Interview with Jarrod Whittaker, ABC Gippsland

JARROD WHITTAKER: Good morning, Minister. What are you announcing today?

CHRIS BOWEN: Good morning, Jarrod. Good to be with you. Well, this is the next stage in the Gippsland offshore wind project. As you know, I declared the zone last year and then called for feasibility licences. And today I'm awarding six feasibility licences and taking six others to the next stage, which really means there'll be twelve projects. Which will mean that now these companies proceed to determine exactly that their project is feasible and go through all the necessary works on management plans and do more community consultation and consult with councils and First Nations people and groups about their plans. And then they come back to me and get approval for a commercial licence in a few months' time. So, it's a big day. These projects would generate 25 gigawatts of electricity. So, to put that in perspective for our listeners, that's about 100 times more than Gippsland's industrial use every year, which is a lot. And it's more electricity than Victoria generated last year in total. And it'll create, these projects if they all proceed, 15,000 jobs during construction and another 7500 jobs for Gippsland on a permanent basis. And that's a big reason why we're doing what we're doing as well.

JARROD WHITTAKER: And these six projects who's been successful?

CHRIS BOWEN: So, of the six, there's a slightly different process because, as you'd imagine, Jarrod, with more than 30 applications, a lot of them overlapped. And so we had - that was a very complicated process to pick the best ones and then get them to work out how they wouldn't overlap going forward. So, there's six that are basically very, very advanced. Their names are High Sea Wind, Gippsland Skies, Blue Mackerel, Kut-Wut Brataualung, Ørsted offshore wind 1 and Star of the South, which is probably the most famous.

And then there's six others. They're just slightly behind them in the process, who now have to do 60 days of consultation, I have indicated an intention to award them a licence and they include Iberdrola, Greater Gippsland 2, Navigator North, Ørsted Offshore Australia 1 and Kent Offshore Wind as well as Great Eastern Offshore Wind. And attached to my press release, which will go out a bit later, there's a map of all the different ones and where they are, so listeners can have a look at that. It's not the whole area that's covered that we previously declared, as you would expect, you know, not every square metre of that has a wind farm on it. Probably a bit less than half does, looking at it, but certainly a very good outcome from these licence applications.

JARROD WHITTAKER: And what made these projects the most attractive of all the applicants?

CHRIS BOWEN: We consider a range of factors. We consider how much energy they'll produce. We consider their local content and local jobs plans, and how much local economic activity they are looking to produce. We consider, obviously, their management, their proposed management of environmental issues. We consider just how credible they are. You know, we look at their financial backing and make sure they're big, serious, players not somebody who will fail later on and make the best assessment of that. And we've got some very serious companies, international companies here, listed there, and as well, as I said, jobs created and all the various factors. So, it was a difficult process because lots of very good bids, but I'm pretty confident that we've come up with the best ones.

JARROD WHITTAKER: And what is the opportunity that's presented here for the nation by offshore wind?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, the big virtue, Jarrod, of offshore wind, is that it's constantly windy off our shore. Actually the International Energy Agency calls it variable baseload. Unlike onshore renewables, wind or solar, they're wonderful, they're very important, but they are more variable, whereas offshore wind is much more constant. And that's very important for our grid. Obviously, it's very windy, so it's high energy. So, those figures I talked about before are really a reflection of that, as to how much it could power. And then it's jobs rich as well. Because the turbines move so quickly, they need more maintenance than onshore wind, and because they're offshore, they need ships to take the workers out. That creates a lot of port work, a lot of maritime work and a lot of jobs. So, when you look at an area like Gippsland, which is undergoing economic change with the closure, inevitable closure of coal fired power stations, we're really looking at where are the jobs of the future going to come from? Energy jobs in particular, because people like working in energy and have the skills to work in energy and this will be a very, very big and important part of Gippsland's economic future.

JARROD WHITTAKER: And is there a fixed timeline for when you hope to be issuing those commercialisation licences?

CHRIS BOWEN: They now have to come back to me with their more detailed plans. That will take a couple of months. Several months. We're not rushing this, as important as it is. It's also important we get it right. There'll be more community consultation and then after feasibility licences, they move to commercial licences and they also have to go through environmental approvals quite separately. So, look, you know, this is not something that you're not going to see construction of wind turbines next week, next month or next year. This is a several-year process. The Victorian Government's plan is to have two gigawatts up by 2032. And, you know, this sort of very much helps Victorian Government along with those plans. But it's not something which is going to be generating energy this year or next year or even in the early part of the second half of this decade.

JARROD WHITTAKER: When you talk offshore wind in Gippsland, as well as the excitement about jobs, there's some concern about transmission line routes, effects on coastline. Do you expect that to be covered off in the next round of consultation?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yes. So, now the companies get - they all have their own different plans, but now they get very serious. Now that they know that they've made the cut, made the grade, and they get very serious about putting out their plans about where the transmission will come up into the mainland. You know, a lot of them can share infrastructure so it minimises impact on communities. There's a lot of transmission already in your community obviously. You know, with all the old coal fired power stations, a lot of transmission built, so that means less need to build a new infrastructure. But inevitably, of course, they'll undersea and get to the land and then they'll come out of different places and there'll be varying options for undergrounding, for above ground, for connecting to the grid, but there'll be a lot of consultation about that in this next stage.

JARROD WHITTAKER: Now, the government's made quite a big deal about local manufacturing of late. Do you expect that we could see some local manufacturing here in Gippsland as part of this?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, look, we don't really have a very developed offshore wind manufacturing capacity in Australia at this point, and there are some very great companies, particularly in Victoria, that make wind-related infrastructure. But, you know, we're not in the global supply chain in a meaningful way for offshore wind. But we do want to see Australia make more things. And that's going to be a centrepiece of our budget, our renewable energy manufacturing plan. So, you'll see more in a couple of weeks when we bring out the budget. And obviously, I want to say to all these applicants and, you know, the ones that have made the growth here are ones including ones which have had the best developed local content, local jobs plans. Now, we're not going to make, you know, everything in Australia, certainly not in the Gippsland. We can't make every wind turbine, every element of every wind turbine. But I do want to see more manufacturing and, of course, Gippsland, with the jobs that we need to create through post the jobs that are leaving and with its connection to one of Australia's biggest offshore wind zones will be well placed to be part of that conversation. But I'm not going to over promise and say, "yes, it's ready to go. There's a big offshore wind manufacturing capacity ready to build in Gippsland," because we're not there yet, but we continue to work on it.

JARROD WHITTAKER: Obviously the energy transition is a big piece of work. Does the government have any ideas about what we'll need to do to shore up supply or firm up supply as these big renewable projects come online?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah, well, I mean, these projects are part of that now. What we need to do is get to 82 per cent renewable by 2030 and then a lot of these projects will be in addition to that. Then we need storage and we're doing that. Big batteries, small batteries, community batteries, household batteries, pumped hydro stores renewable energy, eventually green hydrogen and then gas is a backup. So, gas is very flexible so it can be turned on and off. That backs up the renewables. That's the plan and that's what we need to do and that's what we intend to proceed with. There are alternative ideas out there like nuclear, which don't stack up. We'll have that debate separately. But this is a very big, important part of our renewable plan for Australia.