Australian firefighters: Renewables and fire risk – what are the facts?
Posted byCam Walker Posted in Australian FirefightersTags:climate change, fire, renewable energy
Why renewables?
Australia and other high-emission nations must take drastic action to stop climate change impacts becoming irreversible.
As was noted recently by Professor Mark Howden, Director of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions (ICEDS) and Vice-Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
“2024 was the hottest year on record globally, and the first calendar year where the average global temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level. The world is on the cusp of failing to deliver on one of the major objectives outlined in the Paris Agreement, and now we are paying the price of escalating impacts.”
An important part of this action must include a rapid transition away from our reliance on fossil fuels to fuel our economy. A combination of renewables, storage and energy efficiency will be required to meet our energy needs while also acting to reduce our contribution to further global warming.
AFCA supports the rapid development of renewable energy and storage. We appreciate that there are areas of high conservation value where these projects should not proceed. However we can also see the many economic benefits that come with the development of renewables and storage in farming and regional areas.
Misinformation and anti renewables campaigning
In the 2000s, the main arguments used against renewable energy tended to be claims about human and animal health and impacts on property values. Both of these have been soundly debunked over the years since then. One of the favoured arguments currently being used against renewables – including turbines, solar panels and batteries – is the ‘threat’ of increased fire risk.
Renewable power facilities do not pose a significant threat of increased fire risk. The AFCA is concerned that misinformation about renewables is rife, and has developed this short paper to outline our perspective.
Firstly, we remember the fire in the Hazelwood coalmine that burned for 45 days and needed many hundreds of firefighters to put it out. It had enormous public health impacts and many firefighters suffered serious health impacts from working in the mine open cut. We personally know people who quit the CFA after being deployed at the mine fire. Compared with the reality of what a fire at a fossil fuel facility looks like, the current opposition to renewables because of claimed fire risk sometimes verges on the hysterical (one example is the claim from the anti renewables group Stop these Things that ‘wind turbine fireballs keep torching the Australian countryside’). In reality, a fire in a turbine nacelle is generally a rare and isolated event.
the fact that anti renewables campaigners ignore the constant call outs for fires caused by fossil fuels (including gas leaks and car accidents involving petrol or diesel driven vehicles) demonstrates that the fire and renewables argument is used selectively and often dishonestly
The fact that anti renewables campaigners ignore the constant call outs for fires caused by fossil fuels (including gas leaks and car accidents involving petrol or diesel driven vehicles) demonstrates that the fire and renewables argument is used selectively and often dishonestly. There are risks with many facilities connected with fossil gas: for instance petrol stations, LPG storage facilities and gas drilling operations. For instance, a gas flaring operation in Gippsland at a test fracking site caused a grassfire (which was stopped by the local CFA). Yet opponents continue to talk up perceived risks about fire and renewables while ignoring the frequent fires associated with use of fossil fuels.
Politicising fire fighting
AFCA opposes the politicisation of firefighting by some individuals and brigades. In Victoria, there have been multiple threats by some volunteers to refuse to fight fires on renewable energy developments. This will undermine the trust placed in us to protect lives and property.
As volunteers in the CFA, we are expected to remain non-political. While we all hold views, we are careful not to voice them as brigades. That is why the AFCA was set up. It allows members to voice opinions on climate change without politicising the brigades that we belong to.
The AFCA deeply disagrees with the brigades who are taking action over a politically weaponised topic like the energy transition. While we support the calls for greater clarity around policy and safety, we do not believe this has to come at the expense of the energy transition away from fossil fuels.
Firefighters are adaptive to changes in firefighting
There is nothing unique about the new challenges posed by renewables. The firefighting environment is constantly changing, and fire fighters are very good at adapting to change and learning new skills. Rural areas get built up, which changes the fire fighting profile of that area, necessitating greater skill development in fighting structural fire. Houses and cars have a lot more plastics and petrochemical based components than in the past, meaning they catch fire more rapidly. Firefighters are good at adapting and learning new skills as the fire risk changes. To suggest otherwise undermines how professional firefighters are.
With the rise of storage batteries, electric vehicles and grid and household scale renewables, we acknowledge that firefighters are facing new challenges. But training is now widely available and more and more brigades are becoming skilled at responding to these new risks. We also know that we are facing the fact that climate change is turbocharging fire conditions – meaning longer and more intense seasons, with growing demands on existing career and volunteer firefighting capacity and the need to adapt how we respond to mega fires and new events like increased incidence of pyrocumulus clouds, which are formed by a rising column of hot air coming off fires, which can generate their own weather.
Risks of fire connected with renewable energy facilities
Wind turbines
A common argument used by people who oppose wind farms is the claim that renewables increase the risk of fire in regional communities. There is no data that we have seen that suggest that areas with wind farms have more frequent or intense fires after the turbines are installed.
There are several measures that are undertaken to ensure fire risk is not an issue at wind farms. Firstly, modern windfarms need to ensure a bushfire risk assessment is carried out before construction and that they meet relevant guidelines from fire authorities.
It could be argued that the construction of windfarms assists in firefighting when they do occur, because they require good road access to all turbines and other infrastructure. It must be noted that fire in renewable facilities is rare and generally very localised.
How often do turbines catch on fire?
Authorities consider the risk from wind turbine fires to be low. The Country Fire Service in South Australia says wind turbine fires are rare [1]. Fire Trace International has suggested that based on data available at the time, 1 in every 1,710 turbines caught fire in 2011 [2]. They say that ‘overall, the data shows that wind turbine fires are relatively rare’. Another data set produced by DNV GL, an internationally accredited registrar and classification society, estimates the rate of fire in wind turbines at 1 in 2,000 each year.
The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council’s Wind Farms and Bushfire Operations document says “wind farms are not expected to adversely affect fire behaviour, nor create major ignitions risks”.
It says wind farms may actually reduce the risk of bushfires starting from lightning since the lightning would hit the turbines rather than the ground because they are tall, metal structures. Unlike isolated trees, vegetation is cleared around the base of turbines, making the likelihood of a fire getting away very low.
The Country Fire Service in SA says ‘CFS recognises that there is a risk of wind turbines catching alight but evidence in SA indicates that this risk is low’ [1].
Additionally, wind turbines are operated and monitored remotely 24/7 and are designed to have a number of fail-safe systems built in to stop operation in case of an emergency [3].
Most modern wind turbines are equipped with automated fire suppression systems in case a fire has developed, and those solutions are able to be retrofitted into existing platforms.
While the chances of a fire in a turbine leading to a bushfire in Australia are low, they are routinely switched off remotely when there is a fire in the area, as happened at the Stockyard Hill wind farm in Victoria in 2024 [5].
Do turbines cause turbulence which makes fires worse?
Wind turbines are not expected to pose increased risks due to wind turbulence or moving blades.
The Australasian Fire and Emergency Services Council (AFAC) position paper on Wind Farms and Bushfire Operations concluded that “wind turbines are not expected to pose increased risks due to wind turbulence or the moving blades.
Local wind speeds and direction are already highly variable across landscapes affected by turbulence from ridge lines, tall trees and buildings”.
Do turbines dry the air, increasing fire risk on the ground?
This is something of a niche obsession among some of the anti campaigners (often announced in CAPS LOCK), and most of the online resources on this topic can be traced back to anti renewable sources. Yes, wind turbines generate wakes, which can potentially influence the local microclimate near the ground. Research has shown this can have a warming or cooling effect (eg this work from the USA). But to claim that wind farms dry the land significantly at scale, and thus increase drought and fire risk, is just not sustained in the mainstream research that has been carried out.
Safety of firefighters
There are often claims that fires in turbines could threaten the safety of firefighters. However, as a practise, fire crews do not undertake offensive firefighting in wind turbines (ie try to get close to the fire and put it out).
Instead, firefighters tend to undertake defensive strategies: they work on the ground to stay on top of any spot fires caused by falling debris and monitor and contain any spread of the fire into surrounding vegetation, and let the fire burn itself out. In this sense it is a very normal firefighting operation.
Hazards for aerial firefighting
Turbine towers, meteorological monitoring towers and power transmission infrastructure pose risks for aerial firefighting operations. Meteorological monitoring towers and power transmission infrastructure are generally difficult for aerial personnel to see, if they are not marked appropriately.
If wind turbines were not shut down, moving blades and wake turbulence could create significant hazards for low flying aircraft, thus the shutting down of wind turbines, in an emergency situation, is defined in wind farm emergency procedures [4].
Aerial firefighters are incredibly skilled and used to working around many structures (including high voltage transmission lines). With appropriate care, working around turbines does not lead to specific threats for aircraft. As noted in the CFS guidelines: ‘Aircraft operators undertake a dynamic risk assessment of all risks to aircraft safety during an emergency incident. The presence of wind turbines, high towers and voltage transmission lines, on or near a fire ground would be considered in the incident action plan’.
‘Going on strike’ could increase the spread of fire
It also is important to note that wind turbines and transmission lines are generally located on privately owned farmland. If a fire takes off on one property it can spread quickly and become a blaze that can have enormous impacts across the community. Firefighters put a lot of effort into stopping small fires before they become uncontrollable. We have specific responses on days of bad fire conditions to ensure rapid deployment of ground and air resources.
The volunteer firefighters who have stated that they would “restrict turn-out commitments to incidents at electricity generation and transmission infrastructure sites to ‘property perimeter defence’” risk this rapid response approach to firefighting. There is at least one known instance of a turbine fire causing multiple spot fires (this occurred at Redhill, in the Mid North of South Australia). If striking firefighters were to ‘stand back’ at the property perimeter, this could lead to a minor fire becoming a major blaze, and the blame for this would rest on those who refused to tackle the fire close to its source.
Guidelines for how to manage turbines for fire
There are guidelines in place to ensure wind farms are built in a way that minimises fire risk and allows safe firefighting conditions should a fire occur within a turbine.
CFA guidelines
For large-scale renewable energy facilities, CFA has developed the Design Guidelines and Model Requirements for Renewable Energy Facilities (PDF 15.2MB).
This guideline contains CFA’s expectations for the planning, design and operation of renewable energy facilities to ensure bushfire risk and safety measures are considered.
NSW Government wind farms and bushfire guidelines.
Click to access 2018_10_AFAC_windfarmsbushfiresoperations.pdf
Country Fires Service SA
Click to access cfs-guidelines-wind-farms.pdf
Produced by the Australian Firefighters Climate Alliance
SEPT 2025
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-12/wind-turbine-fire-concerns-risks-danger/103443918
[2] https://www.firetrace.com/fire-protection-blog/wind-turbine-fire-statistics
[3] https://w-wind.com.au/do-wind-turbines-cause-fires/
Electric vehicles & fire. Don’t believe the hype.
Posted byCam Walker Posted inUncategorizedTags:fire
People who oppose renewables love to talk up the perceived fire risks of wind turbines, batteries and electric and hybrid vehicles. And when accidents do happen, news is spread on social media which generates a sense that these events are common and pose unacceptable risks to firefighters, the environment and the community.
The fact is that the risk of fires in all of these facilities is actually very low. There are more than 350,000 electric vehicles (EVs) on Australian roads (July 2025), yet to the best of our knowledge there have only been 7 on road accidents where the battery pack has ruptured and the cells have gone into thermal runaway (when a battery cell short circuits & starts to heat up uncontrollably). Electric vehicle battery fires are rare. Indeed, the available data indicate the fire risk is between 20 and 80 times greater for petrol and diesel vehicles.
A current news story that is circulating involves commentary of a recent fire from the USA:
‘Five Sacramento firefighters were hospitalized after responding to a Tesla crash. The vehicle’s battery pack had been compromised, scattering hundreds of cells across the roadway. When the tow truck tried to move the Tesla, the main pack reignited, releasing a massive vapor cloud that traveled hundreds of feet downwind.
These weren’t just flames — this was a toxic mix of hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide, and vaporized solvents like ethyl and dimethyl carbonate. The result: four firefighters still off duty months later with lasting respiratory, cardiac, and renal complications.’
To have a battery pack release cells across the roadway is *very* rare.
Bad faith actors often amplify these sort of events to try and convince people that new technologies that they don’t like are incredibly dangerous.
The photo used in the header of this story is from a hybrid fire I attended in NOV 2024 in central Victoria. The battery pack was ruptured and went into thermal runaway. When we arrived I was the only person on scene who had breathing apparatus (BA) qualifications so all firefighters moved back to a safe distance while I worked to contain the fire. In many ways it was a routine car fire.
Firefighters are constantly learning new skills and techniques. Battery fires are now a part of life. These events are manageable – we just need to learn how to respond safely.
There are things we need to consider, like:
– knowing the safe standoff distances for people not in BA,
– ensuring air monitoring, and that the public is kept back beyond a normal exclusion distance
– knowing how to react to the fire itself
There is lots of great training opportunities and information out there.
We suggest the resources available via EV Firesafe: https://www.evfiresafe.com/
And check the AFAC website: https://www.afac.com.au/public-resources/volunteers-embrace-the-new-response-to-electric-vehicle-incident—foundation-training-program
Are electric vehicle fires common? https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/docs/are-electric-vehicle-fires-common/
Electric vehicle fires are very rare. https://theconversation.com/electric-vehicle-fires-are-very-rare-the-risk-for-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles-is-at-least-20-times-higher-213468
Queensland Fire Department briefing sheet on responding to EV fires and incidents: https://www.fire.qld.gov.au/safety-education/battery-and-charging-safety/electric-vehicle-fire-safety
Don’t believe the anti renewables hype!