00:00The boom in renewable energy in regional Australia has seen the residents of one town band together
00:06to build their own project.
00:08They want to share in the returns from the transition to renewables and help educate
00:14other communities.
00:16Reporter Tim Fernandes travelled to the New South Wales town of Goulburn to find out more.
00:35Dimity Taylor is doing the rounds on her sheep farm in the New South Wales Central Tablelands.
00:43As the sun sets, she gets a regular reminder of how the region is changing.
00:50We find it beautiful.
00:52The sun sets that reflect off the turbines during sunset is just so beautiful.
01:00There is some noise occasionally, but it's got to be perfect conditions.
01:06And even when we do hear them, it kind of sounds like the ocean.
01:13For five years, the wool and sheep meat producer has lived beside a wind farm at Bannister,
01:18about 30 kilometres northwest of Goulburn.
01:21They've been a good neighbour.
01:23It's part of the reason why she's keen to be involved in clean energy.
01:27So she's investing in a nearly $5 million solar farm being built by a community organisation
01:32on Goulburn's outskirts.
01:35People are just excited that the community is owning it.
01:39It's not some big foreign company that we actually get to be owning this project and driving
01:47this project from our community and being the change we want to see happen.
01:54300 Goulburn residents have invested in the solar farm run by Community Energy for Goulburn.
02:00People have bought one solar panel for $400, right up to an investment of $100,000.
02:09After eight years of planning and consultation, work has finally begun on this two-hectare block.
02:16There's a conversion box onto the...
02:19Ed Suttle is a cattle breeder and vice-president of Community Energy for Goulburn.
02:25When Landline visited, he was giving his team of engineers a tour of the site and also staff
02:31from the Australian Rail Track Corporation, which has supplied some of the land.
02:36Once built, he says the 4,500-panel farm will be the first community-owned solar farm in
02:42Australia with a battery.
02:44It was the brainchild of five or six of us.
02:47It's the classic kitchen table discussion.
02:51People who were fed up with the apparent lack of activity at state and federal level about
02:57developing renewables and ending fossil fuels.
03:01So in short, we felt we needed to do something ourselves.
03:06All the energy produced will be sold into the grid and it's estimated the farm will generate
03:11a profit of around 5% per year.
03:14There are several ways of setting up a community energy project.
03:18This solar farm here in Goulburn will be run as a cooperative, where each investor becomes
03:23a member of the co-op and receives one vote.
03:26That means regardless of the size of the investment, every member gets an equal say.
03:31And with most investors living locally, the profits stay in the community.
03:36The pure democracy of it was very attractive to our investors.
03:40It means you don't have one or two rich people potentially taking it over and running it.
03:49Community energy projects are taking off.
03:52It's estimated that over the past eight years, the number of groups setting up projects around
03:57Australia has almost tripled to 145.
04:00But it's not only locals interested in building solar farms in Goulburn.
04:04The area has also caught the interest of the private sector.
04:09I think it basically comes back to where we're situated more than anything else.
04:16Because Goulburn is situated on the transmission lines, it tends to lead to investors wanting
04:23to come here and set up.
04:31But not everyone is happy about the arrival of a big energy company.
04:38Stanmore is a wool grower on the Gundry Plains, about 12 kilometres south of Goulburn.
04:45A 400 megawatt solar farm is proposed on a neighbouring property.
04:50It's a massive multi-million dollar project and will go for four kilometres along his fence
04:57line.
04:58The biggest impact, not only the noise of operation and the inconvenience, but the whole landscape
05:06and outlook will be totally destroyed of the whole Gundry Plains.
05:12This is a historic plain.
05:14There are a lot of people.
05:15It's a closer settled area.
05:17And there are a lot of people who are going to be impacted.
05:20Just on this one alone, there will be over 60 families impacted.
05:25And those families are neighbours or adjacent to neighbours and therefore are impacted by
05:32the visual aspects of this solar factory.
05:37The project is backed by British energy giant BP.
05:42740,000 panels will be installed across 700 hectares.
05:47It was put out for community consultation by Light Source BP.
05:52Stanmore has been disappointed by his interactions with the energy company.
05:56Stanmore, All they do is come along and tell us how good it's going to be for us.
06:01And I've suggested to them, maybe they would like to purchase this property.
06:05If they think there's no impact on value, come and purchase it, give us the price, plus
06:10a premium for the inconvenience.
06:12And then you go ahead and you keep it and you sell it and see what you can do with
06:16it.
06:17No, their consultation process is bordering on being a sham.
06:24Light Source BP says it has engaged with the local community extensively over the past year.
06:31It says it has also made changes to the layout of the solar farm based on feedback.
06:38Dimity Taylor believes community-backed energy projects get consultation right.
06:43Locals make the decisions.
06:45I've seen the effects of when a renewable energy project doesn't do good early consultation.
06:54And it causes so much disruption in the community.
06:57And I love that the community solar farm went and interviewed every single person who was
07:04likely to be able to see the solar farm and had genuinely asked them, are you happy with
07:10this?
07:11Is there anything we can do to make it a bit better?
07:14How do you feel about this solar farm?
07:16So because they had that really good early consultation, they've had so little opposition.
07:24The New South Wales government is supporting the Goulburn solar farm.
07:27It's giving it $2.3 million.
07:31Part of that money is to fund a knowledge sharing document when we've finished, which is a template
07:38for any other community in the entire country to do what we've done, but without making
07:43all the mistakes we've made on the way.
07:45But for now, just Goulburn is getting its own community solar farm.
07:50Plans are to supply power to the grid by the end of the year.
07:54I really hope that this model can be expanded.
07:57And I feel like this project in particular is paving the way to make that more possible.
08:03This project has had to go through a lot of hurdles to get going, but that should make other
08:10projects in the future much easier to roll out.
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