From wool, to cropping, to solar: How renewable energy can “grow the agricultural pie”

Renewable energy developers need to stop looking at farmers as “landholders” and treat them as businesses, a regional advocate says. 

But that’s just the start of a change in the way energy and country people perceive each other, says Chris Sounness, CEO of the Wimmera Southern Mallee Development, and part of an energy collaboration project that wants to find better ways to bring the twain together. 

Fierce opposition to renewable energy and transmission development has come out of Western Victoria, as initial questions and concerns have been enflamed by so-called grassroots social media campaigns.

Now movements are growing to try to rebuild broken communities. 

Sounness frames it as “cumulative opportunities.”

“A few of the things is working with the communities to decide how construction is going to be, how can we work with the local town to design construction workforce needs that might suit three or four different projects,” he tells Renew Economy. 

“What the collaboration has been trying to work through, is trying to build this understanding and build up opportunities to work together to try and deliver outcomes that will be making a difference to everyone. 

“So there’s win-wins, rather [than asking] what do we have to give away, as that which is a very transactional way of thinking.”

Big opportunity on offer

Sounness lives in the Wimmera region of western Victoria.

It’s a land of flat horizons covered with crops, the Grampians mountain range, and home to the new Western renewable energy zone (REZ) and the country’s second largest approved wind project, the up to 1.5 gigawatt (GW) Warracknabeal energy park. 

Across an area spanning Mildura in the north to Ararat in the south, Kerang on the east and tiny Kaniva in the west, there are 24 wind, solar and battery projects with 1.5 GW already operating, according to data from RenewMap.

Another 44 projects are proposed and while not all will be built nor at the opening-bid size that developers are pitching, they currently total almost 16 GW of generation and storage. 

It’s also the heartland of where the proposed VNI West and Western Renewables 500 kilovolt (kV) power lines are planned for. 

It’s a lot for anyone to get their head around and for some communities it’s proving too much.

Sounness says communities in western Victoria have coped “outstandingly” as agriculture has shifted from being wool-based and grazing, to crops, even as it’s meant shrinking towns, fewer children for schools, and a complete inability to find a plumber or a local doctor. 

Into these diminished communities have come renewable energy developers.

“They feel disempowered about [changes from renewable energy] and that has meant the communities aren’t having good discussions with each other about what is on offer, what changes are occurring, what’s most important for the community going forward,” Sounness says.

“Our communities are generally not performing particularly well.”

He said towns such as Birchip and Rupanyup had been very forward looking with reputations for being strong communities, but they are some where community division has been greatest.

But Sounness is not throwing a pity party for rural communities, saying the sector is extremely productive – one of Australia’s best – and farmers routinely deal with disruptions they can’t control, from the weather to foreign exchange rates to foreign powers imposing tariffs.

“That’s why I’m finding it really interesting,” he says.

“It is a really productive industry, but used to dealing with uncertainty and change. As I said to one meeting a couple of weeks ago, when farmers decided to no longer grow wool on their farm and change to cropping there wasn’t a town hall meeting saying, “Oh, we’re going to go from wool to cropping.”

Councils are finally in the fight

Councils in other energy zones are either banding together or taking proactive steps to figure out how to deal with the new industry of renewables. 

In Hay, the council set the rules of engagement by talking to neighbours and constituents early, and had a brief ready to go when developers showed up of expectations and requirements. 

In Gippsland, mayors are banding together to have the offshore wind industry included in the payments in lieu of rates (PILOR) system so they have some income to pay for road maintenance, for example, and in April released the Gippsland Offshore Wind Sector Plan, a roadmap for renewable energy into the future. 

In western Victoria, the nine councils home to those 68 operating and in-development projects are doing something similar, producing a report in January outlining what they want to see from renewable energy, transmission and mining.

This covers issues such as creating permanent future housing, fixing roads and managing competing needs for resources such as water. 

The predominantly agricultural economies also want new industries to understand, avoid and mitigate consequences for farming.

Sounness says part of this is developers and their contractors understanding that farming is a big business that operates in a global market. 

“Farmers in the Wimmera, Southern Mallee region are pretty large family businesses. Often they’ll have assets $30 to $50 million worth of agricultural country, and that agricultural country has appreciated greatly in the last 20 years,” he says. 

“I don’t think [developers] realized they were dealing with an industry. They like talking about landholders. They like talking about community consultation, but they never talk about how do we engage with agricultural businesses? 

“[It’s not a] matter of negotiating compensation when dealing with agricultural business… Generally, when an opportunity comes along or a threat, they want to understand. How is this going to impact my business? How does it affect my logistics? How does it change my biosecurity risks? Does it change my ability to do what I need to do when I need to do it?”

He says that attitude has had real financial consequences, such as the hay crops contaminated with rubbish blown out of a skip, so it can no longer be sold to Japan, or the lentil farmer who had to pick tiny stones out of his paddock that were being flicked up by big trucks working on a site nearby. 

Sounnes says almost all of the big renewable developers and transmission companies are involved in what is now called the Regional Energy Collaboration to try to “grow the agricultural pie.”

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