The Australian Wind Alliance (AWA) said the inquiry’s recommendations, which were released on Monday, were idealogical and unbalanced attacks on wind energy while the Southern Grampians Landscape Guardians (SGLG) embraced the recommendations as fair and reasonable.

The inquiry was led by anti-wind power crossbenchers David Leyonhjelm, John Madigan and Bob Day.

SGLG president Keith Staff, of Penshurst, said “big wind had got away with a lot over the years” on planning controls and noise levels and the recommendations would make wind energy companies more accountable.

“Everything (in the past) has been stacked for wind proponents to gain approval,” Mr Staff said.

He doubted the inquiry’s call for wind turbines built over the next five years to only receive renewable energy certificates for five years would kill off the wind energy industry.

Wind energy proponents have said that recommendation would make wind farms “unfinancable”.

However Mr Staff said he understood wind turbines could each generate up to $800,000 a year through subsidised income, which should make many of them an economic proposition.

He said the inquiry’s call for an Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Industrial Sound to advise on whether wind farms posed health risks was not before time. 

AWA said the report’s recommendations “threaten the massive economic benefits regional Australia is set to reap from new wind farm projects”.

AWA south-west organiser Angela McFeeters said if the recommendations were adopted, they would be a massive blow to Portland which was a centre for wind farm skills and material provision. 

"This would also be a huge issue for future projects expected to be built in the wider Warrnambool region which have approvals already," Ms McFeeters said.

AWA national coordinator Andrew Bray said the inquiry wanted to strangle wind development in Australia with red tape.

Mr Bray said attacking renewables gave Australia’s trading partners the impression that Australia was not serious about tackling climate change.