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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-03-06 Daily Xml
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Wind Farms

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Energy. Are any South Australian wind farms facing imminent decommissioning? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: The Codrington wind farm in western Victoria has been decommissioned and will be shut in 2027. It was one of Australia's first commercial wind farms, opened in 2001, and it is unclear how much of it will be able to be recycled. The Wattle Point wind farm in my electorate on the southern Yorke Peninsula was opened in 2005.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:52): I think they are different scenarios. But the point you make is a good one because, like a lot of ageing assets, South Australia has been a leader in wind farms and wind farm technology and solar arrays and some of those wind farms are coming to the end of their life.

But of course, the difference between us and the Victorian example is that our wind farms are in exceptional resources, in terms of the wind resource and the solar resource. While there might be independent generators that are changed and turbines that are changed, I suspect that you won't see decommissioning; what you will see is reinvestment.

Ultimately, all jurisdictions around the world are beginning to start thinking about what happens at the end of the life of wind farms. It is very important. The Abbott government quite rightly had a commissioner to look into the life cycle of wind farms, and that was a very important body of work that they did. There were some examples in New South Wales of poor workmanship around the establishment of some wind farms. South Australia has been largely immune to those problems because of our very stringent regulatory processes that we have in place, but we are very, very keen to maintain those resources. The important thing about the way we've rolled out wind farms in comparison to the way they are done in other jurisdictions is we've used the PDI Act, which means that the land that is zoned has a multiple land-use framework around it, which means those wind farms and the locations that they sit on have a value, because they have unlocked that wind resource, they have connections to the grid. I doubt very much, Mr Speaker, that you will see wind farms in South Australia completely decommissioned.

What I think you will see, as technology changes and you can get more output from a single wind farm and turbine compared to multiple ones, is either a consolidation, or you will see a reinvestment. But in terms of total decommissioning, it would not make sense in a lot of these spots because of the sunk investment and the long-term nature of having to get connections to the grid. And, of course, there's also other aspects, which are the subsidies in place by the commonwealth government for renewable energy that would be forgone.

While it is a timely and good question, I don't think South Australia is going to suffer through what's happening in Victoria. It is a very, very different type of landscape in Victoria in terms of multiple land-use frameworks. I know the member has been a very strong advocate in this state of protecting farming rights on farming land. I have a slightly different point of view, which we have a very friendly disagreement on. I do believe in multiple land-use frameworks. I do think we can have a mine, a farm and wind farm operating together for the benefit of our community and the farmer and the wind farm and the mine, but, ultimately, it leads to a lot of conflicts.

In short, to your answer, it is something that the department is putting its mind to. It is a very, very good and timely question. We are looking at how we remediate this. Obviously, if a wind farm does close, remediation is not as impactful as it would be on a mine or some other type of industrial activity; it's basically connections underground and concrete foundations. By and large, remediation is a light touch, but I think the sunk infrastructure means that the wind farms that we've got now aren't going to shrink, they're going to grow.

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