“We had to wait for the grass to grow:” How an Abbott-inspired community solar farm finally got built

Australia’s first community-owned solar farm – with battery – was officially opened last Saturday, as Sophie Vorrath reported earlier this week.

It’s not big, just 1.4 megawatts of solar and a 4.4 megawatt hour battery, but it’s the community effort that got it built at all that makes this such an uplifting and significant story, particularly in the world that we live in now.

The story of the Goulburn community owned solar farm actually began at least 12 years ago. The regional city’s then elected representatives – current federal Liberal leader Angus Taylor and state MP Pru Goward – were making a lot of noise opposing nearly every large scale renewable project in the region.

But it was the actions of then prime minister Tony Abbott that really jolted the local community into action.

“We really owe the existence of this solar farm to Tony Abbott,” Mhairi Fraser, a member of the Goulburn solar farm co-operative, says in an interview with Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast.

“He was just attacking climate scientists, attacking science … you know, climate change is crap stuff, dismantling a lot of the kind of government institutions that were supporting climate action and emissions reduction and certainly really trying to get rid of the Renewable Energy Target.

“There were a lot of us in Goulburn that were furious and we were frustrated. A lot of us are grandparents and parents and feeling like what is going to happen to the future generations … if we continue to along a trajectory of reliance on fossil fuels.”

And so a bunch of them travelled to Canberra for the first Australian community energy congress. “That was a turning point,” Fraser said. “We thought, why don’t we build a solar farm? Can’t be that hard.”

"We had to wait for the grass to grow:" How an Abbott-inspired community solar farm finally got built

Tony Abbott's climate attacks inspired a local community to build a first of its kind solar farm. They literally had to watch the grass grow under their feet, but it is now complete.

^{Giles Parkinson (RenewEconomy)}