Nine little councils that could: The gutsy regional energy pact that is facing down the anti-renewable fury

After years helping Gippsland councils navigate offshore wind planning, Brent McAlister wanted to get out of renewables, so he moved for “a quiet life” to western Victoria. In the end, it was more like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“October 2023, meeting in Stawell with 500 people, angry farmers, which has now generated into burning effigies of transmission lines, and then if you’re on social media, you’ll see Farmers Fightback,” McAlister, now the Northern Grampians council chief, said during a visit back to Gippsland last week. 

“The centre of that is in the Northern Grampians Shire Council.”

But for all of that, in February nine north-western Victoria councils signed on to a pact called the Resource Ready Strategy that outlines what they need to do to prepare for the waves of energy and resources developments coming for their region.

Western Victoria is home to some of the state’s most promising wind and solar resources.

The Western Renewables Link (WRL) and VNI West interstate transmission lines, and a couple of major renewable energy zones, are all designed to help set up those regions as energy hubs. 

But this is also a part of the state dotted with small towns with dwindling populations and small councils that are resource starved, unlike the big and energy-savvy councils in Gippsland.  

“It’s pretty impressive for nine little councils to come together and do things… It took us about 18 months to get the money and get the councils to agree to it,” McAlister says.

And it might not have happened if the state government hadn’t set the ultimate distraction: by formalising the renewable energy zones (REZs) and fining recalcitrant farmers, it further galvanised opposition to all things energy in western Victoria but also took the heat off councils. 

“We were sort of fortunate in that the groups that are against VNI West were focused on other things,” he said to laughter at a forum in Gippsland last week. 

“The hardest one was… to get all the councils to pass a resolution to endorse the resource reading.

“[It’s difficult] to get one council to pass a resolution on a very controversial subject. Hard to get nine to do it. I didn’t think it would happen, to be honest with you.

“Miracles do happen in local government.

“But if the [protest] groups had got onto it and said, ‘Hey, why are you doing something positive here?’ It wouldn’t have been politically doable.”

And yet if the difficulty of getting nine councils in a region with escalating social division was high, extracting the necessary cash to actually set the plan in motion is an equally tall order.

The nine councils – Buloke, Gannawarra, Hindmarsh, Horsham Rural City, Loddon, Northern Grampians, Swan Hill Rural City, West Wimmera and Yarriambiack – need cash to prepare and make sure their areas get something out of the new industries knocking on the door. 

The ask is for each council to be given $350,000 “cold hard cash” a year and another $750,000 to run six studies that follow-up on issues raised by the strategy. They’d also like an economic transition fund. 

A little like what NSW has, in fact. 

“We also compared our notes with NSW. Most of the councils in NSW are getting at least $250,000 per annum just to deal with the bureaucracy of EESs [environmental effects statements] and being on technical advisory groups,” McAlister says. 

“We’re yet to get anything directly, although we have had two funds from Vicgrid.”

The councils are also walking a fine line: preparation can look like collaboration – and perhaps even treachery – to those who are against everything about renewable energy, transmission or mining.

McAlister says people find out when he meets with developers as part of his job “and it can be quite problematic.”

“It was quite risky for the councils to do this because you could be seen as buddying up with the industry,” he says.

“I kept on saying, ‘Look, we’re not a protest group. We’re actually a council. We have to plan for housing. We have to plan…. We are a council, so we have to do these sorts of things. We’re not a protest group’.”

Will the riches really materialise?

There is a real fear that regions such as the north-west will not get the economic benefits they’ve been promised. 

Across the nine councils are $3.37 billion worth of construction needed to upgrade existing transmission lines, and another $7.1 billion pencilled in for the controversial interstate interconnector, VNI West, according to the Resource Ready Strategy.

“There are 33 renewable energy projects planned in the Study Area with the potential to generate more than 12 gigawatts (GW) of energy through solar and wind. Three planned battery storage projects also have approximately 2 GW of storage capacity,” it says.

“A total of 22 mining projects are planned in the area, including 11 mineral sands projects and nine gold projects.”

That could mean 9000 new jobs in the area and $2.8 billion spent locally. 

But if councils aren’t ready – if they don’t have plans in place for housing workers or for preparing locals for job opportunities – then what’s more likely is a fly-in-fly-out workforce that doesn’t leave any lasting benefit. 

“I fear for the north-west because there are a lot of small towns. I think a lot of these big projects will go, ‘well, let’s just bring everything with us and let’s just take it all away when we leave,” McAllister says.

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