Queensland’s $2 Billion Forest Wind Farm development creating jobs

The $2 billion Forest Wind project will include up to 226 turbines and will located in the Wide Bay-Burnett region between Gympie and Maryborough. The location was carefully selected due to its large working environment.

It will be situated at least 3km away from any residence to ensure it doesn’t affect the local community. Local residents have been consulted at the planning stage and will be continually involved through the project’s development.

440 jobs are expected to be created over the course of the project with a further 50 jobs to be created to facilitate the operations of the wind farm. A large number of these jobs will be allocated to local residents where applicable.

The project is set to increase Queensland’s installed power generation capacity by around 9%.  This will be a large contribution towards Queensland’s target to have 50% renewables by 2030.

The Forest Wind farm is expected to generate up to 1200 megawatts of electricity which would be enough to supply 25% of Queensland homes or enough to power all homes across Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and the Wide Bay-Burnett. This will add on to the existing 5500MW of renewable energy Queensland currently has.

Over the last 3 years, the Queensland government have invested $5 billion in renewable energy creating 2500MW over this time and creating approximately 5000 jobs.  Generating renewable energy Is assisting in keeping electricity bills down for Queenslanders.

Commencement is due to commence by the end of 2020 of early 2021 depending on finalising all contractual agreements.