Australia’s Offshore Wind Zones
Six offshore wind zones covering 30,006 square kilometres of sea, an area fifteen times Port Phillip Bay, have been declared off four states, and not one turbine, not one foundation and not one commercial licence exists in any of them.
The Scale
| Turbines in the water | Nil. None under construction. No commercial licence, the only instrument that permits construction, has ever been granted. |
|---|---|
| Sea declared | 30,006 square kilometres in six areas: Gippsland 15,000, Bass Strait 7,100, Bunbury 4,000, Hunter 1,854, Southern Ocean 1,030, Illawarra 1,022. Every one strategically “reduced” before declaration: the Southern Ocean by four-fifths, Bunbury by half, Gippsland by 46 percent, the Hunter by a third. |
| What the government says the water could hold | 52.4 gigawatts across the six: Bass Strait 20, Bunbury 11.4, Gippsland 10, Hunter 5.2, Southern Ocean 2.9, Illawarra 2.9. That is 18 Erarings by rating. It is an estimate of the sea, not a project. |
| Licences | 16 feasibility licences ever granted, 13 in force: nine in Gippsland (about 18.6 gigawatts), three at Bunbury (about 4 gigawatts), one in the Southern Ocean. A feasibility licence permits investigation, not construction. The Hunter, Illawarra and Bass Strait hold none. |
| How big the machines would be | Star of the South, the most advanced project, plans up to 147 turbines with tips 271 to 350 metres above the sea, on monopiles up to 11.8 metres across. At 350 metres a turbine would stand taller than Q1 on the Gold Coast, the tallest building in Australia at 322.5 metres. |
| What one farm would generate | Star of the South at 2,200 megawatts, running at the 40 to 50 percent of rated power typical of offshore wind elsewhere, would generate roughly half to two-thirds of an Eraring a year (estimate). Construction could start around 2030, generation from 2032, taking up to seven years. |
| The cost | No Australian offshore wind project has a published cost. The CSIRO warns that “a first of a kind premium” will apply when offshore wind is first deployed here. The Hunter project that was offered a licence and declined it was reported at $10 billion for 2,000 megawatts. |
The Hunter
The Hunter area was declared on 12 July 2023: 1,854 square kilometres, almost exactly the size of Port Phillip Bay, at least 20 kilometres offshore at Port Stephens, 35 from the Central Coast and 54 from Norah Head, with turbines capped at 260 metres for aviation. The government estimated it could carry 5.2 gigawatts; at 15 to 20 megawatts a machine, that would be 260 to 350 turbines, and all three numbers are arithmetic, not plans.
Eight applications were received when the window closed in November 2023. One licence was offered, in February 2025, to Novocastrian Wind, a venture of Equinor, two-thirds owned by the Norwegian state, and Oceanex Energy, for a 2,000 megawatt floating project about 20 kilometres offshore. On 22 August 2025 Equinor declined it. Oceanex announced its own closure in December 2025. No feasibility licence has ever been granted in the Hunter zone.
What Remains Proposed
Star of the South holds a feasibility licence granted in May 2024 over 586 square kilometres, 10 to 40 kilometres off the Gippsland coast, with a 30 kilometre cable route inland from Reeves Beach. Ørsted referred Gippsland 1, 2,800 megawatts and up to 200 turbines 56 to 100 kilometres offshore, for environmental assessment on 9 February 2026. On 23 January 2026 the minister offered three licences off Bunbury, announced that no Illawarra licences would be granted because no application could progress, and made a preliminary decision not to offer licences in Bass Strait for want of competitive bids. Victoria has legislated targets of 2 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2032, 4 by 2035 and 9 by 2040, and planned to open its first tender, for 2 gigawatts, in August 2026.
The Zones
| Zone | State, declared, area, cut from proposal, government estimate, licences in force |
|---|---|
| Gippsland | Vic, 19 Dec 2022, 15,000 km², 46 percent, 10 GW, 9 |
| Hunter | NSW, 12 Jul 2023, 1,854 km², about a third, 5.2 GW, 0 |
| Southern Ocean | Vic, 6 Mar 2024, 1,030 km², 80 percent, 2.9 GW, 1 |
| Illawarra | NSW, 15 Jun 2024, 1,022 km², a third, 2.9 GW, 0 |
| Bunbury | WA, 2 Sep 2024, 4,000 km², 48 percent, 11.4 GW, 3 |
| Bass Strait | Tas, Dec 2024, 7,100 km², 30 percent, 20 GW, 0 |
Reading the Numbers
A declared area is a line on a chart. A feasibility licence permits investigation. A research and demonstration licence permits a trial. An environmental approval is a separate consent again. Only a commercial licence permits construction, and none exists. The capacity-factor range used for the generation estimate is drawn from overseas experience because Australia has none.
Technical material prepared for To Save a Beach and removed from the manuscript for length. Figures are as at August 2026. Where a figure is an estimate, the assumption is stated.
- Approach and measures
- Australia’s renewable energy build: a national snapshot
- Australia’s solar installations, rooftops and grid batteries
- Australia’s Pumped Hydro
- Australia’s Coal-Fired Power Stations
- Australia’s Wind Turbines
- Australia’s Renewable Energy Zones
- Australia’s Offshore Wind Zones
- Australia’s New Transmission Lines