Outback wind farm to be Australia's biggest

Australia has given the green light for the country's biggest ever wind farm in the outback town of Silverton, New South Wales.

In the first stage of the project, 282 wind turbines will be installed, generating enough electricity for 200,000 homes. An additional 316 turbines will be added in the second stage of the scheme.

When completed, the wind farm is expected to power more than 400,000 households and have a total installed capacity exceeding 1GW. The estimated annual output of 3.5 million MWh would be enough to supply 4.5% of the energy needs of New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.

Construction is expected to start by early 2010 and take up to five years. The project will be built and financed by a joint venture of German renewable energy project developer Epuron and Macquarie Capital Wind Fund. The investment fund is jointly owned by Australia's Macquarie Capital Group and Portuguese steel construction company Martifer.

Since 2005, the New South Wales government has approved 14 wind farms with a total capacity output of 2,486MW. It projects that when all the farms are operational, they will save more than 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually and have the capacity to serve 800,000 homes.

Australia's emissions of greenhouse gases make it on a per capita basis one world's worst polluters, thanks to its reliance on cheap and abundant supplies of coal.