Offshore wind farms avoid ‘unpopular’ fast-track for fear of taint

The Government has touted the Fast-track Approvals Bill as a key enabler of renewable energy projects, but offshore wind companies worry getting involved would jeopardise their social licence.
This means the seabed mining industry, which has been quick to sign up for fast-tracking, is on course to beat them to the critical and contested South Taranaki Bight.
Consent applications for wind farms in the area are still years away, and mining applications had previously been refused because of their environmental impact. Now, the fast-track offers miners an alternative pathway by overruling existing environmental legislation and bypassing local consultation.
As the wind companies opt to wade through government and environmental regulations, the bight’s other suitor has no qualms about using the fast-track to beat them to it. 
During Question Time on Wednesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick: “We are going to double the amount of renewable energy in this country, and we’re going to do that by accelerating our fast-track, one-stop shop legislation.” He encouraged her and her party to support it. 
But the only mention of “renewable energy” in the fast-track bill is under the “Ineligible Projects” section, where it applies specifically to offshore projects. Leaders from the offshore wind industry told Newsroom they deliberately avoided inclusion in the bill to preserve their social licence. 
Luxon went on to clarify what he meant by ‘renewable energy’ by saying it was “unacceptable to take eight years to consent a wind farm and then two years to build it”, before again calling for support from Labour and Greens to “support that legislation”.
Clause 18(l) of the Fast-Track Approvals Bill lists “offshore renewable energy projects” as an ineligible project. It’s not a blanket ban; the reason for inclusion is because future legislation is in the works to provide a specific provision for the consenting of renewable energy projects.
The subclause applies only to projects “that begin before separate offshore renewable energy permitting legislation comes into force”.
Having this legislation ready within a year was a campaign promise, but it has been delayed until 2025. Labour’s energy and climate spokesperson Megan Woods has said this represents a broken promise by National. 
Meanwhile, the environment select committee is due to report back on the fast-track bill in October. The bill currently contains pre-approved projects, and a Taranaki seabed mine has said it hopes to be one of those listed. If the bill includes this mine, and if it passes before the renewable pathway opens up, the offshore wind industry will be beaten to the bight.
The Government’s emissions reduction plan placed a heavy emphasis on private industry to support the transition to renewables, and wind is expected to play a major part. But the key area being eyed up by international wind developers is in the sights of another major player: Trans-Tasman Resources. 
Trans-Tasman Resources and the offshore wind industry both have plans for the South Taranaki Bight. The former wants to dredge the seabed for metals, the latter wants to build a wind farm. The Government will have to choose whose plan will move ahead.
Taranaki locals have been vehemently opposed to the idea of seabed mining, and Trans-Tasman Resources has been trying to get its application approved for over a decade. It’s taken them all the way to the Supreme Court.
But earlier this year, the company pulled out of hearings with the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee. Trans-Tasman Resources boss Alan Eggers told Newsroom at the time the company may want to “wait for new legislation” to open up. He wasn’t yet sure if the fast-track was a silver bullet.
Five days after Eggers spoke to Newsroom, Trans-Tasman Resources was invited to apply for the fast-track. The company soon put out a statement saying it had been “formally invited” to the fast-track. It intended to apply, and likely hoped to be one of the still-undisclosed projects listed in the legislation that would be automatically green-lit if the bill were passed.
Giacomo Caleffi, director at Copenhagen Offshore Partners, told Newsroom the offshore wind industry received a similar offer, but did not plan on taking it up. Caleffi said his group was first approached by fast-track proponents in February.
Its decision to not accept the invitation was twofold. Caleffi explained the industry was concerned primarily about social licence, but also recognised the timelines associated with its project meant it wouldn’t be ready to apply for the fast-track anyway, assuming it opened in the next few years. 
When he first heard of the bill, Caleffi said the details were vague, “more of an idea” than a definite piece of legislation.
But the idea was enough. “There was this feeling that it would have probably reduced the amount of consultation and engagement required with communities … it just seemed like it was not really in line with the way we are approaching our development.”
He said the industry was absolutely interested in legislation aimed at easing the consenting process, but not at the expense of social licence. “Let’s put it this way, consenting is not the thing that is worrying us at the moment.”
The industry has spent years working within the wider Taranaki community to ensure they “have as much voice as possible in these developments from an early stage.”
But while offshore wind ticks the social and environmental boxes, Trans-Tasman Resources has been trying to start digging for years, and is keen to start as soon as possible. 
Caleffi said the main concern for Copenhagen Offshore Partners, and other offshore wind developers, was that by the time the industry was done ticking those boxes, Trans-Tasman Resources’ project would already be underway thanks to the fast-track. In that case, “we then have offshore wind in the 2040s instead of the 2030s”.
He said offshore wind coexisted with most other industries – including oil and gas – “quite well”, but the offshore wine and seabed mining industries are not mutually compatible. Offshore wind turbines are connected by cables on the seafloor, and Trans-Tasman Resources’s plan includes dredging 8000 tonnes of seafloor per hour.
If offshore wind was built first, in effect its network of cables would make Trans-Tasman Resources’ operation impossible. 
If Trans-Tasman Resources started dredging first, the wind companies would need to hold fire for the duration of the project, and for the environment to settle. And this would take a while. Eggers himself told Newsroom last year that seabed mining “totally destroys” the environment, albeit “in a very limited area for a very limited time”.
But Caleffi said that “limited” time would make it “quite difficult for our investors to keep investing confidently”.
The environmental burden was what Nathan Turner, New Zealand country manager for BlueFloat Energy, said was a third concern of the industry. He told Newsroom its project application would have to be considered alongside the existing impacts of activities in a given area. 
In the case of the South Taranaki Bight, this would include the impacts of seabed mining. Even if the two projects were next to each other, instead of overlapping, “that might create a significant amount of consenting risk for a project nearby, just because of the cumulative effects of both projects added together”.
But, Turner said, the buck ultimately stopped with people, not with legislation. Social licence was paramount, he said, and he was not willing to risk that licence in the interests of profit.
“We believe our projects are in the best interest of New Zealand. But if a majority of New Zealanders – or a majority of people in the areas we’re proposing to build – don’t agree, then we would need to think pretty long and hard about whether we go ahead with the projects in their current format, or at all.”
Turner was not as quick as Caleffi to say association with the fast-track bill was risky, but he admitted BlueFloat was “very conscious of the fact that the fast-track proposal is unpopular in some parts of the community and among some stakeholder groups. At the moment, we’re going to quite a lot of effort to educate and build consensus around some of those very same groups.”
He said his group had some reservations about whether association with the bill would be good for its objectives. “I think there’s a bit of water to go under the bridge between now and when it becomes critical for us to make that decision.”
Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop added after publication: “Work is underway and announcements will be made in due course about how the regulatory regime for offshore renewable energy will interact with fast-track legislation.”