Andrew Forrest foe Yindjibarndi joins Pilbara green energy race
By Peter Milne
The Pilbara’s Yindjibarndi people plan to start building wind and solar farms within a few years to help Australia’s iron ore producers cut emissions, alongside a major renewable energy developer.
Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Michael Woodley said his people knew their country was well located for renewable energy development, so decided to move early.
The lands of the Yindjibarndi covers 13,000 square kilometres of WA’s iron ore-rich Pilbara.Credit: Yindjibarndi Energy
In June, the Aboriginal corporation and Filipino-owned ACEN formed Yindjibarndi Energy Corporation to develop projects across the 13,000 square kilometres where their native title has been determined.
The Yindjibarndi have exclusive native title to 2700 square kilometres of that area after a two-decade legal fight led by Woodley with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals group that ended in 2020 when the High Court rejected the miner’s application for an appeal.
The newly formed energy corporation’s chief executive Craig Ricato said he was in detailed discussions with a number of major businesses with “publicly stated significant decarbonisation aims” to purchase power from an initial 750-megawatt wind, solar and battery development.
By 2030 Rio Tinto aims to halve its emissions in the Pilbara and BHP plans a 30 per cent cut across its global operation, with $US2 billion allocated to the north-west.
Fortescue, the most aggressive of the big three iron ore miners in its decarbonisation goals, aims for net-zero emissions by the end of the decade.
Ricato said he saw the opportunity to eventually host 3000 megawatts (three gigawatts) of renewable energy generation.
He said the 1050-square-kilometre area for Stage 1 could fit in the 20-gigawatt Sun Cable solar project in the Northern Territory – that Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes fought over – four or five times.
“We’re not out there saying to people we’re going to do 25 or 100 gigawatts because we actually want to be taken seriously,” he said.
Most of the Yindjibarndi’s area is set back from the coast away from dangerously high wind speeds from cyclones.Credit: Yindjibarndi Energy
Ricato said he believed the company could move more quickly through WA’s land tenure system than most proponents as it was Indigenous-led.
“It’s difficult in Western Australia, because it’s so multi-layered,” he said.
Renewable energy proponents must deal with the existing rights of pastoralists, Indigenous groups and holders of mining tenements that cover almost all of the Pilbara.
Much of the 1050-square-kilometre area for Stage 1 is on land reserved for water bore fields where renewable energy is more acceptable than mining.
Ricato said the company was an independent commercial entity but had an obvious advantage in securing an Indigenous Land Use Agreement required by all projects. It had committed to the involvement of Yindjibarndi people in all areas including a minimum 25 per cent equity in each project, financed if required by a loan from partner ACEN.
While the Pilbara has several large solar farms, there has been no construction of wind generation that is important to provide 24-hour power, so high levels of renewable energy can be achieved without excessive amounts of expensive battery storage.
Coastal areas of the Pilbara are designated wind region D, where buildings must be designed to withstand wind speeds of about 300 kilometres an hour, making them unsuitable for wind turbines.
Ricato said much of the Yindjibarndi land was further inland with a good but manageable wind resource and, like all of the Pilbara, was fantastic for solar generation.
Yindjibarndi Energy Corporation expects soon to obtain a Section 91 licence from the WA government it applied for a year ago, that allows the investigation of the feasibility of Stage 1.
ACEN Australia is a subsidiary of the Philippines Ayala group and has one gigawatt of renewable energy under construction. In May it received approval to build Australia’s biggest battery on a site in NSW.
On Friday the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation was appointed as one of the first three groups to be designated as a Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Service to manage Aboriginal Cultural Heritage under new state legislation that came into effect on July 1.
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