RELA Land Assessment Tool Project

Summary

Need

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) 2024 plan entitled the ‘Integrated System Plan’ (ISP) highlights that the national electricity market (NEM) needs grid scale wind and solar to increase six-fold by 2050 to meet the future outlined in the ISP under the ‘step change’ scenario. This means that the current rate of investment in renewables would have to accelerate with between 3-6GW of new capacity built each year for the next decade.

In reality, the pace of wind and solar developments is much slower than what is needed to reach the step change projection, as outlined in the ISP. Delays in fostering social licence has been cited as a critical barrier to the energy transition. Social license for renewable energy developments among landowners has, in part, been eroded by negative experiences of landowners with renewables development, such as:

1. land banking by developers, in which exclusivity clauses in contracts prohibit landowners engaging alternate developers, and allow project developers to dictate the pace of development, without regard for detriment to the landowner; and
2. lease terms which are unfavourable for landowners, including uncompetitively low pricing or an absence of legal protections for continuation of farming operations and decommissioning.

A key root cause of these negative outcomes is the asymmetry of information between landowners and developers.

Action

The Project aims to reduce delays in fostering social licence by:

1. creating easy-to-use and easy-to-understand tools that make assessment of the renewable potential of land accessible to landowners;
2. increasing landowner knowledge of the value of their asset, reducing information asymmetry between landowners and renewable developers, and facilitating more successful negotiations; and
3. fostering positive experiences of landowners with renewable energy development through improved outcomes for landowners.

The Project’s target audience is landowners who are considering renewable energy as an additional revenue stream to supplement their core farm enterprise or who have been approached by one or multiple renewable developers to negotiate a land agreement.

RELA has an existing land assessment product that uses an offline, manual process to assess the potential for a parcel of land to host renewable energy projects. The Project represents a material upgrade of this product, allowing landowners to access information relevant to their land, that is independent and easy-to-understand, and will support a more knowledgeable engagement with renewable energy developers.

Outcome

The objectives for the Project will be achieved through the following Outcomes:

1. increase the number of landowners who are willing to enter discussions on co-existence with renewable energy development on their land;
2. reduce information asymmetry between landowners and renewable developers when discussing co-existence; and
3. facilitate an increased number of renewable energy projects connecting to the grid in the medium to long term.

Learn more about RELA Assess at RELA.com.au