Farmers welcome the released Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines for renewable energy and transmission projects
Farmers applaud the call for better coordination on community benefit and greater transparency with landholders and neighbours
Warn that a lot of work needs to be done to re-build trust in the renewables rollout
Farmers for Climate Action welcome the Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines for renewable energy and transmission projects put out by the Victorian Government today, but caution that the devil will be in the details.
CEO, Verity Morgan-Schmidt said these guidelines should mark a major shift forward in how developers interact with the community. She noted the push for greater transparency between neighbours, greater involvement of local government, as well as better coordination across industry as important.
"On the guidelines alone, Victoria now leads the nation on best-practice approaches for developers to interact with the community. The Victorian Government and renewable energy industry need to re-build trust in many regional communities around the clean energy build, and if implemented well, this goes some way toward that," Ms Morgan-Schmidt said.
"Broader benefits are so important for bringing the wider community on board and we are pleased to see the guidelines address this, as well as ways to improve what is often a current hodge-podge approach. The community needs to be included as co-designers of benefits, rather than accepting whatever the developers decide to offer.
"These remain unbinding expectations and the devil remains in the detail as to how developers follow the guidelines. We also know that there is much work to be done to ensure that those responsible for implementation; including VicGrid, have the social license, ability and whole of organisation commitment to ensure the guidelines have the intended impact."
