British naturalist Sir David Attenborough called it the “most extraordinary place on earth”.
The globally renowned rainforest and crystal-clear waterways of the World Heritage-listed Daintree in Far North Queensland attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.
But it often shocks visitors to hear that many hotels and businesses in the area burn hundreds of litres of diesel fuel each week to stay open.
“The Europeans especially are absolutely horrified,” local hotel owner Mark Cromwell said.
“They come to a World Heritage-listed national park … and the message is, ‘We’re not really committed to the environment.'”
Despite having a permanent population of about 800 people, there is no mains power in the Daintree, just a two-hour drive north of Cairns.
It was a decision made by the Queensland government in the 1990s to help control development and over-population in the world’s oldest surviving rainforest.
But in 2012, the government’s Daintree Policy was repealed, allowing residents and businesses to install their own isolated networks with approval from the energy regulator.
The federal government took that a step forward in 2022 and signed off on a $18.75 million funding deal for a renewable-energy microgrid, which would include an 8-megawatt solar farm and power delivered to homes and businesses via underground cabling.
The government promised power by 2024 in a statement by then-assistant minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction, Tim Wilson.
But construction is yet to start on the microgrid and just a fraction of the money has been allocated to the Brisbane-based Volt Advisory to deliver the project, which the government promised would create 200 jobs.
In a statement, the Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said $1.55 million of the $18.75 million grant had been paid to the Volt Advisory Group.
“The only site work that has taken place is surveying,” the statement said.
“Due to confidentiality requirements that apply to all Commonwealth grants, the department is unable to comment on the terms of the grant agreement with Volt Advisory.”
The project also needed additional private funding to go ahead — Volt Advisory has not confirmed how much exactly — but no investors have been announced yet.
Scott Dwyer, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, said while microgrids offered a practical solution for tourism communities with seasonal influxes of visitors that put strain on the electricity grid, the systems were complex and expensive.
“Microgrids are in the very early stages in Australia … there’s still a lot of uncertainty around the regulatory hurdles and business models as well,” Dr Dwyer said.
“It’s for those reasons they can be hard to attract investors to.”
Green power getting dirty
Mark Cromwell, who owns and operates a luxury lodge in the area, burns about 400 litres of diesel a day in the summer months to power air conditioners, fridges and wastewater treatment plants.
Even when there are no tourists, he still uses 250 litres of fuel a day just to keep the place running, he estimates.
“It is quite an embarrassing thing to have to rely on a generator,” Mr Cromwell said.
“We would love to have solar and a battery but it’s a $1.3 million investment, it’s just not affordable.
“Many of the businesses in the Daintree are just mum and dad enterprises, they are not multi-million-dollar affairs.”
Further down the road, 89-year-old Betty Hinton, a renowned botanical artist, has been running her Floravilla Ice Creamery since the 1980s, producing 60 flavours of biodynamic, organic ice cream.
She switches between two diesel-powered generators that she services herself to make and keep her products cool, at a cost of $2,500 in fuel a month.
“Ice cream doesn’t like to be melted down and I’ve learned how to run my freezers so that I never lost an ice cream,” Ms Hinton said.
“It would be nice to not have to lift 200-litre drums of oil … it’s just sheer determination that keeps me going and the thought of that microgrid going in one day.”
While many tourism and business operators in the Daintree support the microgrid project, others in the small community do not.
A 2019 KPMG report commissioned by the Queensland Government examining the viability of a microgrid in the area concluded “microgrid-based solutions do not appear to be the right long-term solution for the Daintree”.
“A microgrid would supply residents with a reliable and secure energy network, however it presents numerous technical and commercial risks and is likely to be financially unviable without significant up-front and ongoing government support,” the report said.
The report instead recommended investing more in establishing or improving stand-alone power options for individual homes.
Concerns about urbanising rainforest
Former local mayor Mike Berwick said while the microgrid would not have a “direct impact on the environment itself”, he raised concerns about it opening the area up to urbanisation.
“It’s the secondary impact of further driving development in a place where we really ought to be promoting the conservation values,” Mr Berwick said.
Despite these concerns, Volt Advisory’s director Richard Schoenemann said the “bulk of people” in the Daintree supported the project.
“They need it,” he said.
“It is very expensive, very dirty and very cumbersome to run a diesel generator to operate a resort.
“It’s expensive, it’s polluting, and it doesn’t fit in with the sustainable frame of mind that people like to put forward in the Daintree.”
He said the company hoped to start construction on the microgrid next April and was in talks with several investors and construction companies.
“We have a tremendous amount of support, especially from the resorts and the business owners up there who need a better solution,” he said.
“People will see the merit.”
Sydneysiders go off-grid
Peter and Gina Tsigris and their five children, aged seven to 14, embarked on a road trip from their home at Marrickville in Sydney, eventually ending up in the Daintree Rainforest in 2017.
They fell in love with the area’s natural beauty and bought a 24-acre property in 2021, where they now run their Daintree Fan Palm Farm and cafe.
“When we bought the place, there was nothing — even the generator wasn’t working so we had to start from scratch,” Ms Tsigris said.
The couple installed a solar system and batteries at a cost of about $100,000 but occasionally have to rely on a generator for their energy needs, in an area that counts its annual rainfall in metres.
She said they remained “neutral” about the microgrid project.
“Around about the time we moved in, there were people saying by April 2024, power was going to be guaranteed, but we’re still holding meetings and talking about it,” she said.
“Who knows if it’s if it’s even going to come to pass?”
