Enel Green Power has emerged as the successful bidder to develop what will be one of Queensland’s largest hybrid wind and solar projects, designed to provide cheap renewables to power a vanadium mining and processing project in the state’s north west.
ASX-listed critical minerals explorer QEM said on Monday it has signed a binding agreement with Enel Green Power Australia for the sale of the giga-scale Julia Creek Renewables Project, after selecting the Italy-owned giant from a shortlist of three bidding groups.
The Julia Creek project is one of a number of massive mining and refining projects that the Queensland government had hoped to unlock by committing $5 billion to building the 1,100km Copperstring transmission line from Townsville to Mt Isa.
QEM is seeking to develop one gigawatt (1GW) of wind and solar capacity over several stages to provide low cost and zero emissions power – key to the vanadium that it hopes to supply to the emerging vanadium battery industry.
Enel beat out Spanish energy giant Acciona Energia and Australia’s Origin Energy, in partnership with renewable and storage developer Energy Estate, to win the rights to build the significant project.
“With outstanding wind and solar resource, the proposed project has the potential to be one of Queensland’s largest renewable energy projects, targeting a significant contribution to… Queensland’s renewable energy
targets of 70%… by 2032, and 80% by 2035,” said Enel Green Power Australia CEO Werther Esposito.
“Our team are focused on ensuring proactive engagement and benefit sharing for the local community throughout the project’s development, construction, and operational phases,” Esposito added.
“The project is expected to contribute to significant supply and employment opportunities for the surrounding community, creating a positive economic impact on the local area.”
QEM managing director Gavin Loyden says the Queensland government’s commitment and efforts to deliver the CopperString high-voltage transmission network to connect the state’s North West Minerals Province and the National Electricity Market had been a catalyst to appoint Enel to progress the project.
In November of 2023, Queensland Labor announced it would spend $1.3 billion to get CopperString 2.0 transmission project to shovel-ready status in mid-2024, paving the way for the 1,100km link.
The payment towards the $5 billion project is expected to cover everything the project will need to get to full construction, from workers camps to down payments on long-lead time equipment such as transformers.
“It is testament to the quality of the renewables resource above ground and the vanadium resource below it
that QEM has been able to attract and appoint Enel Green Power Australia to deliver the renewables project
that will provide cheaper power for our project and assist us to contribute to the global clean energy transition,” Loyden said on Monday.
Under the sale agreement, EGPA will acquire existing wind and solar monitoring equipment and more than 18 months of data, and intellectual property regarding engineering, environmental, geotechnical, flood plain and other project studies, the companies said.
QEM says the agreement with Enel Green Power Australia (EGPA), which is jointly owned by Inpex Renewable Energy Australia, gives the miner potential for future green power for its flagship Julia Creek project, and the potential to receive future milestone and royalty payments.
All going according to plan, EGPA will make an upfront payment of $3,000,000 to QEM, as well as two contingent milestone payments totaling $4,000,000 in aggregate, payable in separate tranches upon achievement of key development milestones, as well as an undisclosed milestone payment upon EGPA reaching Final Investment Decision.
Once the project starts generating power, EGPA has also agreed to pay QEM a revenue based royalty of between 1% – 2% generated by the Julia Creek Renewables Project operations. Additionally, QEM will be offered a 10-year off-take agreement for up to 25MW firm capacity to supply its mine operations.
“In addition to the direct benefits for QEM in having access to renewable power for our vanadium project, the whole region will enjoy significant direct and indirect benefits from this scale of development,” said Loyden.
“EGPA’s approach to creating value for the communities in which they operate is very aligned to QEM’s own commitment in Julia Creek.”
Copperstring update on jobs
Queensland government-owned network company Powerlink said on Monday it would recruit Townsville-based apprentices to work on the huge grid expansion project.
State energy minister Mick de Brenni the coming weeks would also see an additional 22-strong contingent in Townsville, to support work on CopperString.
The group of Townsville-based workers will be located at the interim SuperGrid Training Centre and Transmission Hub at Bohle, with the site for the permanent hub announced as the Cleveland Bay Industrial Park.
“This is a huge year for CopperString and Townsville and the North Queensland community, with the benefits of the Queensland SuperGrid already starting to show,” de Brenni said.
