Australia to open talks on New South Wales offshore wind zone
Australia to open talks on New South Wales offshore wind zone | Windpower Monthly
The Australian government is set to launch a consultation on a new offshore wind zone off Australia’s Pacific coast with the potential to host up to 4.2GW of capacity.
Chris Bowen, the minister for energy and climate change, said today (14 August) that the latest offshore wind zone being explored would be a 1,461km2 maritime area off the coast of Illawara on the Pacific Coast of New South Wales, south of Sydney.
The proposed area is 10km from the coast at its nearest landfall point and stretches from Kiama in the south to Wombarra in the north.
The Illawara zone is the latest offshore wind zone announced by the Australian government as it seeks to embrace the country’s vast offshore wind potential as part of its climate change strategy.
Other zones were announced earlier this year including another 1,854km2 zone off the coast of New South Wales, in the Hunter Region north of Sydney, which was unveiled in July.
Offshore wind zones are also being explored in the Southern Ocean off the coasts of Victoria and South Australia, in the Bass Strait region off northern Tasmania, and off Australia’s west coast in the Indian Ocean off Perth and Bunbury.
Several offshore wind developers have already expressed an interest in the Illawara region, including Irish developer Simply Blue Group, which announced a joint consortium with contractors Subsea7 and Australian renewables developer Spark Renewables earlier this year to pursue offshore wind opportunities in New South Wales.
Bowen claimed in his statement that the Illawara offshore wind zone could generate up to 2,500 construction jobs and 1,250 ongoing jobs in the region.
Consultations with local communities about the proposed offshore wind zone will start on 16 September.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.