Plan to bring renewable gas to Goulburn Murray a win for Indigenous economy
Published Wed 02 Nov 2022
ABC News - Rosa Ritchie
2 November 2022
A collaboration between a First Nations entrepreneur and a clean energy company is aiming to bring renewable gas to northern Victoria while stimulating the local Indigenous economy.
Yorta Yorta, Wamba Wamba man Daniel Briggs is a criminal lawyer turned businessman and is the managing director of Yurringa Energy.
The former Shepparton local wants the region to support the transition from fossil fuels while simultaneously generating Indigenous business and employment opportunities.
Clean energy assets developer, Pacific Heat and Power, will be pivotal in the success of the proposed Goulburn Murray Woka Yurringa Energy project.
The company specialises in a 'build, own, operate' model.
Mr Briggs was inspired by a large solar farm built to the north of Shepparton in Numurkah.
"I thought it would be a great idea for an Indigenous company to develop a renewable energy asset and utilise Indigenous procurement policies … to be able to purchase the energy," he said
Mr Briggs said it appealed as an environmentally friendly solution, as well as a chance to "move away from a cost model and into an investment model".
"Historically, we haven't had a lot of Aboriginal men and women in business, so I think if we can start interacting and engaging with the economy in a positive way is when you start to get traction," he said.
The collaboration will leverage Mr Briggs' local expertise and give him a buy-in to the project.
High-intensity manufacturers to benefit
Pacific Heat and Power chief executive and managing director Scott Grierson said the initiative would launch grid-scale renewable gas in the Goulburn Murray region for the first time.
Dr Grierson said a waste-to-energy supply would help address price volatility and reduce carbon emissions.
"It's really a very large renewable gas project, somewhere in the order of four petajoules per annum of renewable gas — so that's equivalent to approximately 6.5 per cent of Victoria's entire industrial gas demand in the year 2020," he said.
Dr Grierson said Shepparton and the Goulburn Murray region more broadly was home to a lot of high-intensity manufacturers that used a lot of heat in their processes, which was not easy to displace.
Dr Grierson said he hoped the collaboration would be "a pioneering model for the Indigenous economy" in Australia informed by examples from New Zealand and North America.
The Victorian government has granted the project more than $410,000 through its Investment Fast Track Fund that will accelerate engineering studies, feasibility assessments, and site selection.