Australian National Wind Farm Guidelines
This seems to make sense BUT the it is really the states that are responsible for planning approvals. The Federal Government only gets involved when there are potential impacts of national environmental significance. The Feds are working on a separate wind farm policy statement to help operators understand when to refer wind farm proposals for approval under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act,
Minister Garrett said “Wind energy has the potential to deliver a significant proportion of Australia’s future electricity needs and an important role to play in helping Australia achieve our target of producing 20 per cent of our electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.
I was a member of DPAC (Development Planning Advisory Committee) in SA for several years and we ran public consultation meetings, among other things from wind farms. While I felt strongly that this was a great responsibility and I took it very seriously I needed to go home and watch “Yes Minister” at regular intervals. The planning process seems to me to be totally inappropriately named. In fact it is a reacting process and I believe this is a major disservice to our community.
In the case of wind farms I must say I have been completely amazed by the vocal nature of NIMBYs (not in my backyard). I think wind farms are unbelievably elegant structures that give us low footprint energy and I do believe that bats and birds have a high level of intelligence. The impact of a wind farm on a hill has much less impact than the clearing of that hill for agriculture or housing and the visual appearance is a great improvement over rusty old farm sheds. When I hear a dairy farmer (who’s cows belch CO2, who often produces a lot of runoff and uses a lot of water) complaining about the environmental damage from a wind farm I just scratch my head in amazement. How can we best change these thought processes?
The new policy is now available for public comment at: www.environment.gov.au
Technorati Tags: CO2, Electricity from renewable sources, Impact of a wind farm, Public consultation, Wind farm policy, Wind farm
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