“Cut the BS … and please understand what you’re dealing with:” Wind and solar developers come face to face with new reality

“Things have changed in Queensland,” Clean Energy Council chief executive and former deputy premier (Labor) Jackie Trad noted at the start of the CEC’s Queensland Energy Summit on Wednesday.

And so they have. For a start, Labor is no longer in power, and the LNP is. And the LNP has scrapped Labor’s renewable targets, “called in” a bunch of already approved renewable and storage projects, and has dumped the government’s EV ambitions and electric bus plans.

The state is not completely shut to new renewables, despite the “calling in” of some projects, and the cancellation of others: Its biggest energy user, the Gladstone smelters, desperately need a lot of wind and solar to transition from coal.

But the balance of power has shifted. Project developers must now negotiate Community Benefits Agreements with local councils before they receive their development approvals, and even before they have secured connection agreements and power purchase deals and financing.

That has turned the tables away from what was seen as a developer-led process to one that effectively puts the power – and the responsibility and pressure – in the hands of local mayors, the people that Katie-Anne Mulder, the CEO of the Queensland Renewable Energy Council, describes as the “kings and queens” of Queensland.

And on Wednesday, the developers came face to face with this new reality.

“I’m not against renewables …. but please understand what you’re dealing with,” Lawrence Springborg, the mayor of the Goondiwindi shire council on the border of NSW, told the conference.

“I’m sick of people telling us what the economic benefits are – I want to see that what is promised is delivered on the ground.”

Springborg’s main gripe is that six big wind and solar projects – including the McIntyre wind farm, which will eventually be the state’s biggest – have been approved in his shire, and he says the community was all but ignored and is not seeing many long-term benefits.

He wants projects that add to the local economy, rather than a one-off “sugar hit” as another mayor described it, with proposals that can support the region’s power needs (and provide local reliability), and he is determined to change that with the next handful of projects that are still in the pipeline.

Other regional leaders agreed.

“Just be genuine,” said Morgon Gronold, the CEO of Rapad, the state’s Remote Area Planning and Development Board which helps manage small remote and isolated communities. “And cut the bullshit.”

“Say to us you’ll get 2,000 people in there to annoy you for the first couple of years when you’re building it, and we’ll wreck your roads, and we’ll do all these sort of things.

“And (then say) we’ll pay for all that, and then what we’ll do is we’ll put 20 people in your community, and we’ll give them 250,000 bucks a year, and that will mean we get another teacher in prep, and that will mean we get …another couple of hospital beds or a doctor.”

It was very much the theme of the conference, and was deliberately framed that way. These events are often talk-fests, where people who like to brag about how clever they are and how big their projects will be. But Trad says it is important for the industry to hear from the mayors, first hand.

Springborg was asked to give the keynote address, and a number of regional mayors – including from key coal regions such as Gladstone and Isaac (the Bowen Basin) – featured in other sessions.

The state government was invited too – as they were to the Smart Energy Council’s Queensland summit the previous day – but they declined the invitation.

“Queensland is a state where local mayors hold a considerable amount of authority and weight,” Trad told Renew Economy after the conference.

“It was very important to hear first hand from mayors on what they were seeking from developers. It was remarkable and obvious how consistent they were. None of them talked about targets, none of them talked about ideology, they said ‘you get us to the table with tangible economic benefits.’ I thought it was very profound.”

Not a renewables evangelist

Springborg, to be sure, is no renewables evangelist. He is a former leader of the National Party in Queensland and the first leader of the merged LNP that now forms government – and president of the LNP until last year. He is even talked of as a future governor.

He carries political weight. Like the LNP government, he wants coal to continue to have a role in the state’s grid, even beyond 2050, sees a key role for gas, and is a fan of nuclear. Springborg accepts that renewables must be built, but says he “struggles to understand how something has been so misaligned” with local communities.

“The simple reality is this – these projects are coming to our communities because we have the land,” he says. “We are polite, we are not good at protesting, but we don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

Tom Dixon, the community engagement manager in Queensland for Re-Alliance, a group that works to secure a fair and sustainable renewable energy transformation for regional Australia, admits that things have not been done well in Queensland.

“I’ve spoken to councils who were saying they didn’t know this project was going ahead until a bulldozer turned up and fences were erected, which of course is not acceptable,” he said.

And Dixon said non-disclosure agreements, a common tool used by developers in dealing with landholders, had proved to be a disaster, because they created a lack of trust, and meant that people could not talk about their experiences, be they good or bad.

Kelly Vea Vea is the mayor of Isaac, which has 35 active coal mines and 27 renewable energy project proposals. “You know that if the Community Benefits Agreement legislation has to come in, then things have gone to shit,” she told the conference.

“What a bunch of cowboys”

“Sometimes we don’t know if we are dealing with Arthur or Marrtha. Some companies were even offended when we asked about their waste management plans. We just thought ‘what a bunch of cowboys’.”

But Vea Vea says that things are now starting to change. “It feels like the dials are shifting. I am seeing a change in approach from the developer companies.”

And she is complimentary on at least one significant point, the willingness of the renewables industry to work together to solve a problem, something she has not witnessed with miners. “International mining companies dont collaborate. But renewables do, and that has been a game changer.”

“If renewable sector sets the precedent, that can be a game-changer. It’s not about minimising impact but maximising benefit.” And, she said, it’s more than just giving money to the local sporting club for new shirts or whatever. “That’s just a marketing budget for you.”

Matt Burnett is the mayor of Gladstone, which has three coal fired power stations within 100 kms, and one in the centre of the city that is soon to shut down, three LNG plants and the state’s biggest energy consumers, the Boyne Island aluminium smelter and associated refineries.

The smelter’s owner, Rio Tinto, says the smelter’s future depends on a transition to renewables once the Gladstone power station is closed in 2029. At first, that was a difficult message for the community to accept.

“We export coal around the world,” he says. “We’re in a coal community, so we knew that we had a lot of people in our community that were very anti-renewable.

“In order to get the renewables, (Rio Tinto) needed to bring our community along the journey, and including me and my deputy mayor at the time, Chris Trevor, whose favourite saying was that he loves coal so much, he drinks rum and coal.”

Rather than allowing a free-for-all and having developers run roughshod over the community, Gladstone chose to do a transition roadmap, with the help of Next Economy.

At first they could fit town supporters in an old telephone booth, but Burnett says the conversation has changed, and now people are supportive, including of the gigawatt scale wind and solar projects that are being built to power the city’s heavy industry.

“The tyre kickers are starting to fall away”

“The conversation has completely flipped … by bringing Next Economy on board, by bringing the community on board, and explaining to them how important renewable energy was going to be to the future of our industrial community.”

Vea Vea agrees that things have gotten better.

“I think that some of the tyre kickers and window lickers are starting to fall away, and you’ve got some really serious contenders that are in it for the long haul, and I think that that has made it so much easier,” she said.

“I’m seeing some really great companies step up to the challenge that’s being presented with the new legislation, because we all appreciate it’s not easy, and the conversations show that locality to locality, it feels like the dials are shifting, but I am really seeing a change in the the approach to companies.

“I think that that example I gave earlier in the day, when it came to a collective of companies coming together in my region to work to upgrade infrastructure for a rural community, it really shows you know, bravery and some initiative and innovation that I have never seen before.”

And she says the transition is critical for her community.

“We’ve got coal miners that sit at our council table that we’re really worried about how to have that conversation (about the transition from coal).

“People just want to know that there’s opportunity for their kids. They want to see a tangible pipeline. And I think that has been a challenge for the renewables. It has felt hodge-podge.

“You get one project here, one project there, and what the mining sector has shown us is that if we create these tangible pathways from high school right through to the delivery on the job side of things, people will come on board because they see the future for the next generation, and that really is where we’re trying to take our renewable sector.”

There is concern that CBAs impose an unnecessary burden on both councils and developers. The councils because they may not have the resource, the developers because timelines are so long, and the investment so uncertain that it is difficult to define.

Still, Gladstone, which is the centre of renewable activity given the urgency to replace the ageing Gladstone power station and to deliver green energy to the smelters, has secured CBAs for three major projects that are likely to start construction soon.

Vea Vea says Isaac has a large council and is well versed with dealing with big companies, and big projects.

Springborg is not so sure, and worries about the ability of councils to deploy the staff needed to wade through the complexity of 500 to 600-page documents for multiple different projects. “We have been given just enough responsibility to get ourselves into serious trouble.”

Mostly, like Gronold, he wants to see economic benefits on the ground, and particularly in energy. He says the community is frustrated that they can see wind and solar farms in their region, and big batteries, and still suffer blackouts.

One farmer, Springborg told Renew Economy, has to rely on a diesel genset sometimes to power his farm, as the MacIntyre wind turbines loom on the horizon.

Big batteries are connected to the main transmission lines and are contracted to solve other people’s problems. He wants these assets working to boost local reliability. It sounds logical, but he says trying to get sensible responses from the maze of developers, network providers and retails is driving him to frustration.

“We talk about local grids and local networks, it is just not happening. And people are getting no benefit from reticulated energy supplies,” Springborg says.

“The government gave the sector a licence to save the world … but they forgot about the community. It’s like we’re an afterthought.

“Now we can get off to a better footing. From my community’s perspective, if we have relatable benefits they will want more of these projects. We don’t have too many other options.”

See also: Spanish giant withdraws 2,000 MWh battery project after being “called in” by LNP planning minister

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