Australia might be known as the great southern land, but an escalating fight for space has industry leaders calling for the Federal Government to intervene to ensure mining and renewable energy projects can co-exist.<\/p>\n
A new report by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies is warning that priority access for green energy developers is putting the lucrative mining industry at risk, thrusting the issue on the agenda ahead of this month\u2019s national economic roundtable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have many more competing uses for the land, no consistent rules and established industries that provide the foundational base of our economy forced to play second fiddle,\u201d AMEC chief executive Warren Pearce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s paralysing mining development, sterilising resources and it\u2019s entirely avoidable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AMEC report, Congested & Contested – Co-existence The Key to Unlocking Productivity, warns that tax and royalty revenue of $493 billion is at stake, due to \u201cuncertainty, delays and conflict\u201d over land use.<\/p>\n
It reports that a preference for exclusive rights is locking mining exploration out, including in WA\u2019s Mid-West.<\/p>\n
Toolonga Mineral Sand\u2019s tenements for coccolith chalk near Kalbarri were terminated, to make way for the foreign-owned Murchison Green Hydrogen Project that has been awarded major project status from the Federal Government and received $814 million in Headstart funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have stated that we we can coexist. But no, the Minister has ignored that request,\u201d Toolonga Mineral Sands managing director Ann Conlan-Nash said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as the Murchison green hydrogen project, we know that they\u2019re not going to do anything up there for probably five to six years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could have been moving forward since 2020. It\u2019s been five years that we\u2019ve been waiting, fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
AMEC said it\u2019s an example of the rush to renewable energy \u201crunning roughshod\u201d over regional communities and risking a backlash from locals.<\/p>\n
The AMEC report found meeting demand from both industries would require an equivalent of \u201ctwo Australia\u2019s\u201d if exclusive rights are applied to all 77 million square kilometres of land.<\/p>\n
Mr Pearce said the solution was diversification leases that had been attempted, but not often taken up, in WA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has actually become a really big problem in regional WA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the fact that all of these renewable energy project proponents say they don\u2019t require exclusive licences, not one of them are using the diversification leases. They\u2019re opting for a section 79 lease which provides exclusive tenure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means they\u2019re pursuing a path that tries to lock out other users and that\u2019s the worst possible outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s lobbying for a national model, to ensure consistency and offer investors certainty.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone benefits, because the highest value land use is multiple land use,\u201d Mr Pearce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is you can do these things without actually ruining the overall purpose or economic benefit of the wind farm. 99 per cent of it will remain untouched. You just need to take a piece out of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat piece creates jobs, taxation, revenues and, of course, royalties, as well as what\u2019s going on with the wind farm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia might be known as the great southern land, but an escalating fight for space has industry leaders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,99,2572,75,2322,6827,84,8146,128,7239],"class_list":["post-50763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-federal-politics","tag-mining","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-science","tag-state-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}