Australia’s push for decarbonisation spotlights the pivotal role of community-driven renewable energy projects.
With the rise of grassroots projects, community wind farms have gained significant attention for their potential to promote energy democracy, decentralised supply, and active local participation.
However, their scalability and broader impacts within the context of Australia’s ambitious renewable energy targets remain topics of spirited debate.
In an exclusive interview, Professor Andrew Blakers from the Australian National University (ANU) shared with ecogeneration the advantages and limitations of community wind farm projects within Australia’s rapidly evolving renewable energy landscape.
One of the key benefits of most wind farm projects, as highlighted by Professor Blakers, is the financial compensation they provide to landowners.
“The landowner is usually generously compensated, and this revenue stream can be significant for rural communities,” he said.
Additionally, wind farms can contribute to community funds, supporting local initiatives.
Blakers said the construction and operation of these projects create employment opportunities within the local communities, through “investment during the construction phase and lots of maintenance jobs”.
He also said that wind farms coexist nicely with agricultural activities, as “wind towers and access roads only occupy about one per cent of the land”.
According to Blakers, a standout requirement for successful wind farms projects lies in the need for transparency and early, proactive engagement.
Proactively addressing local community concerns, providing equitable compensation, and fostering open dialogue can help navigate challenges and facilitate a smoother, more socially cohesive transition towards a sustainable energy paradigm.
While acknowledging that it’s impossible to satisfy everyone, Blakers pointed to the importance of providing information and engaging with the local community and ensuring proper compensation for hosting landholders.
“The first thing to realise is that you’re never going to satisfy everybody,” he said.
“When building a wind farm, you can make sure that you supply lots of information, engage with the local community, and make sure that the hosting landholders are properly compensated.
“The same way the transmission and wind farm companies have dealt with it, you have to also provide generous compensation for the owner of the land that the transmission is traversing. Then you have smaller payments to their neighbours, and you have a community fund,” Blakers said, advising on strategies for multi-stakeholder collaboration.
“You are open and transparent from the outset that there is going to be transmission, but the route needs to be negotiated.”
Despite the benefits of small community wind farms, their inherent scale is limited when compared to the colossal size of Australia’s decarbonization ambitions.
To meet this demand, Blakers pointed to the necessity of large-scale commercial wind farm developments spearheaded by major industry players.
“If each turbine is 4 megawatts (MW), then we need 20,000 turbines. This is utterly beyond the scale of community wind farms with a few turbines. It has to be large companies with large assets,” he said.
“We need about 400 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind to completely decarbonise Australia, including electricity, transport, heating, industry, and synthetic aviation and shipping fuels. Right now, we’re about 12 per cent of the way towards this 400GW target. So, whatever we’ve got now in terms of transmission and solar and wind farms, we need about eight or nine times more.”
However, this does not negate the valuable supporting role that community wind farms can play within Australia’s broader renewable energy transition, particularly when integrated synergistically with complementary technologies such as solar photovoltaics and battery storage systems.
“If you’re building a multi-100MW wind farm, it’s usually a good idea to add solar because then you have a common connection point into the grid, which is usually difficult and expensive,” Blakers said.
“And the solar, the wind, and the battery, if you have it, can share the same connection point.”
Blakers acknowledged the importance of minimising environmental disturbance during wind farm construction, suggesting that projects should proactively avoid areas requiring deforestation or significant ecological disruption.
“If you need to cut down trees, then go somewhere else. There’s a lot of places to put solar and wind farms,” he said.
“It turns out that when you build these things that life continues pretty much as was. If you’re already farming the land, then you’ve already done so much damage through conversion of natural pasture to improve pasture and by cutting down trees. Putting turbines every square kilometre doesn’t add much extra damage.”
While acknowledging that some level of disruption is inevitable, Blakers drew insightful parallels with the impact of mining operations and urban development on local communities over time.
“People in cities have to put up with the building next door suddenly getting three extra stories. People in rural areas also have to put up with some level of inconvenience,” he said.
Ultimately, Blakers said that governments need to be prepared to proceed with necessary projects, while ensuring fair compensation.
“In the end, governments have to be prepared to say, ‘I’m sorry, but the transmission, the wind, the solar, or whatever, is going to get built. You’re going to get compensated. But we are going to build it in the same way that railway lines, roads, and cities get built,” he said.
According to Blakers, while community wind farms may not emerge as the predominant mainstream source of Australia’s burgeoning renewable energy supply, their role in fostering energy democracy, decentralised generation, and grassroots support cannot be overlooked or underestimated yet.
“The role of grassroots, of course, is to adopt renewable energies like putting solar on your roof,” he said.
“Every time you use more renewable energies, we’re burning less coal and gas, and this is a very good thing to do well into the future.”
This article featured in the June edition of ecogeneration.
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