Council lodged incorrect trigen DA
Image: Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese and Clover Moore promoting the City's aborted trigeneration scheme at Green Square in April last year
City of Sydney Councillor Angela Vithoulkas has lambasted Council for incorrectly lodging a development application (DA) for the failed trigeneration plant at Green Square.
The DA for installing a trigeneration power station at 3 Joynton Ave in Zetland, submitted on December 11 2012, has the applicant listed as the City of Sydney, not Cogent Energy.
The move sparked initial concern the City of Sydney was beholden to a contract with Cogent, despite Council aborting the trigeneration scheme for Green Square three weeks ago.
“That is quite a big mistake and I was quite appropriately very concerned and disturbed by that fact, because it meant that it wasn’t corrected until the Council meeting,” said Ms Vithoulkas.
“It would have had a whole different debate at committee had we been aware as Council if the actual applicant was Cogent.
“Why should Cogent still want to go ahead with an application if we have in fact decided not to proceed at all with an agreement?”
A spokesperson for the City of Sydney confirmed the DA was incorrectly lodged, but only “as the architect, not the applicant”. However, a copy of the DA obtained by City News explicitly lists the City of Sydney as the applicant.
“Cogent was the applicant and the City is the owner of the land,” said the Council spokesperson.
“On termination of the development agreement with Cogent Energy, there are no binding restrictions upon Council, other than an ongoing obligation to preserve the confidentiality of some information.”
The City of Sydney spent $8.1 million on attempting to deliver the trigeneration network before shelving the plan, citing regulatory barriers. The original plan was to develop a city-wide trigeneration network – using natural gas for power, heating and cooling – including a proposed plant at Green Square.
“The City claims that it’s not money down the drain because we’ve learnt something and that we’ve developed knowledge,” said Ms Vithoulkas.
“I would question why it takes $8 million dollars to learn something. I would question when we discovered that it wasn’t economically viable, because I suspect it was a lot sooner than has been disclosed.
“That’s a lot of money to investigate something that should have been approached probably in a very different way, given that we were essentially relying on state and federal regulations to enable such a huge project to go ahead.”
A spokesperson for the City of Sydney responded: “The investment has funded research, technical material and other work which will be used to pursue trigeneration systems in our own buildings and for future trigeneration precincts across the city.”
