Bringing renewable gas to northern Victoria is the goal of a partnership between a First Nations businessman and a sustainable energy firm, which also seeks to boost the indigenous community’s economy.
Important details:
- A scheme to supply the Goulburn Murray region with grid-scale renewable gas is gathering traction.
- An indigenous entrepreneur and a clean energy company joined together to launch the project.
- Project leaders assert that utilising waste-to-energy resources will assist cut carbon emissions and manage pricing volatility for high-intensity businesses.
Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta guy Daniel Briggs is the managing director of Yurringa Energy and a former criminal defence attorney turned businessman.
The former resident of Shepparton wants the area to foster Indigenous business and job prospects while also assisting in the move away from fossil fuels.
The development of clean energy assets by Pacific Heat and Power will be essential to the realisation of the Goulburn Murray Woka Yurringa Energy project.
The business focuses on the “develop, own, operate” approach.
A sizable solar farm constructed near Numurkah, to the north of Shepparton, served as inspiration for Mr. Briggs.
In order to be able to acquire the electricity, he stated, “I thought it would be a terrific idea for an Indigenous company to build a renewable energy asset and utilise Indigenous procurement policies.
The Goulburn Murray region’s high-intensity factories are highly dependent on the availability of fossil fuel gas.
(Brant Cumming of ABC News)
According to Mr. Briggs, it was attractive since it offered an environmentally benign answer and the opportunity to “move away from a cost paradigm and into an investment approach.”
In the past, there haven’t been many Aboriginal men and women in business, so he believed that if we could begin participating and engaging with the economy in a constructive way, we would begin to get traction.
The partnership will make use of Mr. Briggs’ regional experience and get his support for the undertaking.
High-intensity producers will profit
The programme, according to Scott Grierson, chief executive and managing director of Pacific Heat and Power, would introduce grid-scale renewable gas for the first time in the Goulburn Murray region.
According to Dr. Grierson, a waste-to-energy supply would contribute in reducing carbon emissions and price volatility.
It’s a fairly big renewable gas project, he said, producing four petajoules of renewable gas year, which is around 6.5% of Victoria’s whole industrial gas demand in 2020.
According to Dr. Scott Grierson, Australia does not support renewable gas production as much as Europe does.
(Provided by Scott Grierson)
According to Dr. Grierson, there are numerous high-intensity manufacturers in Shepparton and the larger Goulburn Murray region that utilise a lot of heat in their processes and are difficult to replace.
“We’re attempting to offer them a renewable solution that also enhances the processing of various manufactured food wastes and agricultural wastes in general.”
According to Dr. Grierson, he anticipated the partnership would serve as “a pioneering paradigm for the Indigenous economy” in Australia, drawing inspiration from cases from North America and New Zealand.
The initiative has received more than $410,000 from the Victorian government through its Investment Fast Track Fund, which will hasten engineering studies, feasibility analyses, and site selection.
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