The Coalition for Community Energy and member groups made a submission to the review of the Victorian Renewable Energy Target II to advocate for support of community energy.
Click here to download a couple of the submission.
In summary, we advocate that there is an opportunity to unlock mid-scale community energy, producing a pipeline of local jobs and delivering significant regional economic development across the state. There is a great opportunity to enhance our sector with the right policy instruments.
Our list of key recommendations:
- Deliver a carve-out of the VRET for community energy, called the Community Energy Target, with a portion of each VRET round dedicated to it.
- Use robust criteria for project proponents to ensure genuine community energy projects are enabled.
- Create an EOI process and development grants to de-risk community energy projects.
- Implement a financial incentive such as a feed-in tariff, minimum floor price or annual payment (CEI).
- Community energy projects under this scheme should be given flexibility for how they trade electricity to prioritise local supply arrangements.