A new campaign urging the government to invest in 'Local Energy Hubs' has kicked off today voiced by three regional Australian farmers' experience with the shift to renewable energy - including Wellington merino wool grower, Tony Inder.
RE-Alliance has today released a film demonstrating the need for Local Energy Hubs: local outreach centres in energy shift regions staffed by trusted local experts, who can answer the questions being asked by their local communities. The campaign tells Tony Inder's story, alongside those of Singleton farmer Sophie Nichols and Narrabri farmer and Managing Director of Geni.Energy, Sally Hunter.
RE-Alliance, Community Power Agency and Yes2Renewables have joined forces to call on the Federal Government to fund Local Energy Hubs for regional communities in the upcoming Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
Local Energy Hubs would:
Provide easy access to facts in local communities by hiring trusted and experienced local experts, across subjects such as renewable energy developments, transmission projects, home electrification and battery storage, electric vehicles and more, tailored to the region
Serve as outreach centres, providing services to support communities in understanding and participating in the shift to renewable energy
Be a crucial touchpoint for developers, helping to foster trust in communities for their projects through quality communication and engagement.
Address barriers to the electrification of households, small businesses and farm businesses such as lack of time or quality advice
Tackle complex challenges like ensuring communities know exactly how to have input into large-scale projects proposed for their regions.
Merino wool grower Tony Inder said he shared his experience of learning how he could still keep farming merino sheep with the Lightsource bp solar farm at Wellington, to help explain how Local Energy Hubs could help farmers like him.
"To be honest, when the solar farm was built next to us I thought, 'Well, that land's wasted.' I thought it would be the last mob of sheep that would ever graze on this land. But it turns out that was all wrong. Now there's actually more sheep grazing in there."
Tony said it was difficult to find advice or information when they were looking at hosting the solar farm.
"It wasn't something that you could walk into the local pub and say 'G'day fellas, anyone know anything about solar, I'm going to sign the farm up?' You'd have got run out of town! If there had been a Local Energy Hub, it would've been beneficial. It definitely would've helped us and it would've made our decision making a lot simpler."
RE-Alliance National Director Andrew Bray said: "Australians support our move to renewable energy, but our understanding of how far we've come, where we're heading and what needs to happen to get to the end point is almost non-existent".
"From hosting a large-scale solar farm on existing grazing land, to working out how to install the best solar and battery system for on-farm use, to filling an empty shop front to build local knowledge around renewables - all three stories in this film show how Local Energy Hubs could have made each journey easier," he said.
"We need governments to proactively support and resource communities to understand, participate in and benefit from the energy transformation - and we think Local Energy Hubs could be a big part of the solution," Mr Bray said.
