Are we planning away Victoria’s renewable energy future?

Australia’s clean energy goals could be thwarted by recent amendments to the Victorian Planning Framework in 2011 for wind farm developments, a study by the University of Melbourne Law School has found.

The study, ‘Planning away Victoria’s renewable energy future’, published in the Environmental and Planning Law Journal, found last year’s amendments were ill-equipped to resolve competing local, state and national interests, which could hamper future wind farm developments by creating a planning slowdown.

The study comes after recent media reports reveal there have been no applications for wind farm development projects since the latest amendments were introduced one year ago.

The new changes prohibit wind farms in many areas in the state, including in those areas that have the best wind resources, and require all turbines that are to be built within two kilometres of a home to get consent from its owner.

“This gives landowners veto power, which is an extraordinary change that is very unusual in the context of planning law,” said Lisa Caripis, Research Assistant at the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environment Law (CREEL) at the Melbourne Law School and one of the paper’s authors.

“Planning law is meant to balance competing interests; however, we found that the current framework is biased towards local interests - such as land values - over more global issues such as clean energy goals, while at the same time extending wind farm ‘no-go’ zones.”

According to the study, the changes cause further problems by giving local governments the power over planning approval decisions for all wind farm developments instead of having to refer larger projects to the Minister for Planning. The research highlighted the findings of a 2010 Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry that local governments lack the capacity, expertise and resources to be exclusively in control of making decisions about wind farm developments.

“As wind is one of the most technologically mature and commercially viable of renewable technologies, the new planning law could create barriers to wind farm development and potentially entrench existing fossil fuel energy production,” Caripis said.

“State planning policy prior to the 2011 amendments had an overall strategic vision of facilitating the development of wind farms, but the current Coalition government changed that going into the 2010 election to give greater weight to community interests.”

The study also outlined other ways the framework could have been amended to bring it in line with best practice examples. This includes having specific planning controls to support wind farm development.

“The planning framework in Germany provides a good case in comparison,” said Anne Kallies, co-author on the paper. “Like Australia, Germany has a national renewable energy target and a federal system of government, but local planning decisions in Germany must take account of federal renewable energy policies. This means that renewable energy priorities are well integrated throughout the German planning system and is one reason why Germany has been so successful at moving to a low-carbon energy sector.”