As the energy debate continues to divide Australians, RE-Alliance National Director, Andrew Bray, appeared on the Country Viewpoint this week, spruiking the message to listeners that regional Australia needs policy makers to be on the same ticket to ensure solutions are sort-after, not politicised.
"One of the things that we're proposing is that we have a Renewable Energy Research Centre run through someone like the CSIRO, so that there's reliable information that people are able to get a hold of," Bray said.
"The way people get their information now is through social media so that's why it's important that information is actually delivered in a local setting and often in a face-to-face setting.
"So the local energy hub with trusted local people who know what they're talking about can be places that people can go and know that they'll get a genuine answer rather than something I might find on Facebook - it's important that as the
rollout takes place and that communities sort of engage with it, that they're engaging with what's actually happening rather than things that people might be saying."
Bray implied regional Australians need to be consulted more about clean energy transitions, particularly those harbouring concerns about clean energy infrastructure such as transmission lines and wind turbines appearing on farms.
"People don't always have a good sense of why the project is rolling out in the places they are in, so to have more information around that at least gives people a better chance to understand why there's a transmission line here, why there might be a wind farm plan there and to have their questions answered around them," Bray said.
"That kind of stuff is really important because at the moment you know in our judgment,
certainly the things we're hearing, people are not part of that discussion enough.
"This would help bring communities much more into the centre of those discussions."
Comments