Renewable energy land rush needs fewer cowboys, more sheriffs

Consider the following scenario: An international, multi-billion dollar company proposes a new development and, as part of this project, it must obtain rights over a number of private properties in remote Australia. They casually allocate $80,000,000 for it and there is no Plan B – no land, no project. 

They hand one of the team members the keys to the ute, the property list, the paperwork, the proverbial chequebook and, most importantly, the responsibility to uphold (even improve) the company’s mammoth reputation which they’ve, to-date, spent decades and countless dollars on establishing. 

This “land agent/acquisition lead/landholder liaison officer/land access officer” (we currently have many terms) makes their way to the town where these landholders reside, who historically have never been more informed, connected and agile in forming opposition groups. In a way, the fate of this currently volatile project and the company’s reputation is in this lucky individual’s hands.

How many years’ experience and minimum qualifications might you expect this person is formally expected to hold? Australia’s current answer: zero.

We’re known to be one of the most resource-abundant countries in the world. We’re also lucky enough to have a good amount of wind and sun out here too. Our land is ripe for renewable energy harvesting, yet our industry’s education and regulations are still emerging.

We’ve certainly taken learnings from areas like Queensland, which navigated a coal seam gas boom in the mid-90s, and elsewhere around the country we’ve picked up many best-practices and talent from the relatively mature fossil fuel energy industry to implement in our growing renewables industry.

Furthermore, we see a scrambling of community engagement consultants spruiking the importance of industry social license and ensuring communities benefit, support and ultimately accept these projects.

To be clear: communities at-large are obviously extremely important with such projects, yet to date, we have given no real consideration to the consistent and best-practice approach to working with the individual landholders to secure land rights to “host” these projects on their own farms for decades or even forever.

It is a frequent requirement of landholder engagement professionals to educate others within projects that while there are some overlaps, community and individual landholder engagement is very different!

Your average punter may not give this separation a second thought, assuming that directly affected landholders fall into the classification of their community.

While impacted communities and landholders are both very important project stakeholders, they both face very different impacts and legislative engagement requirements and therefore must absolutely be considered and treated separately.

While there are dedicated and experienced landholder engagement professionals in our industry, the role itself has grown from a niche role, where it might’ve been someone within a project team speaking to landholders in addition to their main day job.

Gone are the days where companies can just send anyone out from the office who got the short straw or “has the gift of the gab.” Not to mention the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner who oversees industry best-practice, releasing a sobering and detailed report with a number of recommendations.

Fortunately for landholders, we are seeing an increase in industry ombudsmen powers, and the establishment of legal minimum requirements for landholder engagement when seeking land access.

In Victoria, the Essential Services Commission last year released their Land Access Code of Practice which electricity transmission companies must follow, and recently the Queensland government set new minimum requirements for landholder engagement and protections. 

We’ve also seen formal landholder engagement training rolled out with the goal to provide minimum knowledge requirements for landholder engagement representatives on projects, and the emergence of industry bodies to represent such resources.

To be able to facilitate or transfer land via a private sale, a real estate agent must be qualified and a registered member of an association.

To even be a buyer’s advocate – which holds some similarities to a landholder engagement role – requires minimum training. Many other countries enforce strict training, licensing, experience and compliance requirements to work in this field, so only makes sense that we start to follow suit.

Many of these compliance measures have been established not from the push for renewables but as outcomes from what has happened to date in our industry; we hear stories of “cowboy” developers, and middlemen on-selling land options, saying anything they need to have landholders provide land tenure options.

We hear of compensation unfairly applied, using an array of agreements ranging from strict confidentiality clause inclusions, dividing communities by having landholders needing to hide what they may have on their land from neighbours and friends, as well as little regard to how these confidential interactions are recorded – if they are at all – which must be captured and handled in line with company privacy policies.

While it is it great we’re seeing these quickly get into place, such regulation must continue. If not, combining these issues with the aggressive transition to net-zero and minimal education and regulation on how to do this work will make for a long and bumpy ride on our road to renewables.

Tom Everitt is the Director of TDC Services, and holds more than 15 years’ experience in the field of landholder engagement. He is currently leading a Landholder Liaison team securing land approvals for a proposed overhead transmission line in Victoria, as well as providing landholder engagement advisory support to Victoria’s government agency developing renewable transmission infrastructure.