– Tony Goodfellow, Policy and Engagement Manager.
The proposed changes as part of the Victorian Access Regime, released by the state government, could set a new national standard.
The Victorian Government is currently consulting on the proposed Victorian Access Regime. The Regime comprises three consultation documents, which will inform how new renewable energy projects can access the grid, and what criteria they will have to meet around engagement, social value and economic benefits for communities, landholders and Traditional Owners.
Building on the Victorian Transmission Plan, the draft documents create a new process that is intended to commence in early 2026. The documents are open for public comment until 5 November 2025.
Improving community engagement and social value
The draft Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines outlines 48 expectations that developers wanting to access transmission infrastructure must meet or exceed. They include minimum expectations on community engagement, social value and economic benefits.
There are some important new requirements in the draft Guidelines – measures that the Renewable Energy Alliance has been calling for for some time. They include:
- Preventing the misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s), ensuring landholders are able to talk to the people they need to about their experiences.
- Requirements to demonstrate how community contributions to consultation processes have been used to influence outcomes.
- Supporting Traditional Owners and community projects to Care for Country, protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity, and support community climate action initiatives.
- Promoting co-ownership, a measure that will help empower communities and help keep benefits local.
- Stronger standards for end-of-life arrangements, something we called for in our recent report on retirement age renewables.
Victoria is the first state to have some of these proposed access criteria, establishing a high water mark for the rest of the country.
There are still some areas for improvement
While the draft Guidelines do include requirements for stronger engagement and delivery of social and economic benefits for First Nations peoples, we would like to see a requirement for Free, Prior and Informed Consent in the final version.
Other areas requiring additional attention include:
- How will monitoring of progress, compliance and how enforcement occur?
- How will the criteria be assessed and who does that?
- What weighting will be given to the different merit and eligibility criteria? It is not currently clear how much weight community and Traditional Owners benefits and engagement will have in the final access decision compared to other criteria.
- How prescriptive the Guidelines should be in terms of what’s in landholder and neighborhood agreements?
- Should the Guidelines set a minimum financial contribution from projects based on the capacity of the project?
Have your say
The next few weeks provide an opportunity to highlight the new opportunities that will be provided under the Victorian Access Regime and to address outstanding questions over some of the details. We encourage regional communities, landholders and Traditional Owners to have a look and make your voice heard on the Victorian Access Regime via engage.vic.gov.au/victorian-access-regime. RE-Alliance will make a detailed submission too, so drop us a line if you think there are additional things we should be including, at [email protected].