Lecroma — Shaping a resilient future
REZ Project Watch
Australia · NSW deep dive
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▸ Presenter mode
Demo seed — verify before use. This dashboard distinguishes between declared REZs, proposed or candidate REZs, access-rights projects, planning-portal projects, priority-list projects and offshore wind declared areas. Status does not imply final approval unless confirmed by the relevant authority.
Data currency: 2026-05-18 · 59 of 67 projects verified at confidence ≥ 70/100
Verified URLs span NSW Planning Portal, IPC, DCCEEW EPBC, proponent project sites.
Practical steps

Improving business certainty, aligning infrastructure investment, building durable community support

The dashboard's preceding pages describe what is happening. This page describes what to do about it. Three pillars, each broken into audience-specific actions. Pick the row that applies to your role — or read across to see how your counterpart in another role is being asked to lift.

Alignment with the Regional Energy Accord: These three pillars map directly to the Accord's emerging principles — community engagement (Pillar 3 ↔ Accord principles 1, 4), infrastructure-priorities alignment (Pillar 2 ↔ Accord principles 2, 5, 6), and business certainty (Pillar 1 ↔ Accord principles 4, 7). Where the Accord becomes the coordinating instrument late 2026, these practical actions are how it lands on the ground. See the Accord page →
Pillar 1

Improving business certainty

Business certainty is delivery-readiness, not just investment confidence. It depends on planning, access rights, workforce, accommodation, supply chains and benefit-sharing landing in sequence — not in isolation.

Why it matters: Where proponents face cumulative delivery risk, capital becomes risk-averse. Where regions face cumulative impact without coordination, communities push back. Both effects compound delay and cost.
For renewable energy proponents
  1. 01
    Publish a delivery-readiness statement. Beyond your IM or PPA materials, publish where you sit on planning, access rights, EPBC, FC, workforce, accommodation and shared-value commitments. Treat it as evidence to councils and communities, not just to investors.
  2. 02
    Coordinate with peer proponents in the same REZ. Share workforce, accommodation, OSOM and procurement planning where projects overlap. Pre-competitive coordination reduces aggregate risk and lifts certainty for every project in the cohort.
  3. 03
    Tie financial close to a community-support precondition. Make FC conditional on a signed Shared Value Masterplan with the host council(s), RDA body and Traditional Owner representatives. The signal it sends to investors is stronger than the perceived governance overhead.
For NSW Government and AEMO Services
  1. 01
    Sequence determinations against workforce and accommodation supply. Where determinations cluster (e.g., CWO 2024-2025), pair the determination announcement with a workforce / accommodation readiness assessment. Avoid creating a peak in approvals that the region cannot deliver.
  2. 02
    Make access scheme conditions transparent. Publish the local-content, First Nations and community-benefit conditions attached to each access right. Sets the floor for what counts as adequate.
  3. 03
    Treat business certainty as a portfolio risk. Score the REZ-level pipeline for cumulative delivery risk, not just individual project risk. Build that score into NSW Treasury and Investment NSW frameworks.
For investors and financiers
  1. 01
    Add a delivery-readiness check to the due-diligence pack. Beyond IRR, PPA and grid connection — read the council minutes, the OM agenda, the local newspaper. Material delivery risk often shows up there long before it shows up in proponent reporting.
  2. 02
    Discount cumulative-impact exposure. Where a project sits inside a cluster, the second-mover penalty is real — accommodation, OSOM and workforce conflicts intensify after the first project starts. Price it.
Pillar 2

Aligning infrastructure investment with regional priorities

The REZ is a regional development zone. Network and project investment needs to line up with what councils, RDA bodies and local businesses have already prioritised — roads, water, telecommunications, health, education, workforce capacity, housing.

Why it matters: Investment that is not aligned to regional priorities is felt as imposition. Investment that is aligned is felt as partnership. The infrastructure spend is the same; the licence-to-operate cost is materially different.
For regional councils and Joint Organisations
  1. 01
    Publish a precinct infrastructure-needs schedule. Take the Community Strategic Plan and Long Term Financial Plan, identify the gaps REZ activity could help close, and put it on a single page. Make it the conversation-starter with proponents — not their fact sheet.
  2. 02
    Pool council capacity. Where multiple councils share a REZ, share the planning, engagement and approvals capacity. The Joint Organisation model is built for exactly this.
  3. 03
    Treat VPAs as portfolio instruments. Negotiate VPAs against your priority schedule, not against what the proponent first offers. Make commitments comparable across proponents.
For state agencies (DPHI, EnergyCo, Transport for NSW, Resilience NSW)
  1. 01
    Make REZ-scale infrastructure planning concurrent with REZ declaration. Don't wait for individual project DAs to surface road, water, health and accommodation pressure. Map them at REZ declaration and bake them into the access scheme business case.
  2. 02
    Allocate state co-investment against regional priorities. Where state infrastructure investment can close a gap (road upgrade, water connection, housing initiative), align timing with the construction peak rather than the determination peak.
For RDA bodies
  1. 01
    Anchor the regional supplier register. One supplier pre-qualification pathway per REZ, not one per proponent. RDA Orana, RDA Riverina, RDA Northern Inland — uniquely positioned to operate this.
  2. 02
    Quantify local-content commitments at REZ scale. Aggregate local-content targets across all projects in your REZ. Publish the running total. Make it auditable.
Pillar 3

Building durable community support

Support is not the absence of opposition — it is shared evidence, shared decision-making and visible delivery on shared commitments. Communities that have seen one project arrive carry the memory into the next.

Why it matters: Communities are the most patient and the most unforgiving stakeholder. Where they see broken commitments or fragmented benefits, that memory shapes engagement on the next project. Where they see coordinated delivery, that memory does too.
For host councils and Joint Organisations
  1. 01
    Convene a REZ-level community reference group. Standing body that meets four times a year. Membership: council, Traditional Owner representatives, community group reps, proponents, RDA. Not a consultation theatre — a coordination table.
  2. 02
    Make benefit commitments visible and trackable. Single public dashboard showing what every proponent committed to, who benefits, what governance applies, and what has actually been delivered. The Shared Value Ledger principle.
For Traditional Owner bodies
  1. 01
    Negotiate at regional scale where the country is regional. Where multiple projects sit on shared Country, a regional partnership beats project-by-project IEPs. Establishes a structural seat at the table for the duration of the build-out.
  2. 02
    Make consultation-vs-briefings distinction explicit early. Decide and document the difference between proponent briefings and genuine consultation on cultural heritage scope before the first revised project document lands.
For proponents
  1. 01
    Resource long-term community liaison, not just construction-phase engagement. Communities remember whoever is still available three years after the ribbon-cutting. Resource the relationship past the construction peak.
  2. 02
    Distinguish construction-phase from ongoing employment in every public statement. The 'jobs' framing is the most common source of contested claims. Use clear language consistently across the EIS, media releases, council briefings and community sessions.
For community reference groups
  1. 01
    Frame asks as coordination, not as opposition. Ask for the Shared Value Masterplan. Ask for the precinct workforce strategy. Ask for the regional supplier register. Concrete, deliverable asks land better with councils and proponents than diffuse concerns.
  2. 02
    Use the dashboard as shared evidence. If the source registry on this site shows seven sources behind a claim, that's harder to dismiss than three social media posts. Bring evidence-backed framing to engagement sessions.
In summary

Business certainty and community support are connected. If communities see unmanaged cumulative impacts, proponents face delay, cost escalation and loss of trust. If benefits are fragmented, even large investment can feel extractive. If infrastructure investment misses regional priorities, capital becomes a cost rather than a partner. The REZ is the right scale for fixing all three at once.

View project timelines →Open Shared Value Masterplan concept▸ Open presenter mode