LAMBRUK Solar Project

Venn Energy is committed to an annual neighbour and community benefit sharing program, with contributions of $500/MWac per year, over the expected 30-year operational life of the project. This fund will be designed to evolve with the changing community needs and to respond to the matters that are important to the local community.

Other key benefits of the Lambruk Solar Project include:

• Employment opportunities for up to 350 employees and contractors during the construction phase, and 15 fulltime equivalent positions for the ongoing maintenance of the site.
• Procurement of goods and services from local businesses – such as accommodation, meals, machinery contractors, construction trades, surveyors, cleaning services, security services, training service providers, building supplies, and waste contractors.
• Training and educational opportunity for local trades, apprentices, and local schools.
• Significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions approximately 600,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

The greatest challenge for selecting where to develop a new solar project is identifying areas within the electricity grid with available capacity to connect. Once an area of the grid has been identified with capacity, planning experts assess the viability of the area based on various opportunities and constraints such as ecology, transport arrangements, cultural heritage significance, hazards, amenity impacts, etc.

Venn Energy has chosen the proposed site as an ideal place for a solar project for the following reasons:

• The site is in an area of excellent solar exposure.
• The site is near an existing transmission line, allowing for easy connectivity to the grid.
• The site has already been largely cleared of native vegetation and heavily disturbed by previous cultivation and cropping.
• The proposed layout allows for the minimal disturbance of native vegetation and wildlife.

To ensure national power supply, the Australian grid is evolving at speed to incorporate more resilient power generation from a range of sustainable and cost-effective resources, including solar, wind and hydro generation with energy storage. This diversity in energy supply is critical to secure low-cost energy for domestic and industrial energy consumers, reducing the environmental and financial costs and risks associated with fossil fuel and nuclear power generation in the 21st century.

This clean energy is critical to replace the fossil energy from nearby coal and gas-fired power plants, which are presently driving enormous increases in the cost of energy for all Australians as a consequence of global fuel shortages.

Clean energy and environmentally integrated power plants are no longer a futuristic luxury. The harsh reality of climate change has hit home with horrific consequences in Australia and elsewhere. Projects such as Lambruk Solar Project are now at the front line of decarbonising our local, national and international economies. We’re proud to be a part of Australia’s rapid decarbonisation. The solar energy produced, stored and distributed from Lambruk will displace carbon emissions, contributing significantly towards the NSW Government’s aim of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Lambruk supports the NSW roadmap to increase NSW’s renewable energy penetration to over 60% by 2030, and the vision of New England North West Regional Plan and the Western Enabling Regional Adaptation (New England North West Report 2017).