June 6, 2012
Australia

No-go wind farms zone being considered

ABC News, www.abc.net.au 6 June 2012

A parliamentary select committee has been told there is nothing which specifically would prevent wind farms being built in the hills face zone or off the Adelaide coast.

The committee has been told an interim policy was created for wind farm developments last October to provide certainty for developers, after a court rejected a wind farm proposal based on visual amenity.

Andrew Grear from the South Australian Planning Department told the committee the policy did not exclude wind farms from the hills zone or off the metropolitan coastline.

“Whether the application is successful or not is dependent on the nature of the application,” he said.

Mr Grear told the committee the Planning Minister’s Development Policy Advisory Committee was considering making parts of the hills a ‘no-go zone’ for wind farms.

He said there had been submissions received opposing wind farm developments in the area because of the nature of the townships, open space and primary production in the hills area.

Greens MP Mark Parnell thinks any offshore wind farm development is unlikely because of the problems it would pose.

“You’ve got recreational fishing, you’ve got all manner of other uses of those waters not to mention the fact that it is very expensive to put turbines offshore,” he said.

“There are plenty of locations onshore with a strong wind resource that could accommodate wind farms.

“We don’t need to be going out in to the open ocean like they have in Europe.”


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/06/06/no-go-wind-farms-zone-being-considered/