Posted on June 2, 2025
In the past three years offshore wind has been made the punching bag for anti-renewables misinformation, lies, and propaganda. Peter Dutton’s political campaign against offshore wind created sovereign risk, stalled projects and stymied genuine engagement with communities.
But it could not deliver the Coalition the election. Prime minister Anthony Albanese now has a clear mandate to deliver a truly ambitious shift to renewable energy. Offshore wind has emerged strong, and has a critical role to play powering communities, manufacturing and heavy industry.
As shown in the Climate Council’s Election 2025 Report, “the ALP’s two-party preferred support increased in most seats with offshore wind debates, despite significant campaigns against the projects.”
Notably, in the Hunter and Illawarra – regions where Dutton promised to cancel proposed offshore wind projects – electorates saw sizeable swings away from the Coalition and towards Labor and its commitment to offshore wind.
This is an opportunity to reset the approach, to acknowledge that offshore wind is a key plank of Australia’s future energy mix, essential to decarbonising heavy industry and other big energy users, and take the actions necessary to support the industry in this critical early stage.
Albanese now has the opportunity to move beyond declaring where offshore wind can be developed to set out a more ambitious policy that builds the industry.
Setting a national target for offshore wind
There are currently six offshore wind zones declared around Australia, representing roughly 23 gigawatts (GW) of capacity of viable projects, many of them located in industrial regions close to large load centres – the Hunter, Illawarra and Bunbury zones all being clear examples.
Victoria is currently leading the way on offshore wind policy, with its ambitious target of reaching 4 GW by 2035 and 9 GW by 2040. Offshore wind will play a key role in deep decarbonisation of Victoria’s electricity system, providing a form of variable baseload that complements onshore wind in the state’s west. Contracts for the state’s first offshore wind auctions will be signed in 2026, providing certainty for investors.
But Victoria’s target alone will not be enough to establish an entire new industry that will necessarily be national in scope, with manufacturing sites and offshore wind ports likely distributed throughout the country.
There is a clear gap and need for a national platform for offshore wind that would need to include:
- Ambitious targets that build on state leadership, backed up by a clear financial mechanism. The federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme has played a key role securing onshore projects, and a mechanism that values the unique benefits of offshore wind would help guarantee a steady pipeline of projects needed to attract investment and establish local supply chains.
- A strategy for domestic manufacturing that sets out Australia’s distinct advantages, attracts new suppliers, and establishes a local supply chain in everything from towers and vessels to subsea cables, floating platforms and smaller components like ladders. Local content requirements are the start. A clear strategy would see offshore wind create thousands of onshore jobs, sharing the benefits more widely, while supporting the local steel industry.
- Clear guidance on community benefits. Neighbouring communities are still asking how their regions will benefit from large projects, and are demanding more than just a few solar panels on the footy club. The government can support communities by providing guidelines for regional benefit sharing, community co-ownership, and co-investment opportunities in offshore wind. This could range from requiring contributions to regional benefit funds, to opening projects up for public investment.
- A multi-port strategy that invests in upgrades for existing port infrastructure for manufacturing, construction and maintenance of both floating and fixed turbines. Without federal leadership ports and states may simply be left to compete with each other, a situation that won’t deliver the maximum jobs benefits.
- A strategic fleet of offshore wind vessels that secures ongoing maritime workforce capable of constructing and maintaining offshore wind projects amid global competition for vessels and maritime workers.
- Public investment in baseline environmental studies. Communities will naturally have questions about potential environmental impacts, but a lack of easily available public research on offshore wind and the ecosystems where it will be built left the government open to attack from anti-wind campaigns in its first term. In its recent offshore wind report, The Australian Marine Conservation Society argues there is an urgent need for baseline environmental studies right now before projects begin construction.
While Trump is wreaking havoc on the US offshore wind industry, with the right strategies Australia could well become a safe haven for the industry, attracting billions in capital investment, highly skilled labor and innovative new businesses.
In the past three years we have been stuck in a conversation about whether offshore wind is acceptable or not, which stymied genuine engagement with communities about what local projects might look like, and the benefits that they want to see.
Now that nuclear and the anti-renewables campaign has been defeated politically, Australia can get back to the nuts and bolts of how we will establish this new industry – and in a way that supports the aspirations of host communities and society more broadly.
The first building blocks for offshore wind have been established through the declaration of offshore wind zones. Now it’s time for Anthony Albanese to build on that foundation and deliver a more ambitious plan to establish an offshore wind industry in Australia for the long-term.
