Agriculture
9 October, 2025
PERSPECTIVE: Let’s get it right on energy plan
By ALISTAIR PARKER LANDHOLDERS and communities who are hosting renewables in regional and rural Victoria deserve a fair go. VicGrid has been talking to people in places where there’s proposed renewable development, from Horsham in the west to...
By ALISTAIR PARKER
LANDHOLDERS and communities who are hosting renewables in regional and rural Victoria deserve a fair go.
VicGrid has been talking to people in places where there’s proposed renewable development, from Horsham in the west to Giffard in Gippsland, and there’s some things we keep hearing.
People want to be properly consulted and treated with respect. They want everyone to have information about what’s planned in their area. And they want their communities to see meaningful benefits.
Victoria’s coal-fired power stations are becoming unreliable and closing down. The least-cost option to replace them is renewable energy backed by storage and transmission infrastructure.
This takes time to plan and build. There’s a pressing need to get on with the job to deliver the power all Victorians need - whether they live in the city or the country.
But it can’t come at any cost. Good consultation and planning are needed to minimise impacts and keep down costs to consumers.
We have to plan well to protect the agricultural sector. It plays a crucial role in our economy and it’s the lifeblood of rural communities. Agriculture and energy infrastructure can co-exist: there are 6,500 kilometres of existing transmission lines in Victoria, mostly located on productive farms.
We’ve consulted with the sector to better understand what types of agriculture are and aren’t compatible with renewables. We’ve listened and located renewable energy zones in places where grazing and cropping can, in the right circumstances, co-exist with renewables. Hosting wind, solar or batteries remains voluntary – all landholders have the right to choose.
Where development is going ahead, we need to make sure it’s done well. Many renewable energy developers are acting with the best interests of landholders and communities in mind. But we also hear from people that some are not.
So we’re taking action to make sure all renewable energy developers in Victoria do the right thing by locals. We’re setting new standards for engagement and benefit sharing and telling solar and wind farms they need to meet these standards if they want to connect to the grid.
We’ve released draft guidelines that set out 48 expectations developers must meet as a minimum.These cover things people have been telling us are of concern, like non-disclosure agreements, decommissioning, insurance, listening to neighbours and delivering real benefits.
We’ve heard clearly that non-disclosure agreements stop neighbours talking about proposed developments: that’s not the country way. You get better outcomes when people are free to share information and discuss proposals with each other.
We want to see clarity on developers’ responsibilities on decommissioning with agreements that protect landholders.
And we expect developers to consult with neighbours on things like insurance and how to mitigate impacts. The transition to renewable energy has the potential to leave a lasting legacy for regional Vicoria. Done right, it could create benefits for local businesses, improve local energy supplies, and provide new income streams for host farmers.
These guidelines will sit alongside compensation arrangements for host landholders and the government’s new REZ Community Energy Funds, landholder payments and neighbour payments to ensure real benefits are delivered.
We know there’s lots of work to do to earn the trust of regional and rural communities if we want to achieve these outcomes. These guidelines are an important step in earning this trust. They’re open for feedback and I encourage people to take a look at the guidelines on the Engage Victoria website and have their say so we can get this right.
Alistair Parker is the CEO of VicGrid