Our shift to renewable energy is not just from fossil fuels to wind and solar. Increasingly, our energy production is going local – into communities, homes and businesses. Our energy consumption has always been local but now is challenged to be smart, flexible and variable.
With such momentous technology realignments, it’s easy to forget that people are involved. We must expect that our energy transition will change us culturally and change how we organise ourselves. Not trivial impacts.
Community offers a social “glue” that will help us do this well. Community energy groups across the country have been championing a better energy system for over 20 years. In fact, “community” keeps showing up as the answer to everything – from electrification to resilience. But not in the mainstream narrative, which continues to focus almost exclusively on customers and energy providers.
This article argues that we must not overlook the work that is needed at the community scale and the collective good that it can unlock. Resourcing local action will empower everyone to participate and speed us to a fairer and faster energy transition.
The transformation of our energy system is no longer a question of “if,” but “how fast.” Rooftop solar, household batteries, electric vehicles and smart appliances can accelerate the shift from dirty to clean, big to local.
Households and small businesses are being asked to make new decisions: when to electrify, what to buy, how to respond to price signals, and how to integrate new technologies into daily life. These decisions are not trivial. They require trust, access to knowledge, and social support.
Most people don’t spend time thinking about energy — until they’re forced to. But we cannot allow people to be left behind simply because they lack time, money or technical knowledge. Nor can we allow the gains to be captured only by those who are already paying attention.
Community is where people gain the confidence to act. It’s where we learn — not just through information, but through example, connection, and shared experience.
There are over 200 community groups in Australia named for transition, totally renewable, sustainable, zero emissions and climate action. These community energy groups have supported a diverse range of projects from locally owned power stations to household action and community planning. More recently, Rewiring Australia has mobilised over 70 “Electric Communities”, powered by volunteers, helping their communities to electrify everything.
Markets underdeliver when there’s no profit in participation. Governments underdeliver when complexity exceeds their mandate or reach. But communities, when trusted and resourced, close these gaps.
Community energy groups offer more than goodwill. They design and deliver solutions that are finely tuned to local conditions – whether it’s a neighbourhood battery that addresses specific grid constraints, a solar bulk-buy that can access the local council’s rate-based financing, or a retrofit program tailored to the installers available in the area.
This ability to match solutions to context is one of their greatest strengths. Unlike generic, top-down programs, community initiatives are shaped by local knowledge, relationships, and lived experience. They mobilise volunteers, attract investment, and embed change where people live. They don’t ask people to go it alone – they organise for success, ensuring that transition is something done with communities, not to them.
Learning to decarbonise homes and businesses is a collective task. It requires participation, not just brochures. From Facebook groups to formal cooperatives, community-led learning builds capability that one-to-many campaigns cannot.
For example, CORENA (Citizens Own Renewable Energy Network Australia) developed Australia’s first zero-interest loan fund for renewable energy investments, making it possible for cash-strapped community buildings to participate in the energy transition with no upfront cost. CORENA originally focused on rooftop solar, but as the barriers to solar have fallen, it has expanded to finance all manner of projects from electric vehicles to batteries, getting off gas, social housing and EV charging.
When government and philanthropic dollars flow to community groups, the value is amplified — not just through financial leverage, but through social capital and long-term local impact. Energy is a foundational source of value in any economy, so keeping it local can be the basis of community wealth building.
In Victoria’s Community Power Hubs pilot, $900,000 in state government funding was leveraged into $3.5 million in local investment and savings and an estimated $11 million in flow-on economic benefits over a two year period.
It also helped catalyse a further $14.7 million pipeline of local projects. Across Australia, 55 community energy groups attracted over $74 million in project funding in a single year, and directly contributed $6 million in volunteer labour.
This multiplier effect isn’t a one-off — it’s structural. Community groups bring together co-investors, donors, local businesses and councils to solve problems with local assets.
Community groups have always been at the forefront of serving community needs. Sometimes community energy is driven by long standing community organisations that have recognised the importance of new energy investments. Often new community energy groups emerge. The people driving these initiatives are frequently part of both and they’re not just building energy projects – they’re building capacity.
The energy transition will fail if people don’t trust the institutions asking them to change.
Top-down engagement can inform, but it rarely builds lasting relationships. Local councils, community energy groups and trusted intermediaries earn respect by showing up consistently, delivering real benefits and staying connected. They are known, not distant. These relationships are mutual, not transactional – it is shared care for community that builds trust.
When trust is absent, resistance rises – especially to major projects like transmission corridors, wind farms or new pricing structures. But where community leaders have earned trust, difficult conversations become possible.
The success of our energy transition hinges on societal approval of both the large and the small investments. Local participation and local conversations are the key to building the social licence we, as policy makers, planners and energy developers, need.
Hepburn Wind, Australia’s first community-owned wind farm, set out with the ambition to benefit their whole community. This meant they worked through different options for site owners, neighbours within 2.5 km and the wider community. Ten years later, the investment in community continues to flow, helping the local energy transition along.
Action on climate change isn’t just about reducing emissions – it’s about resilience. Fires, floods, blackouts and supply disruptions are becoming more frequent.
When disaster strikes, a resilient system of people and assets adapt relationships to prioritise and provide essentials. Resilience is found in relationships, and the strength of community can make all the difference in offering alternatives and solutions.
Prepared communities – those with strong networks, practiced communication, and trusted organisations – respond better and recover faster. Solar and battery systems at community buildings can double as emergency power hubs. Any community group or local business can become a lifeline during disruptions.
An apt metaphor for community groups is as society’s immune system. When shocks come – whether economic, environmental or political, or perhaps simply the challenge of achieving a fast and fair energy transition – strong community organisations help us respond.
Community is often romanticised, but its role in the energy system is increasingly technical and political. Decisions about tariffs, network constraints, local energy resource optimisation and data use and control need more than consumer feedback – they need deliberation and participation. Consent for distant companies to manage our batteries, hot water systems and electric vehicle charging, might not be forthcoming.
We may need to reimagine energy system governance with new community spaces for negotiation and decision making.
Community energy groups already model democratic governance: boards, AGMs, member votes, public reporting. They bridge public and private interests with transparency. They’re not perfect, but they embody the kind of adaptive, participatory governance the energy transition needs more of.
The rise of “community independents” in politics reflects this hunger for place-based, listening-first leadership.
As Energy Consumers Australia noted in its 2024 Power Up report:
“Consumers are ready, willing and able to engage with complexity and change to some degree but want to see their interests at the heart of decision-maker actions.”
Unlike many aspects of climate policy, “community” enjoys broad public support. In fact, 71% of Australians say community organisations make the world a better place by solving problems others ignore.
Sporting clubs, emergency and social services all provide important common goods to their communities. Energy clearly needs some of this community spirit too, which helps explain the emergence of community energy groups and the expansion of many climate, sustainability and environmental groups to include energy transition in their activities.
Community energy is not ideological. It appeals to values across the spectrum – local pride, mutual aid, self-reliance, environmental care. By focusing on the practical work of transition, communities build common ground where polarisation can fall away.
ENOVA, Australia’s first community-owned energy retailer (now closed), operated in the politically diverse Northern Rivers region of NSW. Half its customers joined not for climate reasons, but because of its strong community ethic – a reminder that people care about fairness, and place, regardless of how they vote.
Building trust, capability and culture takes time. But that’s exactly what we don’t have much of. As climate shocks accelerate and markets strain, we can’t afford to delay. Getting involved in community energy offers people the reassurance of hope that can be experienced alongside the positive action of contributing to the future they wish to see.
The same work that builds resilience also builds belonging, meaning and joy. Working on something together – solar in the local hall, a neighbourhood battery, an EV charging station – is how we forge stronger, safer communities.
The question is not whether communities can be involved – it’s whether we can succeed without them.
The energy champions within community energy groups are often outsiders to the formal energy system. They learn a new language – full of acronyms and technical concepts – and become translators between consumers and the system. They offer the sector a bridge: a way to connect with real people, in real places, using the language of community.
The real question for the energy sector is whether its commitment to building the future includes learning that language too – and building with communities, not just for them.
Peter Block, who wrote Community: The Structure of Belonging, says “Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community.
“It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.”
I’ve argued that
– Community is essential for a fairer and faster clean energy transition;
– Community is missing in our current reforms and advocacy;
– Community energy shows one way that local, collective action will manifest, and;
– Resources for energy transition are needed at the local level to truly leverage everything that strong communities can bring
Now it’s your turn. How can you incorporate community – that scale between individuals and the behemoths of markets and governments – into your every day work? How can you make sure it is represented in your reforms, your resource flows and your advocacy? How can you make sure you deliver with and not for?
Let’s talk.
Heather Smith is the chair of the Coalition for Community Energy (C4CE). C4CE received funding from Energy Consumers Australia to build policy capacity and raise the voice of community energy into the national energy transition debate.
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