Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (20:30): (2835) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning, and the action that I seek is for the minister to reject the planning application to locate a battery energy storage system inside the green wedge zone on Middle Hut Road, Doreen. Battery energy storage is intended to stabilise the energy grid and smooth supply by storing energy when generation is high and prices are low and releasing energy back into the system when demand goes up. However, current technology using lithium ion batteries contains a risk of runaway fires, so we must be very careful about where such battery systems are placed.

There is currently a proposal to install a massive battery energy storage system, or BESS, in Doreen, which will cover 14 hectares of farmland and paddocks with lithium ion batteries. This project would be a massive industrial facility, and the proposed site for the BESS is simply not an appropriate location. The site is inside the green wedge zone. It is covered by an environmental significance overlay and sits within a designated bushfire-prone area. These protections exist for a reason. The Black Saturday fires of 2009 engulfed this area and local residents still report having great difficulty getting insurance because of the known bushfire risk. Yet this proposal plans to put fire-prone lithium ion batteries right in the middle of paddocks and rolling hills that are not easily accessible to fire trucks. Nillumbik’s planning scheme states that the green wedge zone is designed to preserve agricultural land by preventing incompatible use and development. Let us be clear: the battery system would be a large industrial facility that is incompatible with the agricultural, Indigenous heritage and environmental values that underpin the green wedge zone.

Instead of informing neighbouring residents about the controversial plan at the earliest opportunity, the developers left their consultation until the last minute, just before applying. They had a community information session on 29 August while intending to submit a planning application in September and expecting to get approval by the end of the year. A second forum was promised but has never eventuated. The developer acknowledges that lithium ion batteries can experience a thermal runaway event resulting in fire. Yet during the session the proponents refused to answer questions from the floor and left the community deeply alarmed by their failure to adequately address the serious fire risk. As I have noted in a previous speech, in 2021 when the Victorian Big Battery near Geelong caught fire it burnt for three days from Friday morning into Sunday. We cannot have this facility within the green wedge.