Submission by Origin Energy in response to the Issues Paper released by Department of Infrastructure and Department of Sustainability and Environment, December 2005

A submission to the Victorian Government’s issues paper “driving investment in renewable energy in victoria” ENERGY ISSUES PAPER 40

The Department of Sustainability and Environment has considered and evaluated the above [Macarthur] application pursuant to, section 52 of the Planning and Environment Act 1987. DSE offers the following response to the above proposal.

This submission deals only with the potential impact on the natural environment and in particular birds and bats.

The media release from the Minister of Planning, Victoria, denying the permit for the Yaloak Wind Farm because of the unacceptable risk to the Wedge-tailed eagle.

Billions of dollars are being spent to stop so-called manmade global warming. Already we have been told "it is a bigger threat to manking than international terrorism", with runaway warming, rises in sea levels and increases in the number of floods, hurricanes, droughts and tropical diseases predicted.

Faced with this, a pragmatic technological society might decide it would get best value for money by modernising existing inefficient coal-fired stations, building nuclear power stations and efficient transport. But instead, we have poured sources into renewables.

This paper recommends a number of 'best practices' for measuring noise created by industrial wind turbines.

The attached report is on collision modeling done for the proposed Yalloak wind farm in Victoria. The wind farm was rejected because of the large risk to Wedge-tailed Eagles. This report suggests that 9 of a population of 12 would be killed in the first year resulting in a population sink.

"This document aims to help developers, planning and enforcement authorities, other government agencies and the broader community assess environmental noise impacts from wind farms. The core objective of these guidelines is to balance the advantage of developing wind energy projects in this State with protecting the amenity of the surrounding community from adverse noise impacts.

Wind farms need specific guidelines because wind turbines have unique noise generating characteristics and the environments surrounding wind farm sites usually have low ambient noise."