Wind holds promise of work for thousands

Australian
Thursday 18/6/2009 Page: 2

ONCE an oddity, the sight of giant windmills harvesting the breeze is set to increasingly become a normal part of the landscape as Australia seeks green energy alternatives. The world's cheapest renewable energy source, which also boasts one of the lowest environmental impacts, wind energy features giant wind-turbine blades which revolve to drive an electrical generator to produce power for the national electricity grid.

Yet despite being blessed with some of the best and most reliable winds on Earth, Australia has only in the past decade taken up the cause of wind energy with a passion. There are now 50 windfarms in the country with an installed capacity of 1306MW, which equates to about 1.3% of the national electricity needs and 39% of the renewable energy sector.

Although well behind Denmark, which gets about 20% of its electricity from the wind, and other parts of Europe and the US, Australia is making up for lost time and is in the process generating employment for thousands of people in the construction and management of windfarms. Recently, the Council of Australian Governments approved a 20% renewable energy target (RET) by 2020. Once that occurs, the green energy sector will power on, creating thousands of jobs.

Pacific Hydro chief executive Rob Grant has called on the Government to pass the legislation as soon as possible. "While much has been made of the potential job losses due to action on climate change, what must be recognised are the tens of thousands of new jobs that will be created in building Australia's clean energy future," Mr Grant said.

"The jobs created in building renewable energy projects are all those sorts of jobs that might be under pressure at the moment because of the global financial crisis and are easily transferable from sectors like mining. "There is no better time to focus on renewable energy infrastructure than now.

We must legislate the RET as quickly as possible to create new jobs and limit the impact of the global economic crisis." There are expectations that through the RET up to $25 billion over the next 10 years will be pumped into the renewable energy sector, of which between 20 and 50% will be spent on generating wind energy.

The Clean Energy Council says there are six large windfarms under construction in Australia with an installed capacity of 535MW, while a further 76 windfarms are under development with more than 5800MW of installed capacity. Much of this planned development has been entirely dependent on the passing of the RET.

Pacific Hydro general manager, Australia- Pacific, Lane Crockett, expects the RET to "kick off a green-collar revolution". "There should be enough activity to keep quite a number of people thousands at least in permanent roles building new renewable infrastructure," Mr Crockett said. "There will be quite significant opportunities for people in other industries that are not quite as active.

We have ended up with quite a few ex-mining people here at Pacific Hydro, from project engineering to senior level people, so most of the skills are transferable." Mr Crockett said while many sectors had been affected by the credit squeeze, the renewable energy sector was still attracting financial support. One of the good things about being in renewable energy is that the banks, who are selective about where their money goes, like renewable energy," Mr Crockett said.

We don't represent a forward risk that a lot of other industries have, so in some ways it's easier to get money." Like other renewable energy companies, Pacific Hydro continues to expand despite the recession. Established in the early 1990s as an owner-developer of hydro-electric power stations, Pacific Hydro opened the first of its five working Victorian windfarms at Codrington, in the state's southwest, in 2001.

It is currently building the 58MW Clements Gap Windfarm in South Australia and has a number of other projects in various stages of development. Pacific Hydro has 600MW of projects which will create $2 billion in investment into clean energy infrastructure in Australia. While the company, purchased in 2005 by IFM Renewable Energy, continues to develop hydro-electric power stations in South America, the bulk of its operations in Australia are made up of windfarms.

Mr Crocket said Pacific Hydro currently employed about 240 people and expected to expand. It was always looking for skilled workers. "We have planning engineers and environmental engineers who work through the early part of the projects," he said. "Then we move into the construction phase with project managers and project engineers, as well as people with other skills in major construction work which has electrical or civil elements to it. "We tend to use construction contractors and for the installation of the actual unit you need crane operators and riggers and they tend to be highly experienced."