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| Blasting ridge-top forests, Mt Emerald wind farm - pic Steven Nowakowski |
The following is the
transcript of my feature in the current edition of The Weekend
Australian newspaper (28/02-01/03/2026) about the environmental
consequences of the rushed rollout of renewables to meet the net zero
by 2050 target. It is followed by a break-out on Borumba Hydro
project. The news story in the same edition can be
found at this link.
The sun rises over
green-grey woodland enveloping the biggest wind farm in the southern
hemisphere (and Australia) on the western slopes of the Great
Dividing Range in south Queensland. Dozens of vehicles roar past at
speed in the early morning light, transporting workers and
contractors to the MacIntyre Wind Precinct from their accommodation
in the town of Warwick, 50 kilometres to the east.
In the motorcade's
wake, the carcasses of freshly mown down native mammals litter five
kilometres of sealed road linking the Cunningham Highway to the wind
farm entrance. A black-striped wallaby lies in the middle of the
road; a joey in its pouch is also dead. A flattened echidna is a mess
of crushed quills. A rufous bettong lies near a sign warning drivers
to take care because koalas cross the road. Close by is another
black-striped wallaby, a young male.
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| Black-striped Wallaby run down by MacIntyre work vehicle |
Drivers don't slow
down. Later in the morning, the carcasses are removed. If this
happens every morning and the wildlife toll also rises along the
highway from Warwick, as seems likely, the carnage overall might be
substantial.
Welcome to the Green
Revolution as Australia rushes towards its goal of net zero emissions
by 2050. A small Cairns-based conservation group, Rainforest Reserves
Australia, is highlighting the environmental consequences of scores
of renewables it is monitoring,
with projects impacting tens of thousands of hectares of native
forest and woodland of high biodiversity value.
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| Native woodland - MacIntyre Wind Precinct |
A
decade ago, many of these projects would have met fierce opposition
from environmentalists and the Greens party. Today their leaders are
silent, believing that the climate change challenge is of such
urgency that effectively, anything else is insignificant. Species
extinctions and loss of biodiversity, habitat and scenic amenity? Not
so much high priority these days. Those questioning the merits of
renewables are demonised and accused of being in the pocket of fossil
fuel and nuclear power industries.
The
Clean Energy Council's investment report for the last quarter of 2025
revealed nine large generation projects were commissioned with a
total capacity of 2.1 gigawatts - more than the previous six
quarters combined - while five more projects worth $3.5 billion
reached financial close. RRA has compiled a register of 1,237
proposed and operating projects – wind farm, solar farm, battery
storage and hydro projects –nationwide. Says RRA vice-president
Steven Nowakowski. “A new project pops up somewhere about
once a week, then another in the same area three months later, and
eventually many are essentially connected to each over. It's
happening so fast it's hard to keep track of them.”
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| MacIntyre Wind Farm |
RRA
is now being joined by respected ecologists and natural history
scientists in sounding alarm bells. Little thought or planning is put
into sites for renewables as the net zero push trumps other
considerations, they say. The welcome mat is out for almost any
company putting its hand up to develop a project wherever it wants.
Federal and state environmental safeguards are of little consequence.
Whether or not you believe Australia makes a meaningful contribution
to reducing global warming by cutting emissions, net zero comes with
a high and largely avoidable ecological price.
Dubbed Big Mac and
operated by Spanish renewables behemoth ACCIONA Energia, MacIntyre is
in the process of commissioning 162 fibreglass turbines, each 230
metres tall. The project size will be doubled by the planned
120-turbine Herries Range farm and 18-turbine Karara farm - and a
battery energy storage system - across 36,000 hectares of largely
well-vegetated land that is home to a wealth of threatened wildlife.
Along a 12 kilometre drive through Big Mac, rows of turbines stretch
to the horizon in every direction, with most positioned in prime
woodland habitat.
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| MacIntyre Wind Farm (above and below) |
Forest glades in the
Big Mac footprint are frequented by the beautiful and rare turquoise
parrot. Two critically endangered species – the swift parrot and
regent honeyeater – migrate in winter from southern states to the
adjoining Durikai State Forest. Their flight paths now pass through
turbines in woodlands which were once widespread in south-east
Australia, but the habitat has been reduced to remnant patches by
intensive farming and other development.
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| Turquoise Parrot |
Wind farm turbines
overseas take a heavy toll of birds and bats colliding with rotating
blades. Big Mac's Bird and Bat
Adaptive Management Plan requires monthly reports of the results of
carcass searches by consultants to be provided to project operators.
Federal and state governments are informed if a threatened species is
found dead or injured.
What
happens then is... not much, it seems. Asked by Inquire to reveal
details of wildlife casualties from turbines, a MacIntyre
spokesperson says there is no federal government requirement for it
to make the information public. So it won't. Federal environment
minister Murray Watt declined to respond to questions about the
wildlife casualties of wind farms. As for wildlife road victims, the
company says speed limits on public roads are a matter for state and
local authorities. Maybe asking staff to slow down anyway in the
early mornings when animals are out and about feeding? No comment.
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| Regent Honeyeater |
Rose
Unwins and partner Lindy Bennett moved from Victoria's Gippsland in
2012 in part, says Bennett, to “get away from wind farms”. After
acquiring a bushland property in the quiet backwater of Greymare,
they were stunned to learn two years ago that Big Mac would be among
their neighbours. Says Unwin: “We woke up late one night to the
sound of huge trucks roaring past transporting equipment. So a
gigantic wind farm goes up in our back yard with zero consultation.
We would not have moved here if we'd known.”
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| Rose Unwins & Lindy Bennett |
Further
north, Millmerran farmer Kim Stevens can see Big Mac's tall turbines
from her property 45 kilometres away. Soon she will have turbines
across the road from her farm. “In this region we've got eight wind
farms and two solar farms on the go. They're all over the place. We
have a deeply divided community, with some people taking up their
offer to place turbines on their property (reported to be $40,000 per
year per turbine) and others who won't.”
Many
properties have signs, No Wind or Solar Here, on fences. Her
82-year-old parents rejected offers by the Wambo Wind Farm near
Jondaryn, 140 kilometres to the north, to operate turbines on their
property: Says Stevens: “Their neighbours accepted. Now my parents
wake up every morning with these monstrosities on three sides of
their home. What can they do? Their property is worthless.”
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| Steve Wakerley |
Kooroongarra
grazier Steve Wakerley was horrified when 64 kilometres of
transmitter tower corridor were cut through woodland to connect Big
Mac to the existing Powerlink transmission line to
Millmerran's coal-fired station, where
the wind farm's power will feed into the grid. Wakerley says:“They
put it straight through the best koala habitat, knocking down big old
trees. If farmers did that, we'd be jumped on. These are all overseas
companies making countless millions.”
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| Transmission lines to MacIntyre Wind Farm |
Anthony Albanese
singled out the MacIntyre Wind Precinct and the Borumba Hydro scheme
in the Sunshine Coast hinterland (see story below) for praise in a 2024
address to the Queensland Media Club, saying they had the “right
skills, supply chains and processes to get projects up and going”.
A spokesperson for
ACCIONA says the company is “proud to be a leader in sustainability
and is committed to developing its projects to respect local
biodiversity and the environment”. An annual report would be
published in accordance with federal guidelines detailing compliance
with management plans. The company had engaged extensively with the
local community for six years: “We understand communities expect to
experience the benefits of hosting renewable energy developments and
ACCIONA works hard to create local jobs and opportunities, while also
delivering a dedicated program of community benefits.”
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| Farm fence sign near Millmerran |
Queensland is Ground
Zero for what is shaping up as a new environmental battlefield as
concerns about sites developed for the renewables push mount. RRA
mapping shows a concentration of wind farms the length and breadth of
the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, from high ridges to
undulating foothills. The sites are largely clustered in areas
identified as being of high biodiversity in recently released federal
environment department mapping.
University of
Queensland ecology professor and Biodiversity Council co-chair Hugh
Possingham says
land-clearing for renewables is boosting carbon dioxide emissions,
“making climate change worse”. Montane wind farms are of
particular concern: “The highest concentrations of birds and
mammals are in the mountains where these projects are. Areas of high
value for biodversity are being impacted and they should not be
impacted.”
Possingham
says governments have no excuse: “We had a good idea this was
coming 15 years ago. State and federal governments were told this
would be big and they needed to get on top of it. They were warned
but they failed to put proper planning processes in place. As a
result, governments have not had the necessary expertise and many
mistakes are being made.”
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| Queensland renewables map - Steven NNowakowski |
Former Queensland
Government Principal Botanist Jeanette Kemp estimated in 2024 that
29,000 hectares of native vegetation would be cleared for wind farms
in Queensland with another 85,000 hectares degraded by weed invasion,
erosion and other impacts. Kemp says those figures are higher today
as the project volume accelerates: “Laws
like the state Vegetation Management Act are not being applied in
ways they should be. The proponents get the go-ahead rapidly with
everything fast-tracked. The last bits of undisturbed habitat are
often in areas where projects are going ahead.”
Kemp
has documented the likely consequences for many endangered
ecosystems: for instance, 30 per cent of what is left of the
bloodwood/swampbox-on-basalt ecosystem is within the clearing zone of
the Mt Fox Energy Park near Ingham in north Queensland. “The
general public has no idea of the enormity of what's going on out
there with renewables because nobody is telling them. If they knew,
things would be very different.”
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| Clearing for Clarke Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
North-west
of Rockhampton in central Queensland, Squadron Energy, owned by iron
more magnate Andrew Forrest, is developing the Clarke Creek Wind Farm
with the placement of 100 turbines completed and another 88 planned.
The project's biodiversity management plan indicates the loss of up
to 1,513 hectares of koala habitat.
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| Koalas at Lotus Creek - StevenNowakowski |
The Clarke Creek environmental impact
statement raised eyebrows with the observation that koalas injured
during clearing might be finished off with a “hard, sharp blow to
the base of the back of the skull with a blunt metal or heavy wooden
bar". Yet the company pledged that “no animal or threatened
species is harmed as a result of project activity”; how this is
guaranteed is unclear.
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| Clarke Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
Further
north, inland from St Lawrence, then federal environment minister
Tanya Plibersek in 2022 approved Ark Energy's 46-turbine Lotus Creek
Wind farm (now under construction and being operated by Vestas) which
had been rejected by her predecessor, the Liberals' Sussan Ley.
Within the site boundary at the time, 101 koalas were recorded during
surveys, with the threatened greater glider located at 131 sites.
Says
the RRA's Steve Nowakowski: “This is a place of wild beauty.
Koalas, greater gliders, rufous bettongs, wedge-tailed eagles...
they're always there. It will all go. The mountain tops are all being
removed. They're dynamiting everywhere.” A recent video filmed from
a drone shows a hilltop ridge at Lotus Creek being flattened by
explosives for a turbine pad. Another video shows extensive areas of
hilltop native vegetation being blown up by Ratch Australia's
53-turbine Mt Emerald wind farm - in one of the few remaining areas
where the threatened northern quoll survives.
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| Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
A
lesson in flawed decision-making in addressing environmental dilemmas
can be seen with DP Green Energy's 70-turbine Callide Wind Farm, west
of Gladstone. The federal environment department approved the
clearing of 340 hectares of greater glider habitat, 900 hectares of
koala habitat, and 407 hectares of habitat frequented by an
endangered legless lizard, the collared delma. To minimise harm to
gliders, the developers are required to identify roosting hollows
used by the animals prior to clearing and relocate them. How they are
to relocate hollows high in the trees without killing the
inhabitants is not explained.
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| Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
Death
from striking turbine blades whipping around at 350kph is a major
concern. Nowakowski says he has found between one and five dead birds
and bats under every turbine at the Kaban Wind Farm near Ravenshoe in
north Queensland – operated by the French company Neon - during
early morning forays. He has been warned by police he faces trespass
charges if the visits continue.
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| Greater Glider - Steven Nowakowski |
Confidential
bird and bat collision reports by wind farms rarely surface publicly,
but one leaked from the Mt Emerald farm showed that in 2021, 168 bat
carcasses were found under 53 turbines – including 105 northern
freetail bats and an endangered spectacled flying-fox – along with
28 dead birds, including 4 wedge-tailed eagles. Many more victims
would have been overlooked during surveys, removed by predators
before surveys, or died later from injuries.
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| Dead Yellow-bellied Sheathtail Bat - Kaban Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
If
that kind of mortality reflects what is happening with thousands of
turbines operating around the country, the death toll would be
considerable, but since the information is not available publicly,
nobody knows. Tasmania's
planned
Robbins Island Wind Farm, despite a good deal of hang-wringing,
remains smack in the middle of the migration flight path of the
critically endangered orange-bellied parrot, with fewer than 100
birds surviving in the wild. An unknown number of endangered
Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles have been killed or injured by wind
farms.
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| Kaban Wind Farm - dead Pacific Swift, White-striped Mastiff-Bat, Northern Freetail Bat - Steven Nowakowski |
Korea
Zinc's 47-turbine St Patricks Plains Wind Farm in the central
Tasmanian highlands was approved before Christmas by the federal
government. Canberra's green light allows the operators to kill an
extraordinary 132,426 birds and 69,480 bats over 63 years from when
it begins operating. These include three migratory bird species
protected under international treaties requiring Australia to
protect them; two of these – the curlew sandpiper and far eastern
curlew – are critically endangered.
Tasmanian
woodland birds whose populations are in decline are in the firing
line: 1,350 strong-billed honeyeaters and 360 dusky robins, among
many others, can be killed each year. If the number of fatalities of
a threatened species reaches a set “trigger” level over a
12-month period, the federal environment environment minister can
simply raise the level. Meanwhile, 481 hectares of potential denning
habitat for the Tasmanian devil – the wild population of which is
struggling to overcome the depredations of facial tumour disease -
can be bulldozed.
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| Dead Little Red Flying-Fox - Steven Nowakowski |
A
2025 report by consultants Ross Analytics to the federal environment
department suggested that 196 of 722 bird species or subspecies it
checked in Australia were at risk of wind turbine blade strike, as
were 16 of 67 bat species. Overseas, the American Bird Observatory
estimates wind turbines kill 1.17 million birds a year in the United
States.
University
of Melbourne Biodiversity Institute chief professor Brendan Wintle
says detailed modelling to be released by the institute soon [eds
late Feb 2026] shows renewables could be placed further west than
existing sites in Queensland and NSW with much less environmental
impact. Wintle says while he supports net zero, many consequences are
avoidable: “They shouldn't be happening in areas that are highly
sensitive and have already endured a lot of habitat destruction. The
industry is looking at the easiest pathway to an extensive roll-out.
The general story is that the further west you go, the
lower the impact on nature and high productivity agricultural land.
We see governments that are desperate to transition and that's fine
but at the same time they are throwing biodiversity under the bus.”
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| Clearing for Boulder Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
A spokesperson for federal environment minister
Murray Watt defended the government's record: “Under the
government’s historic reforms to Australia’s national
environmental laws delivered last November, project proponents will
now have to comply with clearer, stronger and more transparent
environmental laws that deliver greater environmental
protections.These new laws apply the same clear, consistent rules to
all sectors, from resources to renewables, ensuring better outcomes
for the environment and more certainty for business. Alleged breaches
of the EPBC Act are taken seriously and assessed for potential
investigation.”
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| Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
Borumba Hydro Break-out
The Albanese
Government gave the green light to the $18 billion Borumba Hydro
project in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland knowing it would
destroy some of the last remaining stands of critically endangered
lowland rainforest and posed risks to 21 threatened animal and plant
species.
The pumped hydro
project 70 kilometres west of Noosa aims to be operating by 2030,
supposedly providing power to two million homes in Queensland's
bustling south-east corner from a 2,000-megawatt energy storage
system. The project would increase the storage capacity of the
existing Borumba Dam from 46 to 224 gigalitres.
The federal environment department approved
Queensland Hydro's application to undertake exploratory works last
December. Canberra's approval for a project that has been singled out
for praise by Anthony Albanese came despite a referral report
provided by state-owned project operator Queensland Hydro in
response to a 2023 demand by the department for it to rewrite a draft
environmental impact plan.
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| Borumba Dam |
The resulting report
concluded that 21 threatened or endangered animal and plant species
could lose habitat or be killed by project works, with 314 hectares
of critically endangered subtropical lowland rainforest to be drowned
or bulldozed, and 4,348 hectares of other forest lost. Wildlife to be
impacted included the Mary River turtle, Mary River cod, and
Australian lungfish: the plight of these three species prompted
former federal Labor environment minister Peter Garrett to scrap the
Traveston Dam proposal downstream from Borumba on the Mary River in
2009.
Other species highlighted in the report include
the Coxen's fig-parrot. One of only two Australian birds never to
have been photographed, records from around Borumba Dam in the 1970s
are among the last known confirmed reports of the bird. Another in
the firing line is the scrub turpentine, a critically endangered
rainforest plant.
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| Critically endangered lowland rainforest to be flooded by Borumba Hydro |
National parks are
supposed to be forever. Declaring a national park should be an
iron-clad guarantee by government to the community that a natural
area of high conservation value is assured protection from
development, now and in the future. They are sacrosanct no longer,
thanks to new priorities in the wake of the net zero push by federal
and state governments. National parks are being frittered away for
pumped hydro projects in two states.
The Borumba Hydro footprint inconveniently
overlaps the boundary of Conondale National Park, known
internationally as the home of one of Australia's most extraordinary
animals - the gastric brooding frog - along with a many other rare
plants and animals. The frog is the only vertebrate animal in the
world to raise young inside its stomach. Now believed likely to be
extinct, the species was last seen in the wild in the national park
in 1979; naturalists hope it is holding on in remote rainforest
pools.
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| Conondale National Park |
The absence of federal approvals for Borumba Hydro
at the time did not stop the then Palaszczuk state Labor government
in 2022 quietly revoking 41 hectares of Conondale National Park,
including pristine subtropical lowland rainforest. The developers
foreshadow the revocation of at least a further 110 hectares of
national park as well as excisions from state forests and other
conservation reserves.
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| Gastric Brooding (Platypus) Frog |
The $12 billion Snowy
2.0 pumped hydro scheme is chipping away at Kosciuszko National Park
in the alpine mountains of southern NSW. The design consultant, the
Singapore-owned Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, oversees
the construction of high voltage power lines and 100 kilometres of
roads and tracks through the park. SMEC is also the design
consultant for Borumba Hydro.
Steve Burgess, a systems ecologist and the Mary
River Catchment Co-ordinating Committee's catchment officer, says:
“Queensland Hydro sees that the national park is in the way so they
draw a line on a map and part of a national park is scrubbed because
it's inconvenient.”
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| Yellow-bellied Glider |
Burgess says power lines to the project will cut
through four biodiversity corridors to the west of Borumba Dam. The
project would drown 45 kilometres of fringing aquatic vegetation
around the existing dam that provides nesting grounds and food
sources for aquatic animals like the lungfish.
The loss of endangered lowland rainforest is of
particular concern:“We are rapidly losing the small remnant patches
that we've still got. Every bit is 100 per cent irreplaceable... The
science is sufficiently strong to say this project should not go
ahead but there is no way that [federal environment minister] Murray
Watt is going to stand in the way of this. Politics will override the
science.” The minister declined to comment on Borumba Hydro.
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| Powerful Owl |
Tall eucalypt forest providing habitat for
powerful owls, yellow-bellied gliders and other scarce animals will
be lost. Says zoologist Ollie Scully, who surveyed areas to be
impacted: “There is some spectacular old-growth forest within the
catchment suitable for these species.”
Pumped hydro expert and Australian
National University engineering professor Andrew Blakers slammed the
project in an address to the Solar & Storage conference in
Brisbane last month (eds Jan 2026]. Blakers said :“The
Borumba site is really terrible because the head [the distance
between water levels in the existing dam and a new upper reservoir to
be built] is small and the cost of the two reservoirs is large, and
that’s going to triple the cost of storage. They could do much
better.”
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| Glossy Black Cockatoo |
The Crisafulli Liberal
National Party government dumped the planned five-gigawatt Pioneer
Burdekin pumped hydro project inland from Mackay soon after its
election in 2024, but has given no indication it will move to scrap
Borumba Hydro, other than to commission a review of its cost blow-out
– up from $14 billion in 2023 to $18 billion last year..
Queensland Hydro
said through a spokesperson that the project has and would continue
to comply with state and federal regulatory requirements,
including measures to avoid, minimise and mitigate potential
environmental impacts. Queensland Hydro provided details about the
potential impact of Conondale National Park excisions in material
submitted to the federal environment department when applying for
approval for exploratory works. The approval contains “numerous
conditions relating to clearing limits, environmental management and
offsets”.
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| Wallaman Falls in north Qld - soon to be framed by wind turbines in Gawara Baya Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski |
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