Plans to develop critical port infrastructure in Victoria’s Western Port Bay have been submitted for a first round of environmental assessment, in the race to support the giga-scale development of Australia’s first round of offshore wind farms.
Preliminary plans for the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal have been submitted to the federal government by the Port of Hastings Corporation, with referrals to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act now open for public comment.
“Offshore wind assembly places unique heavy-duty operational requirement on ports, including significant land area adjacent to available berths, pavement strength and channel capacity,” a Port of Hastings statement said on Tuesday.
“There is currently no port in Australia that can facilitate offshore wind assembly.”
The Port of Hastings was last year confirmed by the Victorian government as the most suitable location for a central hub to support the state’s offshore wind development targets of at least 2GW of capacity by 2032, 4GW by 2035 and 9GW by 2040.
It is the closest deep-water port to Australia’s first offshore wind development zone off the coast of Gippsland in Victoria’s south-east and has also been identified as the preferred primary construction port for the 2.2GW Star of the South – likely to be Australia’s first offshore wind farm.
If approved at its site at the Old Tyabb Reclamation Area, the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal is expected to support offshore wind delivery of up to 1GW a year, putting the Western Port town of Hastings at the centre of the potentially huge new industry.
According to the EPBC referral documents, the Terminal would be built over an area of 146 hectares, and would require clearing of vegetation and dredging of the seabed to allow deeper ship access to wharf structure from the existing channel.
A wharf structure of approximately 600m long by 100m wide would also be built alongside the reclaimed land that would be capped with a concrete apron.
According to the documents, the project area includes the Western Port Ramsar wetlands, the protection of which was central to the recent state government decision to reject a proposal for a 300-metre-long floating gas terminal in Western Port.
“It’s very clear to me that this project would cause unacceptable impacts on the Western Port environment and the Ramsar wetlands — it’s important that these areas are protected,” Victoria’s planning minister Richard Wynne said last year of his decision on the gas terminal.
The referral for the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal is open to public comment until close of business on October 23. A decision on whether a proposed action requires approval will be made within 20 business days.
