Wider community impacts

People need to consider the benefits that offshore wind would bring to the wider community. Just as coal fired power from the Latrobe Valley served the entire state in the past, offshore wind will serve the state in the future. By generating large amounts of clean power locally, offshore wind helps to create new business and employment opportunities across the state for the next few decades.

Locally produced electricity, especially when there's a surplus, means that we could produce things like fertilizer, desalinated water, industrial heat cheaply. Producing those things at low cost enhances local business competitiveness. Locally produced goods also reduce transport costs. We have local businesses that rely on gas and imported fuels such as diesel which are becoming expensive and unreliable as energy sources. Locally produced electricity from wind replaces all that.

To be involved in providing reliable, renewable energy to the grid is something of which to be proud. Gippsland has a tradition of providing energy to Victoria and beyond through brown coal reserves in the Latrobe Valley and ESSO off-shore oil and gas rigs. Transitioning to renewable energy in Australia has a major role in mitigating the impacts and importance of fossil fuels, reducing the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and developing sustainable technologies in energy industries.

Offshore wind has a number of benefits with a more reliable wind supply during both the day and especially at night it provides more continuity and reliability of renewable energy supply than onshore and is less disruptive to communities and agricultural land.