considered, evaluated and assessed all relevant information’.
Appeals against plans for a huge new wind farm on the West Coast have been dismissed by Environment Minister Barbara Creecy, paving the way for the addition of up to 140 megawatts of renewable energy into the national grid.
This is the Juno Wind Energy Facility, planned for a farm in the West Coast District Municipality about five kilometres from the coast. It will consist of up to 49 turbines, some of which will stand nearly 180m high, and associated infrastructure to connect it to the Eskom national grid.
It is one of 12 wind and solar renewable energy projects currently in the planning phase within just 35km of each other in this region, according to Juno project documentation.
Some of these projects already have environmental authorisation and others are in the statutory environmental impact assessment (EIA) phase.
Although not all are likely to become operational as “preferred bidders” under government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP), the proliferation of proposals indicates the important potential of this West Coast region as the renewable energy industry looks to meet government’s ambitious REIPPP target of 17 800MW of electricity by 2030.
To see this in perspective, Eskom claims its current coal-powered plant capacity is about 35 000MW, about double the 2030 renewable energy target.
The first appeal was from the ratepayers’ association of the seaside holiday village of Strandfontein.
The closest turbine will be just 3.6km from the nearest house in the village that has about 120 permanent residents. The wind farm will also be quite close to the small historic West Coast settlements of Ebenhaeser, Doringbaai and Papendorp and Lutzville.
In her appeal decision, Creecy dismissed the association’s concerns, saying she was satisfied that the public participation process had been conducted appropriately.
There was evidence the wind farm project was supported by representatives of the Ebenhaeser Communal Property Association, the Papendorp community and the Doringbaai Development Trust Her department had “considered, evaluated and assessed all relevant information” in making its decision to authorise the wind farm.
The second appeal was by Heritage Western Cape (HWC) which had withdrawn it, but had not informed Creecy of this.
– GroundUp