We’ve worked across rural and regional Australia at the forefront of the shift to renewables for over 10 years.
During this time, we’ve definitely seen industry engagement practices improve. Yet each week we see a new release of research that backs up what we’re hearing in the Renewable Energy Zones we work in: while there is a healthy level of general support for renewable energy, sentiment for individual projects is often fragile.
Maybe a project isn’t rolled out well, or maybe local people don’t see why a project is needed. The phrase we’ve heard a hundred times is “we like renewables, but…”.
So why is this still happening at a time when the renewable energy industry has made steps forward in its community engagement practice and state government bodies are more active in Renewable Energy Zones?
The unaddressed issue is the vast “missing middle” of information and coordination in the shift to renewables. And it’s a gap we want to see filled by Local Energy Hubs.
Rural and regional Australians understand at a high level why renewables are important for Australia, and in broad terms we support the move. If we live near a proposed project, we’ve probably had more than one opportunity to engage in the details of it.
However, if you live in a Renewable Energy Zone, you don’t just live near one proposed project. You live near many. What will the impacts be when a number of these projects are built, and what’s the plan for making sure they are managed? Who is looking after that plan and are all the responsible bodies talking to each other?
We want to know what the plan is for our regions as a whole, including how the renewable energy industry is contributing to the future vitality of our region, whether that’s by providing jobs and skills, housing, energy bill relief, or simply fixing up the local swimming pool.
We’ve spoken to landholders who want their wind farm to go ahead, but are opposing transmission that would make it viable. And that’s because no one has been communicating the plan for the region.
When our communities are given the information and resources to understand renewable energy development, we turn this into benefits for our region.
We’ve seen this recently in RE-Alliance’s work with Hay Shire Council. The Council and community came together to get a proper picture of the local context: that renewable energy projects compete for access to the grid and may or may not proceed; that a local economy centred on agricultural export would be threatened by international tariffs against countries without credible emissions targets.
This gave the Hay community a grounding in why renewable energy is coming to them. It gave them the power to set expectations about how they’d like to be engaged and how projects can contribute to their region’s future.
This is the “missing middle”, the information gap we are proposing could be filled with Local Energy Hubs.
Local Energy Hubs are a proposed network of outreach centres, funded by the federal government, for the rural and regional communities seeing the most change in our shift to renewables.
Hubs would support communities with all aspects of renewable energy, from lowering bills to navigating large projects, to figuring out how to electrify and decarbonise different types of businesses, to finding the expertise required to set up a community energy project. They would also provide reliable, trusted information and tackle the increasing levels of misinformation now floating around in local communities.
They would benefit industry by facilitating relationships between regional and industry stakeholders and providing clarity and expertise around the engagement that works best for each region. It’s not the responsibility of individual proponents to engage with the public about regional plans but they will benefit significantly from this work being done.
Which is why key industry representatives such as the Smart Energy Council have put out a statement calling on the federal government to “back in and fund Hubs as soon as possible”.
Regional MPs in renewable energy zones are supporting the call for Hubs because they solve a key issue for their constituents.
Which is why we’re seeing front page articles and editorials in regional papers about leaders like Helen Haines’ repeated call for Hubs in northern Victoria, or Dan Repacholi and Sharon Claydon from the Hunter, or Alison Byrnes in Illawarra doing the same.
Regional communities can be the backbone of our shift to clean energy. It’s time we invested in them as if they were.
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