The next round in the battle to decide whether the southern hemisphere's largest wind farm should be constructed on the Lammermoor Range in Dunedin starts on Monday.
Five days have been set down for Meridian Energy's appeal against an Environment Court decision declining consents for the proposed $2 billion Project Hayes wind farm.
Justices Chisholm and Fogarty will preside over the hearing in the High Court at Dunedin and only points of law can be addressed in the appeal.
Any party unhappy with the result of the hearing can appeal the decision to the Court of Appeal.
Meridian planned a 176-turbine wind farm on 92sq km of land, making it the largest in the southern hemisphere with the capacity to produce about 630MW of energy each year: enough to power about 263,000 average homes.
In 2006, Meridian lodged resource consent applications for Project Hayes with the Central Otago District Council, and the following year with the Otago Regional Council.
Several individuals and environmental and recreational groups opposed the consents being granted and appealed to the Environment Court.
The 350-page Environment Court decision was released last November.
The court said the negative effects of the wind farm on the landscape, heritage and recreation outweighed the positive benefits to the region and to the country of providing a large quantity of renewable energy.
The court found the project was inappropriate in such an "outstanding natural landscape" and said it was extraordinary that no cost-benefit analysis had been done on the project.
Meridian's "failure to consider alternatives properly" was another factor towards declining consent the court decision said.
Parties involved in the hearing next week include the Central Otago District Council, Otago Regional Council, the Maniototo Environmental Society, Upland Landscape Protection Society, John, Sue and Andrew Douglas, Eric and Cate Laurenson, Ian and Sarah Manson, Gaelle Soguel Dit-Piquard, Ewan Carr and Roch Sullivan.
