Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Cooba solar project

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (18:22): (1564) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Energy and Resources and it concerns the proposed Colbinabbin solar farm, the Cooba solar farm. I note the enthusiasm from people tonight from the area who are determined to make their points known. I want to draw the minister’s attention to the Solar Energy Facilities: Design and Development Guideline – October 2022, specifically page 11, which lays out a number of key points:

Solar energy facilities connect into the NEM through the Victorian electricity transmission network.

It lays out:

Victoria’s electricity transmission network is planned by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). In Victoria, the transmission network is owned, operated and maintained by licensed transmission network service providers (NSPs) including AusNet Services, TransGrid and Powercor.

A solar energy facility seeking to connect to the NEM must have its generator performance standards …

laid out. This is an important point, because you cannot just connect in willy-nilly. They do say:

Managing cumulative effects in an area

The clustering of solar energy … facilities in an area can result in efficiencies …

They lay that out, and:

However, too many facilities in an area can:

• reduce the availability and/or productivity of strategic agricultural land

• result in landscape-scale visual impacts, due to an overconcentration of built form in an area

• impact the area’s biodiversity, habitat or wildlife, due to an overconcentration of built form.

They talk about the cumulative effects and say this can be reduced by having a mix of land uses and:

• having enough distance between solar energy facilities within an area to minimise or avoid environmental impacts and natural hazard risk exposure.

These are all worthy points made in the guideline, but what I want the minister for energy to do is to address this particular solar farm and its associated battery approach. It is a very large and impactful solar farm that will devastate the local area and cause huge damage in terms of fire risk and other matters but also with the visual impacts. I am asking her to make sure that this guideline is adhered to, that the guideline is actually approached in a sensible way and that the terrible impacts of this particular solar farm through the agricultural area, particularly the wine-growing area, are dealt with. As far as I can see, the government’s process to date has not dealt with these matters satisfactorily, and that I think is a concern. The government’s own guideline is there. The minister needs to make sure that this guideline is adhered to and actually actively intervene and ensure that the community is not overrun or overreached in this way by an effervescent and forceful – (Time expired)