Union leaders have demanded job guarantees for coal workers transitioning to low carbon industries as the renewable revolution in Australia looms large.
A national conference in the New South Wales Illawarra this week heard the region, which is synonymous with heavy industries and highly unionised workforces, was facing significant change.
"There is going to be a big construction of renewable energy," national research officer for the Maritime Union of Australia Penny Howard said.
"A lot of that will be built off the coast – floating, offshore wind turbines."
The Illawarra has been identified as one of five Renewable Energy Zones (REZ) in NSW.
Last week, the state's energy minister Matt Kean revealed the government had received $43 billion worth of potential investments in the Illawarra REZ.
Of the 44 projects proposed, 10 were wind developments, including eight offshore wind farms.
The Illawarra has also been identified by the federal government as one of six regions where offshore wind energy generation would be explored.
One developer, OceanEX, had indicated construction of the massive turbines could take up to four years and would require a workforce of 3,000, with 300 ongoing jobs.
"There's multiple projects proposed that would all be of a similar scale to that, just in the Illawarra," Ms Howard said.
"There's a similar number of projects that are proposed off the Central Coast and Newcastle as well, so there will be steel, concrete, all sorts of skills that will be needed.
"We will need seafarers, we will need a lot of electricians, we will need a lot of other tradespeople to put the turbines together, to install and maintain the generators and to repair the blades."
'It's a problem'
In February, Origin Energy announced plans to wind up its Eraring facility, Australia's largest coal fired power station, in the NSW Hunter region, seven years early.
It is one of several coal fired power stations facing early closure across Australia.
Last month, Australian miner South32 scrapped its plans to extend the life of its Dendrobium underground coking coal mine in the Illawarra, with production at the facility anticipated to continue until at least 2028.
But Ms Howard criticised the lack of a plan to support the mining workforce as it faces an uncertain future.
"It is an enormous problem that there's been no transition plan, authority, none of that infrastructure at either the NSW government, national or regional level," she said.
"It's a problem we need to take up as soon as possible.
"We need a strong government program that looks at the skills of those workers, the training they might need.
"There's probably income support that will be needed and then making sure they've got a job guarantee that ensures they can get employment in those new industries."
But Ms Howard said she was confident unions would continue to play a crucial role in supporting workers during the transition, and in the renewable sector.
"Of course, we need to put requirements on those new industries, to ensure they're providing good, secure, permanent employment and they're not just going to use sub-contracting and poor labour standards," she said.
"No worker should be left behind.
"It is a social imperative that we deal with that collectively and make sure that workers who have spent their lives in coal mines can move across."
'A learning curve'
National research director with the Mining and Energy Union Peter Colley said establishing a national energy transition authority would be key to supporting workers impacted by the early closures of coal fired power stations to seize new opportunities in the renewable sector.
"We're on a learning curve here," he said.
"Australia actually has a bad track record of industrial restructuring, and we tend to just pay workers their redundancy and let them fend for themselves.
"This is an opportunity to do better than that, with a focus on coal power in the first instance, but it will become the rest of the coal mining industry."
Editor's note 9/9/22: This article originally stated that production at the South32 mine was anticipated to end in 2028. It has been changed to reflect the company’s projections that it will operate until at least 2028.
