A leading figure in the European offshore wind industry has said that Port Kembla has the capacity to be a major node in the offshore wind industry, provided the Illawarra - and Australia - learn from mistakes made elsewhere around the globe in developing an offshore wind industry.
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Dr Jan van der Tempel has been involved in the European offshore wind industry for more than 20 years, and shot to prominence after developing a system of getting workers from ships to offshore wind turbines, even in the rough waves of the North Sea.
Having seen the development of an offshore wind industry in Europe and now watching the same begin to play out in Australia, Dr van der Tempel cautioned that Australia cannot get ahead of itself in establishing an industry.
"You need to crawl, walk and then run, right? You can't press a button and all of a sudden have an industry," he said.
"The first thing is trying to learn from all the stupid things we've done."
Dr van der Tempel warned that smaller countries heavily involved in the offshore wind industry, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, could not complete the entire supply chain on their own, and instead specialised. In Denmark's case, manufacturing the turbine components, and in the Netherlands, by focusing on offshore servicing and installation.
But, the director of the Netherland's offshore energy knowledge hub said, not specialising in any area would leave countries with nothing - unless they are the size of China.
"In the UK, they said, the Danes make the turbines, the Dutch put them in, and the only thing we do is make coffee," Dr van der Tempel said.
"To get those jobs, you need to have a strategy, you need to figure out, what are we good at?"
In Australia's case, the tyranny of distance can played in the country's favour, meaning more components need to be made and servicing carried out locally, but Australia could use its existing steel and manufacturing industry to become a global leader in floating foundations.
With successive offshore wind industries having sprung up in East Asia and more recently the United States, the differing conditions also caused havoc.
"In the North Sea, we've been fiddling around for 10 years, we made any mistake we could, and then we went to Taiwan, and it was completely different, different waves, different soil, and then we went to the States, and the same thing [happened]," Dr van der Tempel said.
"When you go into a new geographical area, make sure you understand what the others did wrong."
What was similar at all sites, however, was that initial plans were met with community push-back, but once test sites were set up and locals became more familiar with the sight and technology, the animosity towards the turbines faded.
"We're in an onshore wind project in Newfoundland in Canada, and I think it was nearly 50 per cent against when we started, so we started educating, telling people what it was," Dr van der Tempel said.
"There was actually a huge benefit, they got better roads, better data, and then they got jobs, and by having conversations with communities, reaching out and explaining it to people they will understand that it's good."
Concerns around environmental impact could be lessened by - for example - turning off the wind towers when birds would migrate, or reducing installation noise to avoid disrupting marine mammals. At the same time, taking a wider approach, such as identifying the main threat to certain migratory bird species were foxes in Scotland, rather than wind turbines in the Netherlands, changed conversations.
"Your cat, your car, over a year's time, kill 10s, 20 or 30 times more birds than wind turbines."
With Port Kembla in the running to not only provide support for a proposed offshore wind zone in the Illawarra, but also as far south as Gippsland, Dr van der Tempel said it was not uncommon for ports with the right infrastructure vast distances away to be part of an offshore wind industry.
"There's floating turbines being constructed and built up on the quay side in the Port of Rotterdam, to go to Scotland, about the same distance [from Port Kembla to Gippsland]."
In Wollongong to speak with pro wind turbine group Good for the Gong, Dr van der Tempel said there was a limit to what other renewable energy technologies could do in assisting the transition to a green grid, and that offshore wind had the potential to fill that gap, while supporting jobs and industries in the Illawarra.
"You can't cover the entire Illawarra in solar panels, [offshore wind] is the quickest way to build significant power production capacity," he said. "It's trying to educate people, who want to get out of their echo chambers and have a grown up conversation."
