Whole of Environment Report: “What do you know about offshore wind?” It’s a question we’ve been asked a lot. Among professionals and friends, it’s usually accompanied by an active-listening face.
Only four offshore wind farm (OWF) zones currently exist in Australian waters. These zones lie off the coast of NSW and Victoria. There are two further potential zones near Tasmania and Western Australia, but they haven’t been finalised yet. Presuming they will be, this means there are only six areas off Australia’s coast where wind turbines could be erected in the future.
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The first zone, declared by the Commonwealth in 2022, was for an area of 15,000 square kilometres. The most recent zone (declared in June 2024) is much more modest. It’s for an area of just over 1000 sq km and sits about 20 km off the coast of the Illawarra in NSW.
Developers still have to get OFWs feasibility tested, funded and designed with a view to obtaining all necessary approvals from various levels of government (the government isn’t proposing to build any OWFs itself).
Obtaining the regulatory licences and approvals is one thing – it’s also a matter of securing a social licence to undertake this type of project. That requires continued public engagement and consultation with the local community, potentially affected industries (such as fishing), and First Nations people, including because native title rights exist in and around the zones.
From there, an OWF just has to be constructed, commissioned and connected to the grid by offshore transmission lines that yet to be built.
On the point of social licence, more than 20,000 public submissions have been received by the Commonwealth in relation to the four OWF zones that currently exist.
Those submissions helped shape the location (usually further offshore), size (usually smaller) and capacity (usually more limited) of these zones. While the first zone to be declared (in 2022) was the biggest and attracted the fewest submissions (less than 800), the most recent zone (in 2024) was the smallest and attracted the most submissions (more than 14,000).
Of course, we haven’t read all 20,000 submissions. From our review of a sample, it appears that a lot of concerns are based on visual impacts and ideology. Other concerns relate to the disturbance of marine habitats and species, most of which aren’t supported by science even though there are obviously genuine environmental risks to manage.
Somehow, the public interest in OWFs has been oxygenated before a single breeze has blown through an offshore turbine.
Yes, it’s almost a stop the boats moment: don’t be fooled by the recycled images of herds of wind turbines floating majestically atop deep blue seas – Australia doesn’t actually have any offshore wind turbines. None. Not one.
Nevertheless, an auditor might struggle to keep count of how many OWFs other countries have.
More than half the world’s offshore wind capacity is now said to reside in China, which has about 130 OWFs. Combined, the UK and Germany have roughly half that amount with investment continuing in these types of projects in Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland, just to name a few.
But not a puff of commercial offshore wind energy has ever been produced in Australian waters. This isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s just a fact that doesn’t get said very often.
Given the potential for OWFs to generate enormous energy (at a far greater capacity than their onshore siblings) within relatively close proximity to major city and industry centres, you’d be forgiven for thinking an offshore wind industry ought to have bipartisan support in Australia. And a few years ago, it did.
The federal legislation – the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act 2021 (Cth) (Offshore Act) – authorises renewable energy off Australia’s coast. It was introduced by the Coalition government under Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2021 and commenced in 2022.
The Coalition’s Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor said at the time that “enabling the development of an offshore electricity sector will deliver significant local benefits to all Australians”. While the Offshore Act ostensibly facilitates various types of offshore energy – from wind, tides, waves, currents, light, heat etc – the very clear focus of the minister’s speech to Parliament was OWFs and transmission lines.
The regime under the Offshore Act is straightforward in theory but intricate in practice. There’s a process of applying for various licences depending on the activity proposed – for exploration and feasibility studies, commercial operation, research, or transmission infrastructure.
These activities are unlawful unless a licence is granted. To be eligible for a licence, a person (or company) must meet various criteria, which invokes consideration of whether the person has the technical and financial capability to carry out the activity, whether the project is likely to be viable, and whether the person is “suitable” to hold the licence.
As the regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA – which might need to be re-branded given its role beyond just petroleum) has various ways to manage licence holders and licences once granted.
These include through detailed management plans that go to compliance issues, whole of environment (WOE) assessment and protection, and the availability of information.
NOPSEMA also has significant powers to regulate compliance with licence obligations with the option for public notifications to assist with transparency. A licence doesn’t “run with the land” and can only be transferred to another entity with approval from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, meaning that there’s protection against the risk of rogue operators as well as complexity in transactions to buy or sell these assets.
Back when the draft legislation was introduced to parliament, the Coalition’s minister said the Offshore Act would “strengthen our economy, create jobs and opportunities for Australians, and ensure the delivery of affordable and reliable power”.
But that ambition seems to have experienced transmission loss factors since then.
The enthusiasm of previous Liberal leaders has given way to scepticism, most famously captured by Opposition leader Peter Dutton saying in October 2023: “when you look at, ah, you know, the whales and the mother and the calf that we saw out there, the dolphins, all of that is at risk because there’s no environmental consideration of what these huge wind turbines, 260, 280 metres out of the water will mean for that wildlife” (no emphasis added).
As far as we are aware, there is no credible scientific evidence linking OWFs to the death of whales anywhere in the world.
This hasn’t stopped the association being a lightning rod for opponents of OWFs in Australia. Next time you see this argument, just bear in mind that, as made clear by other countries’ progress, OWFs aren’t the product of novel technology like, ah, you know, some of the nuclear energy options that have been put forward as alternatives. This is in spite of the fact (as readers of our last column know) that some of the nuclear technology is not yet in commercial operation anywhere in the world.
Any genuine concern from a WOE perspective is always welcome. As indicated above, thorough environmental assessment of OWFs still has to occur on a project-by-project basis, with cumulative impacts being a relevant consideration. At that point, the likely impacts on marine species and environments will be analysed under both the Offshore Act by NOPSEMA and the Minister for the Environment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act).
The EPBC Act requires approval from the minister for any action that will (or is likely to) have a significant impact on a protected matter such as certain migratory or endangered species. In recent times, the minister hasn’t been afraid to pull the trigger on projects that pose too much risk.
Just a few months ago, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek rejected a wind farm in Queensland because, she said, “the effects of this project on nature are too great and could not be accommodated”.
Earlier this year, Minister Plibersek also refused the Victorian government’s own proposal to develop a wind turbine assembly plant for offshore wind projects due to the likely impacts on protected wetlands.
It helps that a new federal regulator in the form of Environment Protection Australia, which is intended to “better protect nature”, is proposed by new legislation in Canberra. The point is that if the environmental impacts would be unacceptable, then OWFs won’t be approved.
If the public interest in OWFs is anything to go by, we suspect numerous legal challenges to the validity of licences granted under the Offshore Act (particularly as those licences progress from feasibility to operational phases) and approvals under the EPBC Act. We’ve previously analysed trends in climate change litigation (here), including how we’ve seen it weaponised against renewables that would have a net-benefit in WOE terms.
The developers of OWFs will need good project teams and very good lawyers if Australia is to have a phalanx of these technological marvels at sea. That’s why it’s a good time to ask: what do you know about offshore wind? The answer, my friend, might surprise you.