Key Takeaways
- The Developer Rating Scheme announced by the Australian Government aims to improve trust and transparency in renewable energy development.
- RE-Alliance has been actively working with regional communities to ensure lived experiences inform the design of the Developer Rating Scheme.
- Research indicates that while the majority in renewable energy zones support large-scale renewable infrastructure, there are concerns about the rollout process.
The Australian Government’s announcement last week on the Developer Rating Scheme progress is a step in the right direction.
At the Renewable Energy Alliance (RE-Alliance), we’re particularly interested in this initiative because of its potential to improve trust and transparency in regions where renewable energy is being developed. We’ve been working with regional communities at the heart of Australia’s shift to renewables for more than a decade.
We have a seat on the government’s stakeholder reference group for the Developer Rating Scheme. We’ve been using that position to make sure lived experience informs the design, and to push for adequate investment in the rollout, to support take up and practical application. The Government has been open and wants to get the scheme right.
The Developer Rating Scheme has strong potential to provide a reference point for farmers and landholders weighing up their options about hosting large scale renewable infrastructure, but also for investors and government agencies who want to reduce risk and prioritise good social and environmental practice.
We’ll use our position on the stakeholder reference group to offer input to help shape how the initiative will measure things like community benefit sharing and engagement practice – getting this right will be crucial.
While the scheme has potential, it doesn’t solve the information and capacity gap we’re seeing across rural and regional Australia, the consequence of which is missed opportunities and misinformation.
Last year, RE-Alliance commissioned quantitative and qualitative research with people living in renewable energy zones (REZs) across Australia. We did this to provide an evidence base to back up the assumptions we’ve been hearing from the ground in the communities we’ve been working with for more than a decade.
This deep dive showed that the majority of people living in REZs support the development of large-scale renewable energy infrastructure. That’s a clear majority and aligns with a stack of other research from people like Porter Novelli, 89 Degrees East and the CSIRO.
But, what we also found is that while the majority of people in REZs accept that the shift to renewables is a move in the right direction for Australia, when we dug into their support they have genuine concerns about how it is being rolled out across regional communities.
There is an overwhelming theme that keeps coming up – not only in the work we did, but also across many other studies, most recently in this research by KPMG released last month: it is increasingly hard for people to get the right information about the energy shift when it’s rolling out in their communities.
This doesn’t surprise us. Rural and regional communities navigating large-scale energy developments have articulated the lack of information and capacity required to make sure that all the opportunities available to them are realised.
It’s a complex environment with many proponents, government agencies, and rules and frameworks to get your head around. Rural and regional leaders we work with have expressed exhaustion and overwhelm.
Making sure there is an easy way for communities to access information about the shift to renewables requires more ambition and direct investment from the federal government.
Local Energy Hubs, a physical centre and outreach service resourced by trusted locals can help to demystify the switch to renewables, bolster local engagement, and independently facilitate communication between energy developers and the community.
We are working with community groups in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania who are calling for Local Energy Hubs in their regions.
From the letters to the editor section of the Tumut and Adelong Times:
“Despite being at the heart of major energy generation infrastructure, our region faces significant gaps in local energy resilience and emergency preparedness. It’s clear to me that our community needs a local energy hub – a shopfront that community members can visit, staffed by local experts who can provide trusted information and advice.”
To another in the Moruya Mail:
“Local community energy group, Southcoast Health and Sustainability Alliance have tried unsuccessfully for nearly a decade, to see community scale renewables set up in the Eurobodalla. The South Coast would really benefit from a Local Energy Hub.”
And yet another in the Illawarra Mercury:
“With a plethora of information regarding the best forms of energy it is hard to know fact from fiction. All towns need Local Energy Hubs.”
You get the picture. Let’s keep up the good work with a strong Developer Rating Scheme, but let’s back some very logical solutions – like Local Energy Hubs that communities are saying are a no brainer and want to be funded by the federal government yesterday.
