‘Listen to renewables concerns and you might learn something, Chris Bowen’
And it is not aided by Chris Bowen’s belligerence and play-the-man, shoot-the-messenger approach.
These are not just my observations; they are shared by some conservationists and Greens, who can see the decarbonisation push losing its social licence because of a lack of planning and safeguards.
Rainforest Reserves Australia has done what the government should have done years ago: map the rollout of wind, solar and other energy projects nationally.
The RRA work – praised by the likes of former Greens leader Christine Milne – reveals the scale of the rollout thus far, in terms of existing and proposed projects.
It also reveals where multiple projects – often considered in isolation in the assessment and planning process – are proposed for a single region.
It appears about five of the projects RRA have mapped have been withdrawn.
This is five of 843 proposed new projects; hardly a major flaw, while RRA argues that wind farms are often withdrawn and later resubmitted in amended form.
Bowen has sought to attack and undermine the RRA by playing the nuclear card and making claims – that he has been unable or unwilling to substantiate – that the true footprint is only 12 per cent of the area indicated in the mapping.
He would do better to acknowledge the real and genuine concerns across regional Australia about poorly placed renewables, and ensure his government does more to address them.
A read through the EPBC portal will tell you that projects are being approved despite an acknowledgment by the federal government that they will have a “significant” impact on threatened species and vegetation types.
These are often tolerated by the federal environment minister, or their delegate, on the basis of offsets – such as providing cash to conservation and breeding programs – and mitigation measures such as bird and bat management plans.
The patent inadequacy and leap of faith involved in some of these “strict conditions” of approval is the reason conservationists, such as Steven Nowakowski and Milne, are opposing some projects.
It may explain why the outgoing Wilderness Society campaigns director, Amelia Young, has warned that the renewables rollout “threatens nature in many of the same extractive and colonial ways that the industrial revolution did”.
And it certainly explains why groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and WWF are pushing for the rollout to be focused on degraded land, with biodiversity hotspots declared no-go zones.
After making queries to Bowen’s office, The Australian was contacted by the Clean Energy Corporation.
After discussing withdrawn projects with the CEC, The Australian received a comment on the very same from Bowen’s office.
Coincidence? Maybe. Either that, or there’s a very close relationship between the two.
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