NSW’s new planning framework to fast-track clean energy future

The NSW Government has developed a new Renewable Energy Planning Framework to promote faster planning decisions, provide investment certainty for industry and host communities and boost economic benefits for regional communities.

The framework includes a suite of guidelines and tools that will play an important role in supporting the NSW Government’s legislated Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap and emissions reduction targets.

According to the NSW Government, while there is broad support for renewable energy across the state, there have increasingly been calls from local communities for greater certainty and transparency on how renewable projects will be assessed and managed over their lifecycle.

In response to these calls and the recommendations of the Electricity Supply and Reliability Check Up, the new Renewable Energy Planning Framework includes five new and updated guidelines:

• Wind energy guidelines – provides advice on planning considerations relevant to wind energy development, including visual impacts, site selection and decommissioning.
• Transmission guidelines – addresses route selection, community consultation expectations and visual impact assessment.
• Solar energy guidelines – revisions to the existing guideline to provide additional advice on decommissioning and incorporate other aspects of the framework.
• Benefit sharing guidelines – encourages equitable and sustainable distribution of benefits to local communities.
• Private agreement guidelines – advises landholders and renewable energy developers on key considerations when negotiating commercial agreements for hosting renewable energy projects.

The framework introduces setbacks to avoid significant visual impacts from wind energy and transmission infrastructure, updates requirements for assessing hypothetical dwellings and establishes the NSW Government’s expectations for how benefits from renewable energy projects will flow directly to regions.

In addition to the framework and supporting guidelines, the NSW Government has released the Renewable Energy Transition Update to summarise progress on actions to deliver a clean, affordable and reliable energy system.