Yurringa Energy: the first Aboriginal-owned company providing green energy to an Australian major infrastructure project

When he got the call from his business partner in June, a slightly incredulous Shane Wilkins asked him to repeat what he had just said. Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer of the start-up, Yurringa Energy, had been anxiously awaiting news of a potential contract on the North East Link, the biggest road project in Melbourne’s history.

If it was what he thought he had heard from Daniel Briggs, Yurringa Energy’s Managing Director, the contract would set a major precedent in Australia – and maybe the world: the first to be awarded to a renewable energy retailer wholly owned and controlled by Aboriginal people. And indeed it was. “We won the contract,” Wilkins remembered Briggs repeating to him. “I knew from the tone of his voice that he was not joking,” he added in a recent interview.

The contract is with Spark North East Link Design and Construction, the consortium in charge of excavating two twin tunnels that will help establish a link between the Eastern Freeway and the M80 Ring Road in the eastern suburbs. At 6.5 kilometres, the tunnels will be the longest of their kind in the state of Victoria, which has Melbourne as its capital. One of the members of the consortium is Italy’s Webuild Group, a global leader in tunnelling. Under the terms of the contract, Yurringa Energy is to supply the green energy to operate two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) for the next four years. The contract started in July, a few weeks before the TBMs embarked on their underground journey that will see them reach depths of 45 metres.

The 137.5 GWh (gigawatt-hours) being supplied by Yurringa Energy comes from Alinta Energy, an energy wholesaler. That amount of power, produced at a wind farm, is equivalent to the annual output of more than 91,000 solar panels.

Although there are cranes, pile drivers and other heavy machinery on site, the TBMs are by far the biggest consumers of energy on the project because of their size and the task they have to perform. They are also among the biggest in Australia: at 15.6 metres in width, more than 90 metres in length, and more than 4,000 tonnes in weight, they are virtually mobile factories. Each TBM has a total installed power of 13,200 kW (kilowatts). On an average day of production, each one consumes approximately 60,000 kWh (kilowatt-hours). Given how the average daily consumption of a three-person household in Victoria is 19 kWh, it can be estimated that each TBM consumes as much as 3,000 households.

Then there is the array of plants and systems needed to support the TBMs: grout plant, ventilation system, water treatment plant, compressed air station, cooling towers, conveyor belts…

Yurringa Energy’s contract is part of a social procurement initiative pursued by Spark to hire not only Aboriginal people but also Aboriginal businesses. Social procurement means creating value beyond the value of the goods or services being procured. So in the case of Yurringa Energy, Spark is helping it grow by giving it legitimacy.

In fact, the contract has been crucial for raising Yurringa Energy’s profile as it looks to offer its services to commercial and industrial businesses with annual energy usage of 2 GWh or more. “We are on the radar now,” said Briggs. “We can now say we are an energy retailer.”

Before signing up with Spark, Briggs and Wilkins had had difficulty convincing prospective customers that what they had to offer was worth considering – especially since they had only founded the business in 2018. “It was hard,” said Briggs. “How do you win their trust with no trading history and just an idea?”

Another positive effect from the contract has been Yurringa Energy’s ability to obtain seed financing to lease office space in Melbourne and hire more sales and administrative staff. “If the contract had not worked out, it would have been back to square one,” said Wilkins, explaining how the seed financing from Invest Victoria, a business development agency of the state government, was conditional on it winning the contract.

Yurringa Energy will prioritise the hiring of Aboriginal people and contractors, providing training to support their careers and businesses, said Briggs, who is a Yorta Yorta Wemba Wemba man from the Goulburn Murray Region on the border between Victoria and New South Wales. A former defence lawyer, he is the sole owner of the start-up. Wilkins was a senior management consultant before joining him.

“Yurringa Energy is proud to lead the way in First Nations procurement within the energy retail sector,” he said. “It will demonstrate how it can transform Australia’s economic landscape by significantly contributing to a growing First Nations economy.”