City of Newcastle will become the first local government in NSW to move to 100 per cent renewable electricity after awarding a tender to purchase power from the state\u2019s largest windfarm.
\nA 10-year power purchase agreement (PPA) was awarded today to energy retailer Flow Power for the equivalent of all the City\u2019s operational needs from the Sapphire Wind Farm in the New England region.
\nThe accepted tender, which follows Council\u2019s August resolution to make the switch to renewables when existing supply contracts expire, stands to save rate payers around $1.8 million over\u00a0the 10-year contract.
\n\u201cFrom 1 January, the City will become the first local government in NSW to purchase enough renewable electricity to meet 100 per cent of our operational electricity requirements,\u201d Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said.
\n\u201cThis means enough clean energy will be put into the grid to power every sportsground floodlight, local library, park-BBQ and any other facility Council operates.
\n\u201cDrawing all our energy needs from renewables is a significant achievement for the City and our mission to make our operations more sustainable and cost effective.
\n\u201cAround 70 per cent of the respondents to a recent community survey supported this move, ranking renewables as one of their highest priority measures to reduce impacts on the environment.\u201d
\nFlow Power CEO Matthew van der Linden said organisations like City of Newcastle were \u201cleading the transition to a new energy future\u201d.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to see the uptake of renewable deals like these grow in the Hunter Region, as proven by City of Newcastle and Molycop earlier this year,\u201d Mr van der Linden said.
\n\u201cWe see this as a long-term partnership, which will not only support City of Newcastle but also, have significant broader impacts for the local region.\u201d
\nThe City already uses half a megawatt of solar energy generated on the roofs of 10 of its facilities, including Newcastle Museum, with an additional five megawatts to come from the solar farm at the Summerhill Waste Management Centre.
\nLocated 18km west of Glen Innes, CWP Renewables\u2019 Sapphire Wind Farm generates enough energy to power around 115,000 homes annually. The facility is part of a 1,300-megawatt wind, solar and battery portfolio the Newcastle-based firm is building across Australia.
\nSapphire also supplies locally based industrial products manufacturer Molycop, which became one of the biggest buyers of renewable energy in Australia when it signed a PPA with Flow Power earlier this year.
\nThe City will join the University of Newcastle in switching over to renewables on 1 January and follow the lead of other progressive Australian organisations, including the University of NSW, CBA, Westpac, Monash University and Melbourne University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City of Newcastle will become the first local government in NSW to move to 100 per cent renewable electricity after awarding a tender to purchase power from the state\u2019s largest windfarm. A 10-year power purchase agreement (PPA) was awarded today to energy retailer Flow Power for the equivalent of all the City\u2019s operational needs from … Continue reading “City awards 100 per cent renewable contract”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}