THE night was dark and wet. The hall was large and cold. Up front a triple-bladed demonstration turbine turned slowly, silently.
This was no ordinary annual general meeting.
Here were the shareholders of Australia's first community-owned wind farm gathered in their hundreds in the Daylesford Town Hall.
Most wind farms are owned by private companies. Some are built by speculators.
The difference with Hepburn Wind is that it's owned by a community co-operative and as a co-operative, its job is to benefit members, not to maximise returns - as is the case for companies - and all members get one vote, regardless of how much they invest so the richest don't rule.
That morning, chairman Simon Holmes a Court announced that Hepburn Wind had signed up to buy two wind turbines that will be erected about 10km south of Daylesford.
Construction is due to start in October.
The turbines are expected to start producing power before the middle of next year, and wind tests on the site show it has potential to produce an average of 12,200 megawatt hours of non-fossil fuel energy a year.
Up to 14,000MWh/yr would power 2000 to 2500 homes.
That same week, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced he was officially delaying the emissions trading scheme, a move that might, you'd think, make shareholders in a wind farm co-operative a little nervous.
Not these shareholders.
After the formal part of the evening, the shareholders headed for the supper room. There I met Jill and Mark. They'd driven up from Melbourne for the AGM.
Jill had been raised in Ballarat but she had no intention of ever heading back to the country. She was a city girl and preferred the anonymity it offered, she said.
Yet here she and Mark were, investing part of their superannuation in this very rural project.
I met too, a man from Mt Macedon. In tweed jacket and blue jumper he looked the most conservative of investors.
I met a woman from Woodend I estimated was at least 60 years of age.
That's not an age for naive or risky investments.
They are among 1112 people who so far have invested $7.5 million in the project even before the turbines that will generate returns have been built.
What was going on here?
It's true that, as is the case with most wind farms, this one faced objections about the visual and noise impact, the proximity to neighbours and more, but objectors lost their challenge before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in June 2007.
The energy and drive around this project is fascinating.
At the meeting, there was a distinct feel that people want to invest in change, to shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy and to invest in their community.
They're not waiting for politically constrained governments to make that change in the form of an emissions trading scheme.
They're doing it anyway.
Hepburn Wind has loads of good feeling going for it. But its viability rests on Australia's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) staying in place.
The MRET requires electricity wholesalers to source 45,000GWh of Australia's electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.
For Hepburn Wind members, and for renewable energy's expansion generally, MRET is more than a feel-good friend.
Genevieve Barlow is a Hepburn Wind shareholder.
