Trust deficit? Wind farm fraud a window into the renewables rort

Wind turbines can be seen next to the Lightsource BP solar farm.

On the Gundary Plain, where we live near Goulburn, Lightsource BP says it will build a 400MW solar factory. It is one of two proposed solar developments that would see 3600 acres covered by 1.6 million solar panels, 300 inverter stations and two 330KV substations.

When Lightsource BP arrived in town two years ago it said there would be no impact on property values. Gundary landowners have now obtained valuations from a variety of experts, indicating up to a 36 per cent loss of value.

The local council and chamber of commerce are opposed to the development because of its location. Lightsource BP persists with its self-described “grid-led” proposal, despite the fact it is causing financial distress, mental health episodes and widespread anger.

Our region has long shouldered a substantial burden of the renewable energy push in Australia. To our south, west and north, the ridge lines – on a stretch of about 200km along the Great Dividing Range – host nearly a dozen wind factories, which will ultimately host nearly 2000 turbines.

Locals have lost track of which offshore entity owns them as they roll through multiple ownerships via bankruptcy or so-called “asset recycling”. Local earthworks and engineering firms, fuel and accommodation providers are owed money by a range of renewables developers who have gone belly up. Fatigued by years of what they openly call “wind farm fraud”, some businesses now refuse credit to any wind company.

But the incursions continue. Land across a 365km, 70m-wide corridor along the proposed HumeLink transmission line is being compulsorily acquired to host mammoth transmission lines through pristine, prized Southern Tablelands properties in some of our best agricultural country.

To our south, yet another mammoth wind factory is proposed on the iconic “Brothers” area of the Monaro.

Unsurprisingly, the social licence for these and a great number of similar proposals is virtually non-existent. There are two common threads that run through this issue. First, for two decades no government or developer has been prepared to deal with the question of remediation.

Country people are gobsmacked that the large-scale renewables sector is not subject to the remediation rules that apply to other land and sea developers in the mining, resources and oil and gas sectors. There has never been an explanation as to why renewables developers are not required to pay upfront for the cost of future remediation as a condition of project approval.

At the outset they should be required to pay into a government-managed trust to ensure abandoned turbines and solar panels do not rot in paddocks and the oceans in decades to come.

Given the scale of the current project – part of a globally unprecedented renewables rollout – it should be regarded as a national scandal the taxpayers of the future will be required to clean up what will become vast industrial graveyards.

Second, planning rules inevitably prioritise the interests of developers over communities. In our case, the NSW Solar Guidelines employ the same methodology for measuring visual impact on a rural landholding as is employed for an inner-city apartment. The impact of the development is measured from a door or a window rather than a garden or paddock.

At Gundary this permits Lightsource BP to claim the visual or scenic impacts are, according to the guidelines, merely “low” or “moderate” when the impact of a 7sqkm solar factory on a many times smaller adjoining lifestyle block is in fact catastrophic.

Another example is the method for measuring the quantum of appropriate compensation for so-called “neighbour benefits”. It is measured by reference to the size of the development, rather than the actual impact on neighbours. The guidelines propose a 400MW solar factory (such as the Gundary proposal) should distribute $80,000-$120,000 per annum to impacted neighbours.

In a remote area this might be enough to distribute to a handful of neighbours, yet on the Gundary Plain this permits Lightsource BP to propose paltry payments to too few.

Rural people are alive to the fact that the development of large-scale renewables underpins a cumulative transfer of wealth from us to others.

The wealth of many on the Gundary Plain will be transferred to the Sydney-based investment banker and property developer who will host the solar factory – and to Lightsource BP itself.

On Lightsource BP’s current form, its “normal” recycling of Australian solar assets will see a sizeable chunk of our wealth end up with the likes of the Beijing Energy Company, to which Lightsource BP has recently offloaded all of its Australian solar assets.

Historically, rural communities in Australia have embraced progress. But our experience is that governments have never taken seriously the unintended consequences of significant large-scale renewables electricity generation.

This – and the failure to hold the renewables industry to account on many fronts – has resulted in entrenched integrity problems in the sector. These problems will only be remedied when governments acknowledge and account for (by actually measuring) the economic, environmental and social costs faced by rural landholders who are being forced to host monster transmission lines or live close to major energy installations – some of which are now literally encroaching on our backyards.

Until then the trust deficit between us and the political, financial and media fraternity who continue to shield the large-scale renewables sector from scrutiny will only widen.

When the bankers, billionaires and trust fund babies – who stand to benefit from the wild renewables-only experiment – insist on a guarantee of remediation of our precious rural landscapes in the future, we’ll start to believe they’re genuinely motivated to save the planet.

Stan Moore is chair of the Save Gundary Plains Action Group. Louise Clegg is a Sydney barrister and a member of the GPAG.