Community and stakeholder engagement is a vital part of any major project. It is critical to develop relationships with the community, as early as possible in the project lifecycle. Community engagement involves speaking regularly with community and opening direct, two-way channels of communication, ensuring people are informed and involved in the process, and that the benefits of projects are shared. This helps to build positive relationships and share an understanding of renewable energy, incorporating feedback to improve our projects. It's the same process with stakeholders – organisations like local councils, environment interest groups and local schools and colleges – to make sure they are aware and can get involved too.

ACCIONA Energía seeks to go beyond mandatory activities of informing and consulting with communities. We learn from the conversations which take place over many years, and maximise positive impact through our tailored programs for each community, like scholarships, small grant and neighbourhood benefit schemes. Through programs like the scholarship program and our small grants in communities, we have invested over $3 million AUD in Australian communities since we began operations in 2002.

From this long and rich experience in community engagement, we have three important takeaways that underpin our approach to community engagement. 

Engage early and throughout

At ACCIONA Energía, we start early, to ensure we have enough time to engage meaningfully. During early stages of development, we provide as much information on the proposed project as possible. We work closely with the Business Development team to coordinate regular visits to the community and share information through fact sheets, maps and even VR tools to help people visualise and understand the project. We also hold face to face meetings and group information sessions, to unearth concerns and address them.  

ACCIONA Energía creates Community Engagement Committees, where community-nominated representatives meet regularly and provide feedback on planning and construction activities, as well as a channel into the community. We also encourage the community to get in touch through our website and a freephone helpline – meaning there are lots of different ways of finding out what is happening and staying in touch.

During operation, we provide regular updates to the local community and stakeholders, and carefully address complaints and concerns, coordinating between teams to resolve these.

Give it the local touch

Communities are made up of a wide variety of groups and individuals. Good community engagement requires a deep understanding of these groups and individuals, as well as strong relationships between our team and the community to maintain support for the project and ensure the community sees the benefits of projects as much as possible. Without this support, a project cannot go ahead. And the best understanding comes from local people close to the project, who can take the time to talk to people, to answer questions, and to respond to concerns with patience, empathy and accuracy.

While we make it easy for community members to contact us through our phone and online presence, where possible we also create information hubs close to our wind farms under construction – for example at Warwick, near our MacIntyre Wind Farm. At Waubra Wind Farm, a 192MW project, generating enough energy to power over 100,000 homes each year, our site manager Cam is well known in the local community – meaning we have a ready channel between our community and the project, along with Cam’s other team members who work on site and form part of the local community.

Share benefits with the community

This is possibly the most rewarding part of community engagement: supporting local organisations and individuals to do what is important to them, improving their quality of life. Waubra Wind Farm was completed in 2009, and every year, local organisations apply for funding through our sponsorship program. In 2022, we were able to distribute over $25,000 to 9 organisations. Beaufort Secondary College, one of the recipients. used grant funding to engage First Nations artist, Jenna Oldaker and graphic designer Dylan Kerr, to design new artwork for their school, and share a better understanding of culture within the school community.  

Mortlake South Wind Farm is another of our projects with tangible benefits. Through our 157.5 MW wind farm at Mortlake, we launched our Neighbourhood Benefit Program, where households located within 4km of a turbine received funds on a prepaid EFTPOS card. These funds can be spent on local goods and services at participating local businesses, benefiting neighbours to our wind farms and boosting the local economy. As a result, we were named a finalist in the Clean Energy Council’s Community Engagement Award, demonstrating  our commitment to go the extra mile to make a difference in the communities where we operate.

To learn more about our impact in communities, visit our Community page.