It is not as chaotic as the California gold rush of the 19th century, but the offshore wind farm rush in Taranaki surely feels like it.

Meridian Energy announced this week that it had joined the race to harness regional wind power. However, another smaller company was ahead of all the competitors.

In August, Wind Quarry Zealandia lodged a consent application to build 54 wind turbines off the coast of South Taranaki.

Wind Quarry Zealandia chief executive Patrick O’Meara said each turbine would have a 15-megawatt capacity and the wind farm building phase could start by 2029.

He said the company, which was founded by two American brothers, Patrick and John O’Meara, would use fixed-bottom wind turbines for the South Taranaki Bight project.

Patrick O’Meara, who was also a general practitioner in Gore, said they started exploring the possibility of a wind farm project in 2019, and then in 2020 spoke with the Taranaki iwi.

“We have designed a three-phase project – each phase is 810 megawatts. So each phase will put out about the same amount of power as the Manapōuri hydro project,” he said.

Wind Quarry Zealandia was playing against bigger competitors in this rush for renewable energies, he said, as New Zealand was committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

On Thursday, Meridian and Parkwind, a company based in Belgium, announced they had signed an agreement to start exploring the readiness of the supply chain, the electrical grid and the market for an offshore wind farm in South Taranaki.

In September, the Taranaki Offshore Partnership, a joint venture between green energy investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, said it had a plan to build a $5 billion wind farm about 23km out to sea in the South Taranaki Bight.

Last year, a consortium comprising BlueFloat Energy and Elemental Group announced another plan to build 65 turbines in the regional waters.

Parkwind’s New Zealand country manager, Peter Spencer, said the South Taranaki Bight was already one of the most competitive areas in the country for wind generation.

He said the alliance exploration project would look at the development of 35 turbines that could produce between 500MW and 1 gigawatt off the coast of Taranaki.

If the exploration with Meridian was successful, Spencer said, the building stage could start in the next decade.

Parkwind operated four wind farms in Belgium and one in Germany. In 2023, the company was acquired by Japanese company Jera, which operated two offshore wind farms in Taiwan and one in the United Kingdom. Jera currently has an offshore wind farm under construction in Japan.

Spencer said around 80 to 100 people were working in one of the wind farms in Belgium, and the work opportunities for Taranaki would be similar.

“These are the guys who sail the boats, these are the guys who go out and do the maintenance … the planners and the administration people in the office … And then there’s all the other white-collar jobs,” he said.

However, he said the alliance would wait for a regulatory framework to be put in place by central government next year, before lodging an application to build.

“Offshore wind needs to be done properly, and it needs to have some regulation over it.”

The news of the alliance planning to harness the regional wind came after National Party leader Christopher Luxon said in New Plymouth that a National-led government would fast-track investment in offshore wind farms.

The announcement by Luxon was followed by a swift response from Labour, as Energy Minister Megan Woods said building wind farms was a “long-term, billion-dollar” investment and Labour wanted to develop a regulatory regime first.

She said it was unlikely any construction would start by the end of this decade.

Spencer said the Government should safeguard the wind farm market and put in place a regulatory framework. Then companies could put forward applications to develop wind farms.

“The Government has committed to having that [regulatory framework] ready next year,” he said.

“If all looks good then we will apply for a feasibility area within the area to then undertake offshore studies.”

He said there was not yet a regulatory framework for offshore wind farms in New Zealand, but the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was working on legislation to regulate offshore renewable energy that included offshore wind, waves and tidal.

But Wind Quarry Zealandia did not wait for the new regulation to come into place and thought New Zealand was already behind other countries.

“There is a Resource Management Act in place that’s fit for purpose for putting in offshore wind installations,” Patrick O’Meara said.

“Waiting any longer for the initiation of offshore wind power in New Zealand is unacceptable from our perspective.”

Taranaki Regional Council resource management director Fred McLay said the council received an application from Wind Quarry Zealandia on August 15 for three resource consents to build an offshore wind farm.

“We are now assessing the application in accordance with current legislative requirements,” he said in an emailed statement.

“No other companies have lodged resource consent applications in respect of wind farms.”

There was also an open debate about noise pollution created by the construction and installation of wind farms offshore.

Craig Radford, an associate professor of marine science at the University of Auckland, said the construction and operation of a wind farm produced anthropogenic noises that could have deleterious effects on animals.

He said noise pollution could affect marine animals’ behaviour by masking animals’ communication signals, or even cause direct damage by changing hearing thresholds or damaging organs.

However, companies were exploring the use of bubble curtains, a device that could disrupt the propagation of sound from the wind farm, Radford said.

“Basically it’s just a big ring that they put on the sea floor and pump air through it, and there’s a lot of holes in the ring and bubbles just come up from it.”