At a meeting in the Victorian town of Clarkes Hill, 200 or so residents stated their strong opposition to a 20 turbine wind farm proposed for the area. To a small group of people who had attended the meeting in support of the wind farm, this heated response to the development was a complete shock.

The Clarkes Hill meeting left Per Bernard, Scott Kinnear, Phil Hanson and a few other wind supporters with an important lesson: although big wind farms have an impact on the landscape and the community, this does not mean wind is not an answer. Raised in Daylesford and owner of a sustainable architectural and building firm in the town, Mr Bernard came up with the idea of offering the local community a smaller development.

Speaking in a local café in Daylesford, owner and operator of organic retail stores in Melbourne and local Daylesford resident, Mr Kinnear says that after the Clarkes Hill meeting, the group realised that as well as minimising the environmental impact of the wind farm, the development needed community support. The best way to acquire this would be to offer the community direct ownership of the wind farm.

Three and a half years later, Mr Bernard’s idea of a community-owned wind farm has grown into the proposed two turbine, 4 megawatt Hepburn Wind Farm to be developed at Leonards Hill.

After a number of local meetings, the Hepburn Renewable Energy Association was formed in 2005 with a membership base of more than 400.

Mr Kinnear explains that the idea was to make sure the community owned and controlled the asset, while also ensuring that the development was sensitive and specific to the needs of the local community and the town itself.

“We actually thought, let’s try and build turbines that will power our town and that then becomes a model for lots and lots of smaller turbine developments to power other towns across Australia,” says Mr Kinnear. “This also fits into the model of distributive generation, which helps to build more resilient grid structures.

“It doesn’t really matter which way you look at it, this is a good project for the community, and we are leading the way and are very excited to be breaking new ground. Even though there are lots of these types of small co-ownership structures of one, two or three turbine developments in Europe – there is one in just about every backyard there.”

However it was clear to the team working on the development, that at a certain point, a formal structure would be needed to make the idea a reality. This saw the formation of the Hepburn Community Wind Cooperative, or Hepburn Wind, in July 2007.

“For me, the early days of the cooperative were a daunting process because there were so many unknowns,” explains Hepburn Wind Deputy Chairman Koos Hulst.

However, he says that as Australia’s first community-owned wind farm that has worked through the process, it is now something Hepburn Wind can present to other communities.

Mr Kinnear is also confident about the example this development will set for other Australian communities and both men are aware of the importance of documenting their progress for future developments.

“It’s a bit like explorers going into the wilderness and hacking into the jungle in the hope of getting to a better place,” says Mr Kinnear. “We are the explorers in Australia doing that.”

“And often explorers don’t get acknowledged for a long time afterwards, but I do think people will look back at what we’ve done and I think down the track people will follow. And it will not only be for generating wind power, but also for communities taking responsibility for energy generation from other methodologies — so it could be biogas, it could be energy savings, it could be solar.”

Mr Hulst believes that being the first group to develop a community-owned wind farm is the reason the project was successful in receiving almost $1 million in funding from Sustainability Victoria.

“I think it’s safe to say that about five communities are looking over our shoulder at this moment to see how it’s going and are chomping at the bit to follow suit,” he says.

However, both Mr Hulst and Mr Kinnear agree that being the first project of its kind has also been the biggest challenge in its development.

“We have had to build everything from the ground up, without a template to grab hold of and just fill in the words,” he says. “We haven’t had that; every word has had to be written.”

Mr Hulst adds that the other challenge has been the thousands of hours of work that have had to be done by a board of eight people and others volunteering their time on top of two or three other jobs.

Of course, the wind farm did not reach the stage of a Share Offer on its own. From the project’s conception in 2005, wind project development company Future Energy has been heavily involved in the development.

Future Energy Managing Director David Shapero says that when Per Bernard initially approached him about the development, it was a meeting of minds.

Future Energy was set up in 2003, with a goal to develop community-owned projects. The company is currently working with five different communities in New South Wales and Victoria, but none of these developments are as advanced as Hepburn.

From the beginning, Future Energy has provided financial and project development expertise to the Hepburn Wind team. The company has assisted with community engagement throughout, while also looking at the site and starting the actual project development – including all the environmental studies and financial feasibilities, site selection and negotiating the technicalities of grid connection. This initial work culminated in submitting the planning application to the council, the application to Sustainability Victoria for funding and the Share Offer to the public.

Mr Shapero says that the Hepburn project is already proving to be a fantastic model and a real demonstration for Australia.

“The level of interest we get from other community groups is enormous,” he says. “We are asked to speak at conferences, we are asked to speak to the media, so people are interested. The model is fantastic and if you look overseas, this type of model is being used by community groups, shire councils, different bodies that want to get involved in renewable energy in their local area and they also want to have control and ownership.”

Future Energy has also been involved in helping Hepburn Wind with the very important process of community development and engagement.

As a major consultant on Acciona Energy’s Waubra Wind Farm development, 35 kilometres north of Ballarat, Mr Shapero and his staff have spent hundreds of hours in Daylesford at stalls in the town, speaking at forums and with individual people, circulating as much information as possible and ensuring the community is fully informed about the project.

Mr Hulst says that while there were some people who were initially opposed to the project, the majority were in favour once they had all the information.

Released on 25 July this year, the Hepburn Wind Share Offer has so far been highly successful.

Mr Hulst and Mr Kinnear are confident that the share offer will be successful and will raise enough money to make the project viable. Aiming to raise $10 million, after two weeks the Share Offer had already raised half a million dollars, with over 850 people downloading the document from the website.

“We will get our money without any trouble at all because we are in a phase of global economic uncertainty. And the one thing about wind turbines is that they are a very straightforward business to run, and the numbers are very well understood. This means that if you have a good financial model, which we do, you can predict the earnings over the course of the project,” explains Mr Kinnear.

Hepburn Wind and Future Energy are excited about the future for Hepburn Wind Farm and other community projects.

Mr Shapero says that the company is looking forward to the process from here onwards, which involves completing the contract for the wind farm and then coordinating and managing the project right through to construction. And provided the development can secure two wind turbines for the project, construction is aimed to begin in 2010.

In the meantime, the aim is to raise the required funding and deliver what Mr Kinnear says is the dream.

“This is a dream to own and generate our own renewable electricity so as a local community we are not impacting on climate change but are taking a big step to generate all the electricity for these houses and these towns renewably.

“We are the custodians of that dream and the launch was a very important event where we brought in the community and there was a transfer of ownership,” he says. “We said now it is yours to come and support; we are ready for you to come and support and invest in it now.”