Top paddocks on Darling Downs tapped for renewables
A slice of one of the best-known cattle stations on Darling Downs, the famed grazing lands of southern Queensland, is being offered as leasehold for a renewable power operator, as landholders seek a stake in the energy transition.
Up for grabs is a 1850-hectare portion of Lyndley Station, one of the largest freehold runs on the Darling Downs and once home to three generations of the Sparkes family, including Sir James and Sir Robert Sparkes, cattlemen and stalwarts of the Queensland National Party.
In the north-east corner of the Downs, on the edge of the Jimbour plain, the station was taken over more than a decade ago by Brisbane businessman Nick Mather, a cattle breeder and veteran of the mining and resource sectors.
Mather was the co-founder of Arrow Energy before it was acquired by Shell and PetroChina and now leads DGR Global, an ASX-listed firm which focuses on generating resource sector projects around the world and sponsoring other listed miners.
With a foot in the resource and agricultural sectors, Mather is now looking to tap into the opportunities in the renewable energy sector at Lyndley. That move comes as Queensland earmarks 12 renewable energy zones through the state, where solar and wind facilities can be hooked up to transmission lines.
The 6275-hectare Lyndley Station falls within the Darling Downs Renewable Energy Zone and has frontage to a 275kV high-voltage transmission line.
Typically, energy developers will knock on the doors of farmers, seeking access to large sites suitable to host renewables. But as the energy transition gathers pace, Mather is among a new generation of landowners seizing the initiative to test market appetite for their land.
CBRE’s Andrew Loughnan and colleague John Harrison have been appointed to canvass expressions of interest for the Lyndley leasehold.
“It’s about highest and best use. It’s Principles of Real Estate 101. This is running a transparent process to work out who they would like to occupy their land as tenant,” Loughnan told The Australian Financial Review.
“There is an agricultural value and agricultural lease rate. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a unique site on a high-voltage power line, of size and scale. It could be developed to a solar farm, a battery.
“If the right partner comes, they might have a [power] off-take [agreement] of some description. You could start talking about data centres.
“At the end of the day, this rush to renewables is creating both opportunities and challenges for regional landholders. Running this process can’t help but get a bit of transparency.”
Not far from Lyndley, there are other renewable initiatives such as the $150 million Chinchilla battery set up at the coal-fired Kogan Creek power station and the 83-turbine Wambo Wind Farm being developed over the next two years.
Greg Elkins, an industry veteran and now chief executive of Global Power Energy, an energy transition firm that works on major projects such as Snowy Hydro and the Borumba pumped hydro project in Queensland, said more agricultural landholders were taking the steps themselves to tap into the energy transition.
“We have seen a new trend emerge of landholders becoming the developer, if you will, in that farmers are now approaching global renewable energy companies to see if there is any interest in their property, or indeed taking it to market and stimulating competitive interest,” he said.
“These are personal generational decisions and the desire to host renewable energy is understandably a case-by-case basis but as with any business, there are opportunities for those wanting to explore them.”
