Foreign-owned wind farms raked in $689 million from unknowing Australian energy consumers in 2024 as part of Labor efforts to prop up renewables, new research shows.
The federal government’s Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) subsidy scheme requires electricity retailers to purchase certificates from renewable energy producers to enable them to remain competitive.
Renewable energy power stations sell their certificates depending on the amount of electricity generated, and the retailers pass the costs on to consumers who then pay an LRET charge that is not shown on household bills.
As a result a total of $1.04 billion was funnelled into the country’s 50 largest wind farms, and the 35 which are entirely or partially foreign-owned took $689 million of that, research by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) found.
Only 15 are wholly Australian-owned, 29 are fully foreign-owned, and six operate under shared ownership.
IPA research fellow Mia Schlicht said the government’s wind farm subsidies were enriching giant foreign corporations at the expense of everyday Australians in order to prop up unreliable and inefficient renewable energy power stations.
“In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, the federal government is forcing Australian electricity consumers to hand over $1 billion through hidden charges on their power bills to largely foreign owned companies, all in the name of net zero,” Ms Schlicht said.
“How can the Prime Minister, having broken his promise to cut household power bills, justify sending over $689 million to foreign companies when mainstream Australians cannot afford their power bills?”
Ms Schlicht said that Australia had gone from having some of the world’s lowest power prices to some of the highest due to decades of destruction and ideologically driven energy policy.
“We are consistently told that renewable energy is the cheapest form of generation, yet it simply cannot stand on its own two feet without outrageous levels of subsidies Australians pay through their taxes and their bills,” she said.
“The lowest cost power system is the baseload, coal-generation system Australia already has. The next lowest cost system would be one built on new baseload power plants, whether they be coal or nuclear.
“Forcing Australians to line the pockets of foreign corporates demonstrates how out of touch the federal government is with mainstream Australia.”
The research was published just weeks after a turbine at the foreign-owned Berrybank wind farm in Victoria collapsed during windy weather, sparking concerns in the local community.
Wind farms and proposals for new sites have caused community backlash across Australia, including in Oberon, NSW, where a farm will desecrate an Anzac memorial drive, and in Western Australia where 1,300 turbines are proposed for an offshore project.
Header image: The fallen Berrybank wind turbine (Lismore & District Rural Fire Brigades’ Group – Facebook).
