A new practical blueprint on renewable energy benefit sharing has set out how regional communities can pool funds across multiple wind, solar and battery projects to achieve big-picture “legacy-scale” initiatives, as well as small and medium-scale projects.
The Guide to Regional Benefit Sharing, developed by Community Power Agency and published this week, responds to the growing reality that multiple projects are landing in the same places, often overwhelming communities with piecemeal grant programs.
In particular, in designated Renewable Energy Zones (REZ), the Community Power Agency (CPA) says there is a need to shift from isolated programs to include region-wide coordination, an approach it calls regional benefit sharing.
“We only need to paint the town hall so many times,” says CPA director Kim Mallee. “Energy projects bring real investment into regional areas, but without coordination, we risk wasting the opportunity.”
Mallee and the CPA team have been working in the community energy space for 14 years, gathering learnings from how the transition is happening in Europe, the UK and the US and bringing them to Australia.
“All that work on the ground, all the conversations with local people wanting to take agency over their own energy transition, locally, gave us a really good insight into the participatory approach of what happens when communities have a voice,” Mallee told the 7th Annual Tasmania Energy Development Conference in Devonport last month.
“Benefit sharing is not compensation for impacts. I just want to make that really, really clear,” Mallee told the conference, which is mainly attended by industry groups and businesses.
“Our projects do create impacts on community and on the environment, and those things need to be mitigated.
“Community benefit sharing comes from a different place. It acknowledges that the wind, the sun and water are all common wealth resources. Not Commonwealth resources, common wealth resources. And the monetisation of these resources … deserves to be shared.”
Traditionally, community benefit sharing programs have been run on a project-by-project basis, offering small grants, scholarships or local partnerships.
The new CPA guide shows how pooling resources, and empowering communities to manage those resources, can open up new possibilities for greater, longer-lasting outcomes.
“We’ve seen communities run out of local small grant ideas while facing big-picture challenges in health, housing or infrastructure,” says CPA’s Claudia Hodge, who co-authored the guide.
The guide draws inspiration from the agency’s work with REZ communities across Gippsland in Victoria, Northern Tasmania, New England in New South Wales and Western Downs in Queensland – as well as from international best practice, like models in Scotland that offer tiered benefit funds for small, medium and large initiatives.
At the Tassie conference, Mallee gives an example from the Western Downs, where she says there are 17 projects that are operational, under construction or approved – and that’s not counting proposed projects.
“So that is a lot of $5,000 to $10,000 grants to paint the hall or provide football jerseys. And they wanted to get a bit more strategic about creating long lasting outcomes for their region.
Mallee says what followed was a nine-month engagement process to design a governance system that is transparent, auditable, community-led and government-enabled to pool some of the funds from each of those projects, while still leaving some funds to create a connection between individual projects and their host community, which she says is imperative for those project’s social outcomes.
“Everywhere I go, everybody agrees we want to create long-lasting benefits for communities where these projects happen,” Mallee told the conference back in June.
“But sometimes it’s really hard to get past that motherhood statement or that concept and go, ‘well, what does it actually look like on the ground?’
“Because I hear this very often: ‘Kim, this is a really complex space, community engagement, benefit, sharing and local procurement.’ And I agree, but so is designing a wind turbine footing or an undersea cable.
“These are complex projects that we put our minds and our expertise and our intelligence to and together, through conversations, we nut out a way forward, and we can do that with really excellent, really clever and strategic outcomes for communities.”
The guide also addresses the issue of growing engagement fatigue in some regions.
“Communities are being asked to consult again and again on one project after another, and their individual benefit sharing initiatives,” said Mallee this week.
“Strategic coordination helps reduce that burden, gives people a stronger voice, whilst minimising engagement fatigue.
“We always hear that renewables will bring regional renewal, but that’s only true if we’re intentional about how we invest in these communities.
“This is our chance to get it right with regional communities leading the way.”
To learn more about the new guide, register here to join a public webinar on Tuesday July 22, from 1pm to 2.15pm.
