If you needed a pulse check on the difficulties in progressing key parts of the Australia’s transition to clean energy, a good place to start would have been the opening of the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference on Wednesday.
The annual event, this year being held in Bendigo in regional Victoria, attracted a record attendance of more than 400 people: Farmers, advisors, energy industry representatives.
The event, held in the old Capital theatre building, also attracted around 30 protestors, brandishing signs such as “no solar factories,” “say no to turbines”, “no hosts, no hassles”, and “stop Labor’s towers”. At last year’s event in Toowoomba in Queensland, there was not even a sniff of protest. But this is Victoria.
Inside the building, delegates shared stories of success and failure, and tried to nut out how the inevitable transition to renewables can be a win for all farmers and the regions.
The general consensus is there’s a lot of work left to do.
“I think it’s become increasingly clear … that the issues that we’re trying to grapple with are not about the big questions – they are not about whether we do this or not,” Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute told the conference on Wednesday morning.
“The only question, really, is how well or how badly we do it. … how do we grapple with this, and how do we do it in a way that not only starts to make some real progress, but also brings along the whole community?
“And that’s not gone very well, as many of you in this room would know.”
In Victoria, where a long-standing Labor state government is working towards ambitious renewable energy targets and fast-tracking the projects needed to deliver them, the friction this is causing in some regional communities is palpable.
Energy transition planners, first slammed for creating renewable development “blobs” that were too big and too costly to accommodate – both in terms of social licence and poles and wires – are now being slammed for making zones too small and out of pace with task ahead.
“We have tried very hard to balance those competing interests and made sure that we have a sensible way through this,” Alistair Parker, the chief executive officer of VicGrid, told the conference.
“But, you know, we really hear strongly that we need to protect high value farmland … and then we also hear really strongly and sincerely from the community about the need to protect biodiversity.
“And on the industry side, there [is] real concern that the renewable energy zones we published were too small, that they didn’t have enough capacity in them for the scale of the task ahead of us, and so we are trying to balance these things.”
Brett Hosking, a farmer and president of the Victorian Farmers Federation puts it little more bleakly:
“I think one of the biggest fictions out there is that we’re doing a good job, that we’re doing this transition well. Because there’s a whole heap of really good, decent people who were out on the steps this morning that are telling us, in their community, in their businesses, in their families, in their lives, we’re not,” he told the conference.
“And the truth is, we’re not doing a good job, and we need to do it better. We absolutely do.
“We we need deep emissions cuts this decade and, unless we do better, unless we engage better with the people who will host and bear the brunt … [of] this transition, then we won’t meet those emissions cuts. We haven’t got a hope. We’re actually setting ourselves decades behind.”
But the great thing about the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference is that there is an abundance of living and breathing evidence that these challenges can be overcome – and plenty of good people doing amazing work to help right the wrongs and share the learnings.
Billy Greenham, for example, who grew up on a beef farm and one day plans to return to it and take over from his parents, is running a business called Cogency that helps farmers get on the front foot on solar and wind proposals for their properties.
And Simon Tickner, whose Wimmera region farm hosts both transmission towers and wind turbines – the latter as part of the Murra Warra wind farm in north-western Victoria – is keen to share the message that farming and energy infrastructure can go together nicely.
“For me, in a region that’s got farms getting way bigger, shrinking populations, small towns that can’t even keep pubs open, more and more kids going away to school … losing footing clubs; this sort of transformational opportunity …offers a huge amount of change … that’s [not only] compatible with our farming, but resets the local economy,” Tickner told the conference on Wednesday.
“The challenge, I think, that I would put out to people who oppose these sorts of [renewable energy] roll outs, you might think you’re quite noble at the at the moment, but I suggest you think strongly about what your kids and your grandkids, in decades to come, will think about… your decisions if you miss out on these opportunities now,” he said.
“I wholeheartedly endorse Simon’s [words],” added Greenham. “Obviously, growing up in a small rural community, with population decline, young people leaving – I’m one of them.
“These economic opportunities we’ve been screaming about my entire life to get into these rural areas… This is it.”
