By Celsias Team
Posted on Aug. 17, 2010. Listed in:
It’s been an action-packed start to the week for Meridian Energy. Yesterday the company won its appeal at the Dunedin High Court, allowing it take its 630 Megawatt Otago wind farm proposal, Project Hayes, back to the Environment Court, and today it was announced that the company’s Te Uku wind farm project has won Environment Waikato’s inaugural earthworks site of the year award.
In his BusinessWire article, Pattrick Smellie notes that the Project Hayes High Court decision overturns a major change to resource consent assessment methods that could have affected any major infrastructure project. The changes involved a new test that requires proof that a proposed development offers superior economic benefits when compared to other developments in the country.
The High Court decision is a positive step towards the goal of generating 90 percent of electricity from renewables, as part of the government’s National Energy Strategy.
Chief executive of the New Zealand Wind Energy Association, Fraser Clark, told Pattrick Smellie that reaching the target involves looking at projects on their own merits.
“There is still no guarantee this project will receive consent, but it’s whether it’s the right project in the right place, rather than whether its merits are greater or less than others in other locations.”
For more background on the Project Hayes appeal, read Celsias article Meridian crosses fingers for winds of change.
Merdian’s second piece of good news comes via their wind farm project that’s moved beyond any High Court appeals and is now firmly under construction. The company took home Environment Waikato’s earthworks site of the year award for the high standard of erosion and sediment control as part of its Te Uku wind farm project. Environment Waikato designed the award to highlight and promote high quality, environmentally sensitive earthworks projects.
The 28-turbine wind farm construction project involves building 26 kilometres of roads on 55 square kilometres of private farm land near Raglan. All up the project is expected to cost $200 million.
Environment Waikato’s land and soil programme manager Grant Blackie says the award to Meridian is an acknowledgement of the “tremendous compliance with consent conditions that had been achieved throughout the construction process so far.”
“It is heartening to see such a large project being undertaken in a way that takes such careful account of the need to protect the environment.”
