Consultant Dan
28 March 2011
Hepburn Wind Board election in a big week for Australia's wind industry
This week is a big one for the wind power sector and climate change politics in Australia. The good news is that Hepburn Wind, Australia’s first community-owned wind farm, has successfully installed our 2 2.05MW turbines. The bad news is the Senate inquiry into the supposedly negative health impacts of wind farms, initiated by Senator Steve Fielding.
The Fielding anti-wind inquiry has public hearings in Melbourne tomorrow and I encourage anyone interested in the issues to attend.
Hepburn Wind provided this written submission to the inquiry and our Chairman, Simon Holmes à Court, will speak to it, at midday.
I am contesting a seat on the Board of Hepburn Wind, at the AGM on Wednesday night. The campaign against wind energy and climate science has powerful backers and I hope to be elected, so that I can offer my PR and political skills to our company.
The current board and the other nominees have high-level business and technical skills and excellent networks in the local area. These are necessary but not sufficient for the community energy sector to thrive.
Climate denialists and big polluters are using powerful methods to subvert renewable energy. I think that every renewable energy organisation has to include someone in the leadership group who knows how to deal with the anti-environmental movement.
The turbine installation has generated some good coverage recently.
Today I did a survey of 200 mostly positive web pages about Hepburn Wind. Here are some of the many positive stories and the few, nasty exceptions.
Building momentum
Peter Boyer writes in the Hobart Mercury that, “The success of the Hepburn Wind project is proof that communities don’t have to wait for government to act — they can do it themselves.”
Phill Parsons from Tasmania wanst the Labor-Green government to give financial support to the Hepburn Wind model and also facilitate them through planning law reforms.
One of the most energetic campaigns for a community wind farm is the New England Wind initiative, in northern NSW.
Eyal Halamish writes in Quarterly Access, a publication of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, that
“It [Hepburn Wind] demonstrates how outrage can be minimised through community ownership and shared responsibility. The process has led the community to understand that as part of the problem they have to be part of the solution,”
Kylie Charlton is Social Investment Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact. She cites Hepburn Wind as an example of “impact investing”, where the investment helps solve social or environmental problems. She estimates that the Australian market in social impact investing has the potential to more than $20 billion over the next decade.
There is a good piece in the rural Weekly Times also ran an opinion piece by shareholder Genevieve Barlow.
The Courier also has run some good, local coverage.
Two CSIRO scientists cite Hepburn Wind as a powerful example of the kind of approach that has the potential to transform the energy sector, because it has community backing.
Here is a good report on ABC Inside Business from 2010.
Climate Spectator has included Hepburn Wind in a round up of green business deals (the site is free but you must register).
Dr Peter Shergold, the Macquarie Group Foundation Professor at the Centre for Social Impact is a notable advocate for the Hepburn Wind model. He was Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet under Liberal PM John Howard. Watch the interview but note that the Hepburn Wind conversation starts at 5:10.
Undermining Hepburn Wind
Anti-scientific cranks like Andrew Bolt oppose Hepburn Wind, for unfathomable, irrational reasons.
Some hard-line socialists oppose it, because the co-operative is a “cross-class business project”. I think their issue is that a cooperative enterprise loses legitimacy if any of its shareholders are wealthy.
The rural media sometimes likes to wax lyrical on anti-wind sentiments in the bush, as in this editorial comment by the Weekly Times, “Quite simply, the majority of rural Victorians hate the thought of living next door to a wind farm.”
There are also some hysterical, anti-environmental groups, which may be connected to extremist US organisations. Quadrant, which used to be a quality organ of conservative opinion, runs extreme, anti-science articles and says that Hepburn Wind is “the imposition on the community of a set of unwanted beliefs unsupported by fact, the cost of which is bankrolled unknowingly by the wider community through hidden subsidies.” It is instructive to read the Quadrant article, because it reveals that the argument against community and commercial wind is not evidence-based. For example, the ‘hidden subsidies’ claim is presumably a reference to a State Government grant of $975,000. Hepburn Wind has in fact frequently promoted the grant, even in press releases (eg. 15 December 2008)!
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