TGG Newsletter March 2025

THERE’S NO STOPPING TGG MEMBERS!

Welcome members to the start of a very busy 2025 for TGG, and our first newsletter.

Read about our ongoing and new projects in the renewable and sustainable space. And congratulations to the Community Solar Farm team. Their enthusiasm, patience and persistence are really paying off.

If you have an idea for a project or an issue you want action on, this is the group to work with. Contact Barb (Secretary) so your idea can be broadcast for like-minded people to jump onboard with you. secretary@goulburngroup.com.au

Get ready for the TGG Meet the Candidates forum for the federal election. Want to help? Contact Barb.

Finally, in our wild, unpredictable world it can be good to hang out sometimes with like-minded people to chat and unload. Look out for our informal get-togethers. Meantime, read on and enjoy.

Penny Ackery, President

A NEW COUNCIL – A NEW ERA?

The election of six new Councillors last year has given many of our members hope that there will be stronger support for the causes that we support under the broad headings of sustainable development and social justice.

Four of our members met with Councillors and senior staff on 11 February - President Penny Ackery, TGG founder and former president Urs Walterlin, vice-president Mike Steketee and longstanding member Jane Suttle. The initiative came particularly from Penny and Jane, who made the point that many of the new Councillors would have little knowledge about the history of TGG or what it had achieved.

In his introductory presentation, Urs made the point that he, together with Carol James and Catherine Falk, founded TGG in 2007 because they had a vision of Goulburn as a hub for sustainable industries and future jobs. It is a vision as relevant as ever. “The fight against climate change – truly a challenge of monumental proportions – is a global trillion dollar industry,” Urs said. “I do not see a reason why our region should not tap into these opportunities and create jobs for our children.”

He reminded Councillors of a few of TGG’s many achievements. The wetlands and the community solar farm are the biggest but there are others that even some of our members may not be aware of, like Solar for Goulburn, which helped many local residents install and pay off roof top solar systems; the Tesla charging station at the Visitors Centre, the first outside a capital city; Goulburn Free Wifi; and the “Goulburn Australia” logo used by Council on its signage.

Jane gave an impassioned address in which she urged Councillors to keep four priorities in mind in every discussion and decision they make:

1. 
   Adapting to a heating environment through means such as access to air conditioning in public spaces and providing shade wherever possible
   

2. Protecting the natural environment, “where ALL the non-human species of plants and animals live and breed”
   

3. Supporting renewable energy
   

4. Working together across political boundaries to tap the best ideas for an inclusive and beautiful environment.
   
   

Mike followed up with three current and new projects that we hope to work with Council to achieve:

1. Low cost tiny houses to be allowed as permanent dwellings to help address the housing crisis
   

2. The Voluntary Planning Agreement (VPA) Council is negotiating with Lightsource bp on community benefits from the Gundary solar farm and on which Council has promised to consult the community before it is finalised
   

3. A new project to start tackling our plastics crisis, including by Council adopting a similar trial to that being conducted successfully by Wingecarribee Council to collect and recycle soft plastics.
   
   
   DEAR MAYOR….

Following our meeting with Council, we sent the following letter under our letterhead to the Mayor

February 28, 2025

Dear Mayor Dillon,

Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to meet with you and other Councillors on February 10 and for being so receptive to our presentations. We think this bodes well for a productive relationship with Council.

We particularly appreciate your offer to us to provide input into the policies and planning documents of the Council, including the Local Environment Plan. Is the best course for us to pursue this with Council staff? If so, perhaps you can suggest the relevant person or persons to contact.

We noted the interest taken by Councillors relevant to one of the policy areas - helping to address the shortage of affordable housing by allowing tiny houses as permanent dwellings. We presented findings from the detailed research on tiny houses conducted by one of our members, Elizabeth Grice, to the previous Mayor and staff and subsequently to a meeting of country mayors and both presentations were well received. As we understand it, it is within Council’s powers to approve tiny houses as permanent dwellings, as several Councils have done. We know of private landholders who would be willing to host such dwellings on their property, subject to Council planning requirements. We would welcome a further opportunity to engage with you and your staff on this issue, perhaps through a meeting where we could update our presentation.

Another policy area is recycling. We recently started a project on plastic waste that is looking at further options for re-use to fit into the Council’s broader recycling program. There are many people we know who have been anxiously awaiting the resumption of soft plastics recycling. We have examined the trial Wingecarribee Council is conducting, under which people bring their soft plastics to a Council depot, from where it is picked up by the company Recycle Smart and taken to their Victorian plant and turned into new products. Other councils such as Randwick in Sydney are also accepting soft plastics and using some of the recycled products themselves. An initiative of this kind would be very much welcomed by the community.

Yours sincerely,

Penny Ackery, President, The Goulburn Group.

We’re drowning in plastics – hence our latest project.

A member brought to us the idea of Plastics - how much there seems to be of it in Goulburn and the question about what our Council (GMC) does to recycle, create awareness of the landfill overload it creates and reduce its use. Other members were enthusiastic to back the issue.

The outcome of the discussion at the committee meeting was to undertake some research as to the status of plastics recycling and soft plastics in the Goulburn Mulwaree area and also in the Wingecarribee area where a soft plastics collection operation for recycling was being undertaken.

The outcome of that inquiry was that GMC does very little in the way of plastics or any recycling compared with the operations in WIngecarribee Resource Recovery Centre https://www.wsc.nsw.gov.au/Residents/Waste-Education-and-Resources/Resource-Recovery-Centre-Tours.

As a result, we decided to get more interested in the issue, such as to see if we could work with Council on ways to achieve our objectives or recycling and reducing. A sub-committee of interested members has now held an inaugural meeting. The first priority is to undertake a ‘plastics audit’ of the Goulburn Farmers Market, suggested by Rita Warleigh. This could serve as a test ground for finding ways and proposing them to consumers, to find alternatives to plastic consumption, such as stallholder packaging and arranging cheaper coffee purchases for those with their own keep-cups. The next point of focus will be to meet with Council in an effort to see where and how we can assist them with the plastics volume which must surely be contributing to their landfill woes. We have raised this in a meeting with Council and followed up with a letter to the Mayor. (story on the right).We agreed a third focus area could be to work with schools, both in improving and reducing their volume and sorting waste, and also with education and awareness.

If you want to fire up some enthusiasm to care or get involved, ABC iview still hosts War on Waste https://iview.abc.net.au/show/war-on-waste/series/3/ and to get involved in any of our activities, you can contact TGG secretary@the goulburngroup.com.au.

Barbara Lewis, Project Leader

Living @ 1.5 Project, 2024

In 2024, fourteen TGG members embarked on an experiment to see if we could develop a lifestyle template that, if adopted by everyone(!!)could keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. By ‘everyone’ we really meant those who live a western lifestyle. Easy!

To do this we knew we had to do the maths – get the tools and keep measuring the impact of each intervention we made – e.g. electrify everything, go solar, EVs, insulation, go vegetarian, get off gas, stop flying, grow our own food blah blah. What came about was a revelation. This is what we found.

In a blink of an eye, humans have brought 4.5 billion years of Earth’s evolution to the brink.

There is no more wriggle room. Living at 1.5 was an experience of facing the reality of ecological overshoot on every level. It was a sobering yet supportive collective journey.

From the start the plan was to face reality and we were confronted in ways we didn’t expect.

No ideological myths and stories, false hopes or wishful thinking. We are all participating in the earths demise, whether we like it or not.We set out to be a social laboratory.

The plan was to explore lifestyle changes to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees. We thought this was achievable if we were armed with the facts and a commitment to implement solutions. 2023-24 was the first year that global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Scientists view a breach when this lasts 20 years, so not a breach yet but a start. Emissions have increased despite 28 COPs and 16 biodiversity COPs.

Living @ 1.5 members wanted to learn how to measure our emission footprint.

We were indebted to Peter (our data champion) who presented the best frameworks to track our per capita carbon budget. We wanted to achieve 3.5CO2e tonnes pp by the end of 2024 which should be the average budget per person globally if we are to keep the 1.5 limit.

We discovered there are no internationally applied measuring tools for personal emissions and no countries systematically measuring emissions within lifestyle categories. We tried to approximate.

To our alarm the best anyone in the group could achieve (by implementing a range of energy efficiency measures, going electric, being vegetarian, not flying, backyard food growing, reducing consumption, recycling to the max…) was 8 tonnes CO2e pp pa. The average Australian is around 15 tonnes CO2e pp pa and the average American is 18-20 tonnes.

In terms of carbon reduction these lifestyle actions make the biggest difference:

* Go electric (solar, batteries & EVs) and increase energy efficiency of homes,

* Stop meat consumption,

* Don’t fly.

We took a deep dive into ecological overshoot.

But it’s not just carbon! It’s the whole economic system of resource extraction for modern life, including processing goods and services, distribution, marketing, land clearing, industry, urbanisation and waste that gives a few people (including us) a lifestyle and a species dominance unrivalled in Earth’s history.

Overshoot sped up with the Industrial revolution and colonisation. It ramped up after WW11 when corporations had to find a use for the technologies developed for war (chemicals and food).

It intensified with the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.

It prettied up its face with Reagan and Thatcher and here in Australia with Hawke and Keating – deregulation, privatisation, globalisation and the birth of ‘free market’ economics. Except economies are not ‘free’ but entwined in a death spiral of unlimited growth.

Living @ 1.5 explored the take-over of our food system by ultra processed food companies, green washing their credentials and faking nutrition at the expense of human health and nature.

We looked at fast fashion, a deliberate marketing strategy to get us to buy more for less and exploit labour in the developing world only to clog our oceans and landfill with discarded clothes turned over on average every two weeks. See the link to a story about us in About Regional. https://aboutregional.com.au/what-these-women-found-when-they-buried-their-underpants-for-six-months/471560/

We looked at the financial, technological, agriculture, and transport sectors, even the funeral industry.

Everywhere we turned there were interconnections that were impossible to isolate. Biomass statistics confirm a planet in jeopardy.

In summary humans are .01% of the total biomass on the planet but we use 47% of habitable land for agriculture (46%) and urban (1%). Of that 46% we give over 77% to livestock production and 23 to foodcrops. (reference – ourworldindata.org)

An unsustainable economic system that focuses on limitless growth has only one end point. We have pushed nature to the margins and are now witnessing the possible beginnings of the 6th mass extinction event in Earth’s history. We can no longer live with salvation myths that exclude a serious powering down of our economy, lifestyles and a degrowth trajectory. Adaptation is serious stuff!

However, Living @ 1.5 built a community of support and fun! We started to fall out of love with modernity.

In 2025 we will continue the journey with four new members!! Yay! We will take an even deeper dive to understand how humanity has got into this mess and how on Earth do we get out of it? Stay tuned.

Mhairi on behalf of the 1.5 team 

SOLAR, SOLAR EVERYWHERE

The NSW government’s Renewable Energy Zones are the modern equivalent of power plants but our area is not covered by one of them.

For that we have to thank Angus Taylor, who successfully lobbied the previous NSW Liberal government to not make our area an REZ. This is despite solar expert and world-renowned innovator Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU judging Goulburn to be one of the best in Australia for renewable energy, with plenty of sun and wind and our location close to major transmission lines.

The intervention of our former federal MP hasn’t stopped renewable energy developers doing the sums and deciding that putting wind farms and large scale solar in our area makes sense. As a community action group, we see our job as making sure the people in Goulburn and surrounding areas receive the maximum possible benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars the developers want to spend on these ventures.

As a result we have become involved in three major proposed solar farms in our region at Gundary, the Merino project next door to it at Tirrannaville and Boro, 5kms from Tarago. This is through our renewables project team, comprising Penny Ackery, Mike Steketee, Phil Irvine, Ray Shiel, Julia McKay and Annie Bilton.

The 400MW, $650 million Gundary project is the furthest advanced and the one that, so far, has aroused the most controversy. In February we attended a meeting with the developer, Lightsource bp, at their request. The three representatives there wanted our thoughts on how they should respond to the submissions sent to the NSW government in response to the Lightsource bp EIS. That included our detailed submission. We were frank about our disappointment with the attitude to date of the company, including its failure to make specific commitments on community benefits. It is one of the reasons, together with the legitimate concerns of local residents – as opposed to the many baseless claims by climate deniers – that opposition to the project has built up such a head of steam.

We went on to argue that we regarded four of the requests in our submission on the EIS to be non-negotiable – that is, despite our support for renewables in principle, without them we would not support the project. The four are:

1. Agreeing to the NSW government guideline for solar projects to pay at least $850 per megawatt per annum in benefit sharing, indexed for the life of the project. This adds up to $340,000 annually, increased by inflation each year for the 40-year expected life of the project.
   

2. A substantial training program in conjunction with TAFE, leading to employment on the project.
   

3. A contribution to social housing, preferably in the form of low cost tiny houses that would become permanent dwellings to help address the housing crisis.
   

4. Sheep grazing on the solar farm – the answer to the claim that renewables and agriculture are not compatible.
   
   

In addition, we asked Lightsource bp to commit to local jobs and contracts for local businesses, particularly during construction, and to put part of its funding into significant projects that would produce a tangible return to the community, such as the Goulburn to Crookwell rail trail.

We received a good hearing from Lightsource and look forward to their detailed response.

On February 17 we attended an information session at Tarago Town Hall organised by Samsung, the developers of the proposed 300MW Boro solar farm 5kms from Tarago off the Braidwood Road. We held a meeting with Samsung representatives, which gave us an opportunity to make many of the same points about the need for significant community benefits. The company hopes to submit its EIS by early next year.

The following day was the turn of the proponents of the 450MW Merino project to hold a drop-in session at the Goulburn Soldiers Club. At the organisers’ invitation, we sat down with a consultant to provide input into the social impact assessment the developer is preparing for the EIS, which the company is planning to submit by the middle of this year.

With all this action on renewables, we are exploring the option of co-ordinating community benefits, possibly by putting the money into a single pool to maximise its impact.

Mike Steketee

An Open Gardens Scheme for Goulburn

Open Gardens Schemes around the country have been very successful in bringing visitors to the areas in which they are based, thereby promoting local cultures and civic attractions, providing opportunities for local business and raising money to support a range of charitable endeavours.

The Crookwell Garden Festival, the Bundanoon Garden Festival and Braidwood Open Gardens have all been remarkably successful in that context. Open Gardens Canberrais another well established scheme that regularly opens gardens in the Australian Capital Territory and adjacent areas of the ‘Capital Region’. While some privategardens in the Goulburn region have opened to the public from time to time, there has been no open gardens scheme operating in our area since the national Open Gardens Scheme folded in 2015.

In November last year a new Association, the Southern Tablelands Open GardensAssociation Incorporated, was established to fill that gap. Before Canberra was established, and the consequent rapid growth of Queanbeyan, Goulburn was widely acknowledged as the largest city and commercial nucleus of the Southern Tablelands region. It is a proud history and one worthy of being honoured. The name ‘Southern Tablelands Open Gardens’ was chosen to do just that and to signify that the Association’s operations extend beyond Goulburn to many of the historic villages and settlements in Goulburn’s traditional hinterland. However, the Association does not intend to cover all the areas that may be said to be part of the Southern Tablelands, such as the ACT and even the Monaro. In addition, there is no intention to impinge on the successful existing open gardens schemes in Crookwell and Braidwood.

The Association’s objects go beyond facilitating an open gardens scheme and include:

* raising awareness of the beauty and important heritage of the region

* promoting the enjoyment, knowledge and benefits of gardens and the shared appreciation of them

*actively encouraging and supporting conservation and enhancement of cultural landscapes, historic buildings, gardens, streetscapes and significant plants

* Promoting local arts and crafts.

The intention of the Association is to raise money for the benefit of Goulburn and surrounding areas. The Association’s objects include raising funds for the purposes of conservation, sustainability and ongoing beautification of significant plants, public gardens, streetscapes and landscapes in the region and to encourage and promote local arts and crafts. The Association will be applying for registration as a charity in coming months.

The Association is planning its first event, Goulburn Spring Gardens, on 18 and 19 October this year. The owners of several beautiful local gardens have already been kind enough to indicate their willingness to open their gardens for the event. The Association is keen to hear from any other garden owners who are interested in participating.

In the lead up to the event we will by totally dependent upon membership dues and/or donations to help us purchase necessary equipment and to effectively market it. We would be very grateful to anyone who is willing to support us by joining the Association.

In coming months, we will also be seeking volunteers to help on the entrance tables at the gardens to check and sell tickets. We would love to hear from anyone who would be willing to volunteer. We can be contacted at goulburnopengardens@gmail.com or by phoning the Secretary on 0448 865 653.

It is expected that there will be areas of mutual interest between the Association and The Goulburn Group which may create opportunities for the two groups to work together in future years.

Serena Beresford-Wylie, President, Southern Tablelands Open Gardens Association Incorporated

BUILDING UNDERWAY ON ONE OF OUR EARLIEST AND BIGGEST PROJECTS

MARCH NEWSLETTER

 Hooray! We can start building the solar farm.

 Last Wednesday, with the completion of stage two civil works by Divalls, we handed over the site to Smart Commercial, the EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contractor to build the solar farm.

 What a great day, after ten years of planning, scraping, negotiating, pleading and hassling, we have the go-ahead to put panels on the site. Pictured below is a site visit with all stakeholders last week for a handover.

Left to right:  Jonathan Ward (Pace Construction Management), Trent Rowe (Divalls), Gerald Arends (Komo Energy), Andrew Bray (Chairperson), Evert Willeumier (Smart Commercial), Louise Bennets (Secretary), Tom Aitken  (Sol Srv – Smart contractor), Mhairi Fraser (Knowledge sharing), Peter Fraser (Director), Shaun Wells (Smart Commercial), Ed Suttle (Director).

 
Smart will build the racking and then install the panels. The Sign is up and soon there will be a sea of panels instead of weeds and grass.

Thanks to Divalls, the site is now in much better shape than when we started. They’ve built an access road, put in swales to control runoff, dug a sediment pond, covered much of the site in hessian, sowed grasses, and levelled much of the area to make it easier to install the racking.

 What was once a toxic industrial site with very little hope of being suitable for anything, will now be put to good use for the benefit of the community and the wider people of NSW who need more renewable energy.

Watch Co-op chairperson Andrew Bray interview Shaun Wells from Smart Commercial on the next steps.

PPA progress

We are still in negotiations and will have more to report in our next newsletter. (PPA: Power Purchase Agreement – a contract to purchase the output at a fixed price over a fixed term).

Battery news

Sometimes there is a good outcome from protracted delays! Our battery supplier has offered a bigger battery at the same price as the previous one, as the smaller battery is no longer being made. This increases our battery from 2.3 MWh to 2.85 MWh at no extra cost.

But wait – there’s more! We have been offered an even larger battery (4.07 MWh) at an additional cost of $375,000. All financial models we have looked at indicate that this would return up to 20% ROI on the cost, adding significantly to the overall ROI and derisking the project even further.

The Board is discussing this possible expansion at the moment, and if considered a worthwhile addition to the project will give members the first option of investing further in the project, going to the public only if the full amount is not achieved.

Working bee

To keep costs down and to offer our members the opportunity to engage in the project, we are planning a working bee to plant trees / shrubs along the western boundary as specified in the DA conditions. This will happen towards the end of winter. We will let you know more in a later newsletter.

Goulburn Community Energy Co-Operative Ltd, 29 Montague Street Goulburn NSW 2580. 

+61 2 4822 7700 - hello@goulburnsolarfarm.com.au