Our response to PoweringWA's draft community benefits guidelines

Community benefits or ‘benefit-sharing’ are standard practice for renewable energy projects, and involve developers making financial or other contributions to host communities to compensate for any negative impacts and to make sure communities share in the financial rewards of the energy infrastructure they’re hosting in their place.

WA hasn’t had a set of guidelines in place for community benefits, which has led to inconsistent practice across the state and the risk of feeding community distrust and resentment. On Thurs 12th June 2025, PoweringWA released their Draft Guideline on Community Benefits for Renewable Energy Projects for consultation, which is a positive step towards creating clear expectations for developers and equipping communities and local government to secure good outcomes.

However, the Better Climate team also has several concerns about the content, scope, and implementation of these guidelines. This briefer highlights the aspects of the guidelines we were pleased to see, details our concerns, and outlines our planned approach for engaging with the consultation process for this policy.

Read our briefer here, then join our webinar to help us strengthen this policy!

Alternatively, if you can't make it to our webinar please fill out our short survey to let us know what you'd like to see in these guidelines, or get in touch at [email protected] if you’d like to speak about this issue with us.