King Island community split by influx of anti wind energy campaigners
it didn’t take long for the discredited anti-wind group – the so called “Waubra Foundation” and their backers – to line up the locals opposed to the proposal. How this can be called a “Foundation” escapes this correspondent. Sandi Keane has written extensively in Independent Australia about the dubious credentials of this group, their murky sources of finances and clear links to the fossil fuel lobby. A mind-boggling chart of the web of interests can be found in Professor Simon Chapman’s article in Crikey…..
King Island’s collateral damage from anti-wind forces Independent Australia 28 May 13 Part-time King Island resident, David Looker, despairs of what he calls “collateral damage” as TasWind engages with residents in a battle to win support for its $2 billion proposal to build Australia’s biggest wind farm.
KING ISLAND sits at the western end of Bass Strait and is bisected by the 40th degree of latitude, which puts the lower half of the island literally in the Roaring Forties. The weather may be fine and windy, wet and windy, cloudy and windy — but it will be windy……
The consistent winds of the Roaring Forties have attracted TasWind, a division of Hydro Tasmania, to target the Island as the potential site of a 200-tower, 600MW capacity mega wind farm that would include a high voltage, undersea cable, enabling the electricity to be exported to the mainland, probably nearGeelong.
E3 Planning in Hobart prepared a Preliminary Socio Economic Impact Study for TasWind. This is a respected company, well-known on King Island but, of course, in the eyes of critics, suddenly not “independent” as this study was commissioned by Hydro Tasmania. E3 estimates the economic benefits to King Island to be between $255.75 and $310.65 million and points to substantial benefits to Australian renewable energy targets:
‘If generated this renewable energy would represent approximately 5% of the total renewable energy currently generated in Australia and would reduced the amount of C02 released into the atmosphere by approximately 1.9 million tonnes per annum.’
At this stage, TasWind are running a comprehensive “consultative process” to gauge community views about doing a feasibility study. A local committee of respected and hard-working individuals has battled to achieve “consultation” in a hothouse atmosphere reminiscent of that experienced by the residents of Waubra.
There will be a vote in June that TasWind say will have to achieve 60 per cent “for” vote before they even embark on an expensive feasibility study….
People on the Island, of course, have valid reasons to be against the project related to the visual impact of so many turbines on such a relatively small island. Opinions on other matters are, so far, not assessed — such as impact on tourism, the mooted golf courses and NIMBY factors which always look bogus until – well – until it is YOUR backyard.
But the matter has attracted the “professional “anti-wind lobby to King Island — a place they’d probably never given a second thought to before.
It’s a case of “round up the usual suspects” and it didn’t take long for the discredited anti-wind group – the so called “Waubra Foundation” and their backers – to line up the locals opposed to the proposal. How this can be called a “Foundation” escapes this correspondent. Sandi Keane has written extensively in Independent Australia about the dubious credentials of this group, their murky sources of finances and clear links to the fossil fuel lobby. A mind-boggling chart of the web of interests can be found in Professor Simon Chapman’s article in Crikey…..
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