The anti-windfarm ‘odd couple’ joining forces to fight the renewable energy projects Australia’s already failing to build
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By Angus Grigg, Mary Fallon and Maddy King
Posted 6h ago6 hours ago
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Deep in coal country, a lifelong environmentalist and one-time Greens candidate is feeling the applause.
It’s Thursday night at a Gladstone pub and Steven Nowakowski has won over sceptical locals.
His message is a simple one; he believes a wave of new windfarm developments threatens to smash hilltops and turn koala habitat into “industrial zones”.
The green movement, he says, are in “la-la land” over windfarms, a comment that draws nods and knowing smiles from the audience.
But its only when one local suggests building a new coal-fired power station does the crowd erupt in spontaneous applause.
This is the front line of Australia’s latest climate war.
Nowakowski, a nature lover who says he’s been arrested fighting for forests, shares the stage with ultra-conservative federal MP Colin Boyce, a man who claims burning fossil fuels creates “plant food”.
“We’re an odd couple,” Nowakowski admits. “I shake my head in disbelief. I cannot believe that I’m in this situation.”
It’s an alliance at the more extreme end of the political spectrum. But it’s being replicated right across the country as vocal groups mobilise to frustrate Australia’s already slow rollout of renewables.
It’s estimated Australia needs to build one new wind turbine every day for the next six years to reach its 2030 emissions target. But it’s a target that’s proving difficult, and the next leg towards net zero by 2050 is even more challenging.
“Wind’s a really important source of new electricity generation,” says Simon Corbell, who’s just stepped down as CEO of the Clean Energy Investor Group.
Wind, he says, is not only one of the cheapest forms of new electricity generation, but it complements solar as the wind often picks up as the sun goes down.
It’s a fact that appears to hold little sway with the growing number of community groups opposed to windfarms.
The pub presentation
At Gladstone’s Grand Hotel, Nowakowski enlists a few more opponents.
He argues Queensland’s streamlined approvals process will further erode koala habitat, bird sanctuaries and the states’ last remaining wild places.
“We’re going down the wrong path,” he says. “We can’t destroy biodiversity to save the planet.”
But as his presentation wraps up and the acclamation grows, Nowakowski shuffles awkwardly and looks towards the carpet.
There’s a hint that his anti-windfarm pitch may be providing cover for those wishing to halt action on climate change.
An audience member urges Steven to look into whether there really is a link between carbon dioxide and changes in the climate.
“I’m just saying we could be on this whole train to nowhere for no reason at all,” the man says.
Nowakowski allows the comment to remain unchallenged, saying he’s “not going to talk about climate change”, but does later concede it is a concern.
“I’ve got to grapple with this every day,” he says.
“My information, my photographs, my love of nature could be weaponised against the rollout of renewables and decarbonisation. But what do I do?”
The Gladstone meeting’s just the first of a three-night roadshow through Colin Boyce’s electorate, for the “odd couple”.
Boyce, who has spent years campaigning against environmental regulations, is now fighting to save the environment.
Windfarms will cause “damage to flora [and] fauna”, he says and will see “the industrialisation of what is literally high value wilderness”.
The meetings also provide Boyce with an opportunity to push a topic he’s passionate about. Once Nowakowski’s presentation ends the Federal MP polls the audience: Should the federal government be having an “open discussion” about nuclear power?
He says an “overwhelming” majority were in favour.
Modelling released in May by the CSIRO found large-scale nuclear power in Australia would be around twice as expensive as renewables and would take a minimum 15 years to build.
Nowakowski has also delivered his presentation to Coalition MPs in Canberra and has been embraced by conservative commentators, climate change deniers and nuclear boosters.
In April, Sky News host Andrew Bolt welcomed Nowakowski back to his program and thanked him for “fighting” to save the forests of Queensland.
It’s a re-drawing of the political boundaries – a union of sorts between the hard left and the far right.
“We often say that the climate wars are over, but I’m not sure they are. I think they have a new focus and that’s renewable energy,” says Kelly O’Shanassy, chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF).
Dilemmas
Nowakowski and his supporters had a big win last month when the federal government knocked back the Wooroora Station windfarm in far north Queensland over concerns it was too close to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
But his fight is far from over. Nowakowski estimates there’s around 50 wind projects in the pipeline for Queensland.
And he’s not alone among conservationists in strongly opposing some windfarms.
It has O’Shanassy worried.
“I sometimes don’t sleep at night because some people who love nature are becoming very strongly anti-renewables,” O’Shanassy says.
This is the uncomfortable truth in the battle to build windfarms — the fine line between fighting for nature and wanting to see a more rapid decarbonisation of the economy by building large renewables projects.
People like Nowakowski accuse the conservation sector of being “completely asleep at the wheel” in the push for 100 per cent renewables.
Meanwhile, windfarm developers criticise them for being too slow to support projects. Groups like ACF provide high level support for renewables but largely stay out of local fights over windfarms.
ACF did get involved to oppose the Wooroora Station development, but it has never come out and supported a single wind project.
In an attempt to show unity, 14 environmental groups (including ACF, Greenpeace, WWF and Wilderness society) today released a joint letter pledging support for renewable energy, but warning individual projects can’t come at the expense of plants, animals, oceans or forests.
“There is absolutely no need, on our over-cleared continent, to knock down rainforests or irreplaceable wildlife habitat for renewable energy projects,” the letter said.
Corbell says in the development of renewables, “any loss of a natural native ecosystem is something that has to be treated very seriously”.
“But we do need to think about what is the existential threat we face and that existential threat for threatened ecosystems, for threatened species is a warming planet and the devastating impacts associated with that … extreme weather events, drought, fire, flood.”
While the sector wrestles with this dilemma, opponents of renewables have become emboldened, pushing a series of half-truths and misinformation about wind energy.
An offshore battle brews
One fight is playing out over Australia’s next renewable energy frontier — offshore windfarms.
These turbines, which are more than 250 metres tall, will help get Australia to net zero by 2050.
Wind energy will need to increase six-fold by then to meet that crucial decarbonisation goal.
“Offshore wind was seen as a real way of freeing up … what you’d call the human issue,” says Andy Evans, whose company Oceanex is seeking to build turbines off the coast of Bunbury, south of Perth.
“They are out to sea, less visible [and] you won’t hear them.”
But long before a wind turbine is fixed to the ocean floor or a feasibility study has even begun, opposition groups have mobilised.
One group has amassed more than 6,000 members on Facebook in a few months.
They’re fighting to stop the construction of up to 200 wind turbines near an area known as Geographe Bay, a picturesque breeding ground for whales and favourite of divers and recreational fishermen.
In February, the federal government proposed this spot – set back at least 20 kilometres from the coastline — as one of Australia’s six offshore wind zones.
Some of the group’s leaders, including anti-windfarm activist Martine Shepherd, directly link offshore turbines to whale deaths.
“What we’ve done is actually support it with evidence that day after day whales are washing up on the shores on the United States,” Shepherd says.
This has been debunked by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, but posts linking whale deaths to windfarms sit on the group’s Facebook page alongside everything from COVID conspiracies to climate change denialism.
Earlier this year, Shepherd shared an image with the group about wind turbines that has been widely debunked, and it was subsequently blocked by Facebook for containing “information that has no basis in fact”.
Shepherd does not believe her scepticism towards climate change needs to be disclosed as part of her opposition to the offshore windfarm.
“I think that focusing on reducing CO2 because that’s the cause of climate change is very questionable,” she says.
Her comments and posts echo those of another prominent member of the group, Alexandra Nicol.
She’s a former Liberal party staffer, who claims renewables are “government-sponsored fraud”.
Nicol’s posts make no reference to her previous work with the Waubra Foundation, an anti-windfarm lobby group whose founder had a long career in the fossil fuel industry.
The foundation has since been disbanded and Nicol is no longer a director.
Despite being an administrator of the group, Shepherd says she has no responsibility to inform other members of Nicol’s background or her history with the Waubra Foundation.
“What I’d like to acknowledge is her [Nicol’s] courage for breaking [her] silence about the corruption and the fraud of this government.”
Four Corners reached out to Nicol with questions but did not hear back.
Simon Corbell says he’s “deeply worried” by what he’s seeing play out.
“I think in many ways there are forces at work that are seeking to hinder the energy transition and are putting resources into doing that and aligning themselves with genuine community concerns,” he says.
“But [they are] also exaggerating them and firing them with a level of misinformation, which is very difficult to counter.”
Watch Four Corners’ full investigation into the increasingly polarised fight over renewable energy tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview.
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Contact Four Corners here.
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