Yass Solar Action Group secretary Kylie Davies and Nationals MP Michael McCormack look out over the proposed solar farm site. Photo: Facebook.
ANU solar power pioneer Andrew Blakers has lambasted Yass residents who successfully fought off a massive solar farm proposal as selfish, but their spokesperson says it was just in the wrong place.
French company ENGIE has pulled the plug on the 328-hectare project about 2.5 km south-west of the Yass township and encompassing the Transgrid substation, saying that after an early-stage review and extensive community consultation, ENGIE had decided not to continue.
“After thorough investigations and careful consideration of the concerns raised by residents and the community, ENGIE has decided not to pursue the Yass Solar Farm project further, or to lodge an Environmental Impact Assessment,” ENGIE said.
“We understand the importance of community input and have listened closely to your feedback.
“While the solar farm project will not move forward, any potential new project by ENGIE will involve community input prior to the lodgement of a scoping report, to ensure that your voices are heard and considered.”
The solar farm would have covered 328 hectares of countryside leased from three landowners with 220,000 black solar panels, and also included a battery storage facility, various new buildings, electrical cabling and substations.
Professor Blakers called the residents selfish and precious for fighting the project, the likes of which were going to be needed to transition away from fossil fuels and would eventually be built anyway.
“There are a bunch of selfish people who value their views over the financial well-being of the hosts of the solar farm,” he said.
“It’s quite amazing that somebody will tell a landowner you can grow wheat or sheep or cattle or plant trees, but you will not get an income from hosting a solar farm.”
Professor Blakers said it was very precious to think that somehow somebody’s view was going to be spoiled by a solar farm.
“People living in Yass have got to put up with houses, roads, power lines, all sorts of things over which they have no control,” he said.
“So, how come solar farms are somehow in a special, different category from all sorts of other landscape-altering things?
“Who would prefer a solar farm or an open-cut coal mine or a gas field, and that really is the comparison.”
Professor Blakers said the local government areas that resisted solar and wind projects would lose out on billions of dollars in investment and job opportunities, but these economic benefits would flow to those local government areas that were welcoming.
The proposed solar farm was as big as Yass itself. Image: ENGIE
Retired Canberra public servant Kylie Davies said she was not anti-renewables or a climate denier, conspiracy theorist or spreader of misinformation.
The proposed solar farm was just too big, too close to town and would have spoiled the rural views she loves.
She and her husband moved to Yass in 2012 for the peace and quiet, not to be living next door to such a facility, which she says would have also interfered with the town’s development, lowered property values and was in a bushfire zone.
The Yass Solar Action Group was established in February 2023 with about 20 residents and took the fight to the NSW Government, attracting the support of local Liberal MP Wendy Tuckerman and federal Nationals Member Michael McCormack, who referred to the proposal as a solar factory.
Ms Davies said residents were very happy and relieved at the outcome, and brushed off the NIMBY criticism.
“The thing I get annoyed about is people in the city wanting all the electricity, so put solar panels on your roofs then,” she said.
“They don’t seem to think about the people in the regions, who are hosting these projects, and our main concern really was the size of it and the proximity to Yass.
“There was no distinction between Yass and the solar farm. It was a road width away from houses.”
Ms Davies said she did not begrudge the landowners for leasing their land to ENGIE, but the company pulled the project for a number of reasons, including that it wasn’t financially viable for them.
The proposal never got to the approval stage, and last year, ENGIE tried to revamp it with fewer panels in a bid to make it more acceptable, but Ms Davies said the company told her the numbers didn’t stack up.
Ms Davies acknowledged that renewable energy projects needed to go ahead, but companies could save a lot of time and money, and communities could be relieved of stress and anxiety by thinking more carefully about where to site them.
ENGIE may end up building a large-scale battery facility, something Ms Davies said she could probably live with.
