– Tony Goodfellow, Policy and Engagement Manager

Overseas, painted wind turbine blades are decreasing bird impacts and acoustic detection is reducing bat impacts. So, why aren’t things like that happening here in Australia? It has a lot to do with planning bottlenecks that are the focus of a suite of new outputs from the Victorian Government.

Here at RE-Alliance, we think ensuring the shift to clean energy is good for people and nature is crucial. We welcome the release of the Handbook for the development of renewable energy in Victoria: Guidance to avoid, minimise, mitigate and compensate for impacts on threatened bird and bat species by the Victorian Government. The release of the handbook responds to the state commitment in 2024 to produce improved tools for mapping (both onshore and offshore), targeted research (see below), and the handbook. All elements are now publicly available. 

This suite of actions by the Government is a positive step, providing better resources for developers and enabling an accelerated planning pathway for projects that adopt and deliver better practice, such as that outlined in this new handbook.

Importantly, we recognise that the Victorian Government has engaged widely, over many months, with stakeholders including community and environment groups as it finalised the guidelines.

The handbook offers improved clarity around managing environmental impacts and will unlock innovation to protect biodiversity on wind farms – something we have celebrated in the past. The handbook covers all types of impacts from renewable energy, including cumulative impacts, and will be updated in the future to be in line with the best available information. 

The handbook addresses not just ecological impacts, but also impacts on culturally significant species for Traditional Owners, and includes guidance for proponents on how to embed cultural values in projects through partnerships.

Wind turbine in the Smøla wind‐power plant with painted rotor blade (May et al., 2020) via Vulture Conservation Foundation

What’s in the handbook?

The handbook provides guidance for proponents and decision makers about how to manage impacts on Victorian bird and bat species from renewable energy development. It has principles, offers a risk-based approach to impacts, and describes methods by proponents to reduce impacts using mitigation hierarchy. The handbook has species specific guidance for brolga and five bat species identified as ‘of concern’. It outlines avoidance, minimisation and mitigation measures and compensation – which must be used as a last resort. 

The finalised brolga guidance has been welcomed by the industry as a key step in resolving the maze of ‘interim guides’ that led to delays in decision-making.

Key principles outlined in the handbook include:

• Renewable energy development should be encouraged in areas with lower impact on biodiversity
• Biodiversity impacts from renewable energy developments should be avoided, minimised and mitigated to the maximum extent practicable
• Only after the avoid, minimise and mitigate steps of the mitigation hierarchy have been applied to the maximum extent practicable can compensatory measures be considered to manage residual impacts.
• Robust, transparent and accessible monitoring, reporting and adaptive management requirements should be required for renewable energy facilities

The handbook outlines some options for minimisation measures including configuration of turbines on the site, buffer zones and scheduling of construction activity.

It also outlines some potential mitigation measures that can be employed at wind farms, including: 

• Low wind speed curtailment and smart curtailment such as including radar, thermal/infrared cameras, visual detection cameras (like IdentiFlight which we’ve talked about previously), weather radar or acoustic detectors. 
• Increasing the visibility of infrastructure to warn bird species of its presence
• Preventing turbines from spinning below below the manufacturer cut-in speed
• Installing acoustic deterrent devices 
• Adjusting turbine height 
• Modifying fencing to minimise barrier effects
• Configuration of electricity transmission lines

Supporting targeted research for future improvements

The Victorian Government is working with the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research (ARI) in pursuing a research agenda to plug the knowledge gaps that has informed the handbook, including:  

• A systematic review of the international peer-reviewed literature, and its relevance to the Victorian Context
• Estimating the potential effectiveness of wind farm mitigations using structured expert elicitation 
• Developing a science-based approach to defining key species of birds and bats of concern for wind farm developments in Victoria
• Comparison of pre- and post-construction survey results for birds and bats at Victorian wind energy facilities 

ARI are also pursuing parallel research projects that are ongoing such as buffer distance for bats. It’s worth having a look at their work. This research has been used to inform the Government’s Handbook for the development of renewable energy in Victoria. 

Some questions still remain, such as how will the soon-to-be finalised Victorian Transmission Plan and this handbook interact with each other?

Also, how will the handbook interact with national environmental protection laws? New federal Environment Minister Murray Watt has indicated his plans to pick up reforms to our national environmental legislation, which are urgently needed to halt species and ecosystem decline and move us towards a nature positive future. Is this a standard that the guide will help to deliver?

Overall, we see the release of this handbook as a positive step forward in reducing impacts on Victorian bird and bat species from wind farms. We will keep an eye on any further action from this handbook and how its guidelines are implemented.