Three former members of the Star of the South project’s executive team have launched a consultancy company focused on offshore wind and are now recruiting with an aim to grow the team to more than ten people by the end of this year.
The company, named Energise Renewables, has been founded in Melbourne by Naomi Campbell, Adam Thyboe, and Jonas Jacobsen, who between them have over 30 years of offshore wind experience from Europe, APAC, Australia, and New Zealand. “I believe the company is unique within the Australian and New Zealand context, offering end-to-end offshore wind project life-cycle expertise including project origination, development, construction, and operation” , Naomi Campbell said.
According to information on the company’s website, Energise Renewables provides consultancy services through all project stages, from bid preparation and feasibility studies, environmental survey and impact assessment planning, to regulatory and stakeholder engagement, as well as supply chain development.
The experts from the newly established offshore wind consultancy have been part of the pioneering offshore wind developments in both Australia and New Zealand.
As already mentioned, in Australia, they have been at the forefront of the country’s offshore wind industry since 2018 through their involvement with the first proposed offshore wind farm project.
In New Zealand, Energise Renewables’ founders were involved in the establishment of the country’s first offshore wind partnership.
The company’s founders are not the first from the team that was developing Australia’s first offshore wind farm to launch a new company.
As reported last year, Andy Evans and Peter Sgardelis, two of the co-founders of the Star of the South offshore wind farm, launched Oceanex Energy in 2020 with plans to develop and build up to five wind farms off the coast of Australia and three in New Zealand.
Work on the 2.2 GW Star of the South, now in an advanced stage of development and given Major Project Status by the Australian government, started in 2018/2019 with site investigations and initial impact assessment studies.
Meanwhile, Australia has been working on pinpointing the areas of its coasts where offshore wind turbines would be installed, with the government having identified six priority regions as having world-class offshore wind potential.
In December 2022, the Commonwealth declared the Bass Strait off Gippsland, where the Star of the South project will be built, as the first region in the country to be home to the offshore wind industry. This region alone has the potential to support more than 10 GW of offshore wind capacity.
The five other regions are the Pacific Ocean regions off the Hunter and Illawarra in NSW, the Southern Ocean region off Portland in Victoria, the Bass Strait region off Northern Tasmania, and the Indian Ocean region off Perth/Bunbury in WA.