Global Windy Day and the Community Energy Congress

On Sunday, 15 June 2014, Yes2Renewables, the Australian Wind Alliance and the Coalition for Community Energy have organised a picnic on the lawns of Parliament House to celebrate Global Wind Day. Yes2Renewables is a community group supporting renewables in Australia and are part of the environmental group Friends of the Earth Australia.

To assist with planning, if you’d like to come along, they would appreciate it if you RSVP on the Australian Wind Alliance website or on Facebook.

The picnic starts at 11am, and it is located at Federation Mall, which is between Parliament House and Old Parliament House.

We will be sure to post a selection of photos soon after the event. It ties in neatly with the Community Energy Congress, a conference exploring new directions towards the decarbonisation of Australia’s energy system. Infigen is a supporter of the event, and I will be speaking at the Community-Industry Nexus session on Monday, 16 June. The topic of my presentation will be community energy best practice, using Infigen’s Flyer’s Creek wind farm development as a case study.

The industry-wide move towards stronger community engagement and ownership reflects the success of the model in Europe – where direct community investment in projects has smoothed the way for the development of large-scale renewable energy.

In Australia, we are seeing this with projects like the two-turbine Hepburn wind farm in Victoria, and with Infigen’s proposed Flyer’s Creek wind farm. A great example of the benefits of community engagement can be seen in this video, which details the process a local artist when through, whilst painting one of the wind turbines at the Hepburn wind farm.

There is strong support for wind energy in Australia (no matter who you vote for). If you are interested in celebrating Australian renewable energy, or you want to learn more about wind energy companies championing community ownership, come along to the picnic and have a look at the C4CE conference website.