Me150613.jpg (JPEG Image, 500 × 333 pixels) Wind tower manufacturer Keppel Prince to boost its workforce after securing Ararat turbine tender. Posted One of Australia's leading wind tower manufacturers has announced plans to boost its workforce, citing certainty around the Renewable Energy Target (RET). Keppel Prince Engineering has secured a tender for 35 turbines at the $450 million Ararat wind farm in western Victoria, announced earlier this year. The project was one of three winners of the Australian Capital Territory Government's 200-megawatt wind auction, aimed at helping the ACT to meet its RET. Wind tower manufacturing company has announced up to 40 new jobsKeppel Price GM blamed "political stone throwing" for previous redundanciesFederal Liberal MP Dan Tehan said sector needed certainty Around 30 to 40 jobs will be advertised at the company's Portland facility to develop the project.
It is a welcome change of pace for the company, which blamed "political stone-throwing" for up to 100 redundancies in 2014. General manager Steve Garner said it was a turning of the tide. He said the sector could expect consistency. Untitled. Could not load plugins: File not found Political support for renewable energy call Labor's Andrew Leigh and Liberal Andrew Laming both support Cameron Clyne's call for more renewable energy, but interpret his statement differently.
Investigation into wind farm leak evaporates into thin air, along with Senate committee An independent Senator has compared opponents of wind farms to people who raised concerns about the dangers of thalidomide, which was later linked to the deaths of 2000 children and birth defects in more than 10,000 infants. Victorian Senator John Madigan made the comments in response to public health expert Simon Chapman, who delivered a scathing assessment of anti-windfarm activists, likening them to people who believe in aliens, reincarnation and other "irrational...nonsense or faith-based beliefs".
Professor Simon Chapman defended his use of the term 'wing nuts' to describe anti-wind farm campaigners. Professor Simon Chapman. Renewable energy: Senate inquiry push to slash wind farm subsidies will 'destroy sector' David Leyonhjelm is leading the Senate inquiry alongside John Madigan and Bob Day. The future of renewable energy in Australia would be destroyed if "radical" recommendations from a Senate inquiry into wind power are adopted, the clean power industry says. An investigation has been launched into how details of the final report, due to be tabled in Parliament on Monday, were leaked to News Corp and published on Friday.
The Senate inquiry is led by anti-wind power crossbenchers David Leyonhjelm, John Madigan and Bob Day. According to The Australian, the report will urge the Abbott government to restrict renewable energy certificates for new wind farms to a period of five years, down from more than 20. The certificates are a type of subsidy that support wind and other clean power projects.
The report will also reportedly recommend the certificates be granted only to projects in states that adhere to federal rules on infrasound and low-frequency noise. ACT launches second large-scale wind farm auction to meet 90 per cent green energy target. Posted The ACT Government has officially launched its second large-scale wind farm auction, which is expected to double the amount of electricity the ACT buys from wind farms within three years. The Government's initial wind farm auction held earlier this year netted three winners; the Ararat wind farm in south-west Victoria, the Coonooer Bridge wind farm north-west of Bendigo and Hornsdale wind farm near Port Augusta in South Australia. Last month the Government announced it would hold a second auction before the end of this year in a bid to meet Australia's most ambitious renewable energy target of 90 per cent by 2020. Today Environment Minister Simon Corbell officially launched the ACT's second wind auction, with the Government expecting "competitive bidding" for the projects from developers in the renewable energy sector.
"Now is the time to secure competitive pricing," he said. "The reality is that getting renewable energy projects on the ground takes time," Mr Corbell said. Untitled. The Capital Wind Farm near Canberra. Photo: Jamila Toderas The Abbott government should draw up national rules restricting how wind farms are built and operated and punish states that do not accept them, a Senate committee has urged.
In its final report published on Monday evening, the committee puts forward a range a measures to curb wind farms, including recommendations to reduce support for projects under the national renewable energy target. The inquiry's recommendations were backed by government and crossbench senators on the committee. The report comes at a sensitive time for the Australian wind industry, which has seen investment dry up over the past 18 months on the back of uncertainty surrounding government support. In particular the industry points to the protracted push by the Abbott government to reduce the national renewable energy target, a push which was ultimately successful.
The committee also proposes an investigation of the power price impact of wind farms. Error Page. | Friends of the Earth (Melbourne)'s renewable energy campaign. Australia's renewable energy investment grinds to a halt. Australia's large-scale renewable energy industry has entered an investment freeze, with just one project securing finance in the past six months amid political uncertainty, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The lone venture in the first three months of 2015 was worth just $6.6 million and following a complete drought during the December quarter, BNEF said.
The project was a floating solar photovoltaic (PV) plant being developed in Jamestown, South Australia, by Infratech Industries. For the year to March, investment totalled $206.9 million, which was 90 per cent lower than the previous 12 months, the consultancy said. "Investment has been stifled by policy uncertainty for over 13 months since the Abbott government's [Renewable Energy Target] review was announced on 17 February 2014," BNEF said. "The Australian large-scale clean energy industry has become practically uninvestable due to ongoing uncertainty caused by the government's review.
" Jobs go. Get Involved. The Abbott government is sabotaging Australia’s renewable energy future. Not content with its savage 20% cut to the national Renewable Energy Target, the government has dictated to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it can no longer invest in wind farms and rooftop solar power. The Abbott government’s attack threatens thousands of jobs, sets up barriers for communities who want to go renewable, and makes it more difficult to tackle global warming. Friends of the Earth’s Yes 2 Renewables campaign knew this day was coming, which is why we’ve been campaigning for over 18 months for the state government to re-establish a Victorian Renewable Energy Target. We’re ramping up our campaign to make Victoria a safe-haven for renewable energy.
If you would like to help out with our campaign, please enter your details: Tony Abbott agrees windfarms may have 'potential health impacts' | Environment. Tony Abbott finds windfarms visually awful and agrees they may have “potential health impacts”, and says the deal on the renewable energy target was designed to reduce their numbers as much as the current Senate would allow. Speaking to the Sydney radio host Alan Jones – a long-term windfarm critic – the prime minister said: “I do take your point about the potential health impact of these things … when I’ve been up close to these windfarms not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise. “What we did recently in the Senate was to reduce, Alan, capital R-E-D-U-C-E, the number of these things that we are going to get in the future … I frankly would have likely to have reduced the number a lot more but we got the best deal we could out of the Senate and if we hadn’t had a deal, Alan, we would have been stuck with even more of these things … The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said the comments would create investor uncertainty.
“There’s Tony Abbott at it again,” he said. David Leyonhjelm blows hot air at satirical performers protesting against windfarm inquiry – video. ABS report finds renewable energy sector sheds 15% of jobs over target uncertainty | Business Insider. Just like the mining industry, employment in the renewable energy sector is heading south as uncertainty continues to plague the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), a new report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has found. The ABS’s first analysis of the sector’s employment patterns, taken over five years, found that jobs fell by 15% between 2013 and 2014 to 12,590 — a loss of 2,300 jobs since the industry peaked in 2012. Western Australia was among the hardest hit, shedding more than half its jobs, falling from 1,740 in 2011/12 to 820 in 2013/14. Queensland shed 34% of its workforce over the same period, with 1,300 full time jobs going.
The ABS report, which spans 2009-10 to 2013-14, found the sector grew 41% between 2009 and the 2012 peak to 14,890 FTE workers. The data comes as Coalition government and ALP opposition continue to fight over a revised mandatory RET, which currently sits at 41,000 gigawatt hours to reach 20% renewables by 2020. Tony Abbott has escalated his war on wind power.
On the edge: the federal government is limiting investment. Photo: Bloomberg Lies, damn lies and emissions targets Tony Abbott has dramatically escalated his war on wind power, creating a new cabinet split and provoking a warning he is putting international investment at risk. Fairfax Media can reveal the government has ordered the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation not to make any new investments in wind power projects. The federal government has ordered the Clean Energy Finance Corporation against investing further in wind energy. Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have issued the so-called green bank with a directive to change its investment mandate, prohibiting new wind funding. The decision is another blow for the multibillion-dollar wind industry, which has just started to recover from the uncertainty created by the government's Renewable Energy Target review.
Illustration: Matt Golding. The clean energy board now has time to respond to the decree. How the power of suggestion generates wind farm symptoms. A surge in health complaints linked to wind farms could owe more to increased discussion of health risk than the low-level sound generated by the actual turbines, according to a new study. The study by University of Sydney’s Professor Simon Chapman shows health complaints in Australia were rare until reports emerged about the purported health risks of living close to wind farms.
Increased numbers of people reporting symptoms linked to turbines could be explained by public warnings about health effects triggering the complaints; a phenomenon known as the nocebo effect. This occurs because such information can create health concerns and related symptom expectations, priming people to notice and negatively interpret common physical sensations and symptoms. In an experimental study published this week in Health Psychology, our experimental team tested the potential for information about the alleged health risks presented by wind farms to trigger symptoms reports.