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NSW wind farm greenhouse gas savings tool

 

As part of the Renewable Energy Precincts initiative the NSW Government has developed the NSW wind farm greenhouse gas savings tool allowing community and industry to easily calculate the projected greenhouse gas savings from new wind farms in different Precincts across NSW.

For community this will allow a quick assessment of new or potential wind developments in their Precinct and will provide an educational tool on the level of greenhouse gas savings produced by wind farms.

For industry the tool will allow the projected greenhouse gas savings to be easily estimated using a standardised methodology.

The NSW wind farm greenhouse gas savings tool estimates greenhouse gas savings by multiplying the output from a wind farm with the emissions intensity of the electricity supplied in the National Electricity Market (NEM). The emissions intensity of electricity supplied in the NEM varies according to where and how big the new wind farms will be, so site specific emissions intensities must be used for different size developments within each Precinct.

Background

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage engaged energy modellers, McLennan Magasanik Associates (SKM MMA), to estimate the greenhouse gas savings from wind farms in NSW and in each of the 6 Renewable Energy Precincts.

Download the 'Estimating Greenhouse Gas Abatement from NSW Wind Farms' (GHGabtmntWindFarms.pdf, 714KB) report.

The greenhouse gas savings from wind energy is specific to each electricity system, primarily because the electricity generation that is displaced by the output of a wind farm is location-specific. The SKM MMA modelling worked out which electricity generators would be displaced on a 5-minute basis, using data from operating wind farms.

In NSW, the modelling has shown that wind farms would 'almost exclusively' displace fossil-fuel generation, either from NSW coal-fired and gas-fired generators, or from coal-fired generators in Queensland and Victoria.