'Be angry': critics call for senate inquiry into how Illawarra wind zone got greenlit

More than 300 people departed Fairy Meadow's Fraternity club earlier tonight (Tuesday, June 25) after two hours of presentations put on by the Illawarra chapter of Responsible Future Inc.

The event comes 10 days after Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen visited the Illawarra to declare the Illawarra Offshore Wind Zone after months of heated public debate.

Speakers at Tuesday night's event - titled Illawarra's Offshore Wind Proposal: An irresponsible gamble - included cardiologist Dr Michael Feneley, formerly of the Illawarra.

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Dr Feneley introduced himself as an earlier campaigner against wind zones on the Central Coast and Hunter, a co-founder of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Foundation and an early personal adopter of solar panels and e-vehicles.

"I've got no ideological problem with renewable energy," said Dr Feneley, who was also the Liberal party's unsuccessful candidate for the marginal seat of Dobell at the 2022 Federal Election. "I've got a problem with technology if it doesn't work, or it's not affordable or if it's not a good idea."

Dr Feneley accused the government of falsifying recently released graphics showing how visible the turbines would be from various locales once positioned 20kms off the Illawarra coastline.

"I was appalled when, as part of the announcement ... [Chris][ Bowen's department put out this [rendering] that appears to show no one at Bulli's going to be able to see these things at all! And yet I do physiology and physics for a living," he said, adding that the true width of the turbines had not been retained when renderings were revised to reflect a height reduction.

"They've reduced the height but kept [the width] pencil thin," he told Tuesday's audience. "What they did was they took all the thickness out of the object."

"They thought about it, they really contemplated it and thought about how they could make it look more invisible, so we should be very angry with them."

Dr Feneley argues the turbines, floating at depths of up to 1000m, are experimental in nature and ultimately unfeasible from an engineering standpoint.

He cited the work of UK civil engineering and environmental hydraulics researchers HR Walling, which recently found that the amount of steel chain required to anchor just 20 floating wind turbines would consume the world's entire steel supply chain for a year.

He predicted the escalating cost of materials would cause players to "just bail" before any Illawarra projects came to fruition.

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He named examples including Denmark's Orsted, which last year abandoned two offshore projects in the US at a loss of $3 billion.

"They ended up saying to the government, 'if you want us to come back, you're going to have to give us more money," he said.

"The thing that's really going to to kill this and stop it happening anywhere in Australia is that it costs too much."

Responsible Future Inc. president Jenny Cullen earlier told Tuesday's crowd the group was pushing for a senate inquiry into how the wind zone was declared.

She said the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water had made "unsubstantiated" claims about the validity of the results it gathered after 94 days of collecting submissions from the community.

"We want a senate inquiry to ask the government why they have proposed and now declared [the wind zone]," she said.

"We need to ask them why they're doing it. It's not economically viable, it's not environmentally viable, and the community has stood up - 65 per cent - and said 'we don't want it'. But they don't care. They've gone ahead with it."

Tuesday's forum follows a similar event in Unanderra on April 30.

The group's next session is in Kiama on July 9.

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