The Forest Wind facility – a new major clean energy project in Australia backed by Siemens Financial Services and local renewables developer CleanSight – has been approved for development by the Queensland state government. It’s going to be one of the largest grid-connected wind farms in the southern hemisphere.
Once complete, it could generate power for more than 550,000 households – that’s approximately one in every four homes in the state. It is going to boost the state’s installed power generation capacity by around 9%.
The project cost an estimated Aus$2bn ($1.3bn). It will be built in phases. The location is within state forest land between Gympie and Maryborough, near the coast roughly 200km north of Brisbane. Forest Wind Holdings intends to install up to 226 wind turbines there, each machine at least 3km away from the nearest resident.
Queensland is aiming to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, hence why the state government is so supportive of this project. Not only will the Forest Wind facility immensely help the state reach its climate goals, but its potential 1,200MW generating capacity will also make a significant contribution to reducing Australia’s carbon emissions. It has the potential to offset emissions by 2.62 million tCO2e yearly and 78.52 million tCO2e over its lifetime.
Forest Wind could provide 25% of the new clean generation needed to meet Queensland’s renewable energy target of 50% by 2030, as well as 10% to meet Australia’s target of 23% by the same time.
The project will now begin the detailed assessment phase and is likely to start construction by the end of 2020, with the first phase of the project expected to be operational by the end of 2023.
