RE-Alliance supports the proposed Hunter-Central Coast Access Scheme as an opportunity to establish consistent minimum standards of community engagement, First Nations engagement, benefit sharing and regional participation across large-scale renewable energy projects in the Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone (REZ).

The scheme should give host communities greater confidence that every project seeking access to the REZ will meet a clear and consistent standard of behaviour.

We broadly support the approach of applying an access scheme to the Hunter-Central Coast REZ.

We make the following recommendations to strengthen this proposal:

• We support the proposed approach of applying access assessment processes and fees to the existing network infrastructure.
• We support the proposed whole-of-REZ Access Scheme and recommend that access rights be conditional on projects meeting a clear minimum standard for community engagement, First Nations participation and community benefit sharing.
• We support Option 1, the Access Rights Regime, since it provides a clear signal to developers and communities that access rights holder projects are more likely to proceed.
• We feel there is value in including an aggregate maximum capacity cap as it would provide clarity on the scale of potential generation and storage projects to project proponents.
• We support the 25 year term of the proposed access scheme. We also recommend that EnergyCo consider mechanisms to extend the term to contribute to community and employment benefits should projects operate beyond this timeframe.
• We support the exemption of access fees to projects that are significantly progressed and also support no exemptions being offered to projects without an offer to connect under the NER or those who have made connection enquiries under the NER. We are extremely concerned that understanding of the regional community context is proposed to be included in the access regime as “non-assessable response criteria”, since this is fundamental to good community engagement. This criteria must be included as proposed assessment criteria, recognising that the assessment should be proportionate to the relatively early stage of project development.
• We have a mixture of views on the proposed assessment criteria. We feel the proponent characteristics are fine. We support the inclusion of proponents being on the public register for the DRS, noting its early adoption, which will need to be reviewed. We feel the biodiversity criteria fails to meet the standard of assessment required through the general NSW planning processes, and must be strengthened.

Read more in our full submission.