Archer wind farm gains govt support

Cooktown Local News
Wednesday 14/5/2008 Page: 5

CRITICAL state and local government support needed to kick-start a proposed $250 million wind farm near Cooktown has been reaffirmed to overseas investors. Government officials reaffirmed the State's support for the project at a meeting in Brisbane on Friday with the German consortium's representative, HE Engineering's Edwin Cywinski, and Brisbane - based Wind Power Queensland, said WPQ managing director Lloyd Stumer.

Cook Shire councillors also resolved last month to provide "strong support" for the massive development - on a 2300ha seaward tract near the largely protected scenic and popular recreation area - "due to the economic and environmental benefits that will accrue to the shire in the first instance, and the environment in the second instance."

The bureaucratic nods come almost two decades after Mr Stumer, a former Brisbane-based meteorologist, first singled out the coastal location 15km south of Cooktown as the best in Queensland for a wind farm. Last month, the Local News revealed that the powerful overseas consortium of wind farm developers, turbine manufacturers and bankers were in the final stages of negotiations with WPQ to fund and build the 50 to 60-turbine, 120 megawatt wind farm - enough to power Cairns and beyond.

The syndicate, which includes Germany's largest and the world's fifth-largest bank, the Deutsche Bank, as well as major European renewable energy sector investor, the Aktiva Group, has extensive experience in such developments in Germany - the world leader in wind power, with its 22,000MW capacity about double what Queensland's entire grid generates.

But in a nation where green power electricity levels feature low on the global stage, coal-rich Queensland still lags well behind other Australian states in wind power production, with just one 12MW wind farm on the Atherton Tableland.

Mr Stumer said it was the Rudd Government's pledge to legislate for 20 per cent of energy to be from renewable sources by 2020, and its signing of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, that provided a catalyst for the Archer project's investors.

"The whole process has taken longer than envisaged because the establishment of a large wind farm in Queensland is a new process for the Queensland Government," he said. "Despite government in-principle approval for the last few years, there has been an absence of operational state and national policies to support the sale of sufficient green energy for any wind farm development in Queensland.

"The Archer Point Wind Farm project will become the leading Queensland project using best already-proven technology to assist in the necessary global actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the effects of climate change." Mr Stumer said a public information meeting with Cooktown residents would be organised as soon as possible once the German consortium finished its due diligence requirements, expected within a few months.

The stage one, 120MW wind farm was hoped to be running within two years, with plans for a stage two expansion still dependent on commercial and electricity grid capacity factors, he said.