Wind Co-Op to study community attitudes

www.abc.net.au
11 Jun 2013

The Central New South Wales Renewable Energy Cooperative which wants to buy a turbine at the proposed Flyer's Creek wind farm near Blayney, says it has a back-up plan if the development is not approved. The wind farm application was lodged in 2008 and Chairman Pat Bradbery says the group will not be disbanded if the wind farm does not get the go-ahead.

"The first is to look at another wind farm that has been approved and preliminary talks have happened about that", he said. "But we will then at the same time look at our other goals, which is that we really want to do what we can to increase the amount of renewable energy being used in the central regions of New South Wales".

He says solar farms and an initiative where businesses can rent solar panels to reduce their energy costs could be considered. "Orange, Bathurst, the Central Tablelands in particular gets a quite a lot of sunlight and so solar power is very do-able. "Also this part of the country is high wind territory so it certainly has the natural resources that are required to produce renewable energy".

The co-op has received a $60,000 state government grant to be spent on a study into community attitudes on wind farms, and a series of seminars. Mr Bradbery says the grant will pay for a study on community attitudes to windfarms being done by the University of Technology Sydney. "They've actually almost finished that.

"We're just waiting on the final report and to run 10 seminars through the region, in which we will present the results of the research and also get feedback about what they think of wind power". Seminars will be held in Orange, Bathurst, Lithgow, Cowra, Parkes, Forbes and Mudgee over the next two months.