December 2022 - The Energy Charter

2022 Year in Review

A final message from Rebecca Kardos, CEO Council Chair 2022

Last week, I attended my last meeting as Energy Charter CEO Council Chair, leaving me with much to share and reflect on as we head into the holiday season.

Of note, was the CEO Council’s decision on a joint Statement of Support (SoS) from Energy Charter signatories to their customers and communities across Australia. The industry SoS (published at #BetterTogether Cost of Living) is a commitment to align action on a range of relief, support and prevention measures that assist customers and communities facing vulnerable circumstances as cost-of living pressures rise.

In addition to individual programs and initiatives within each business, the SoS features new collaboration commitments, including a:

A nationally coordinated concessions’ awareness campaign and engagement campaign
Expanding the Voices for Power train-the-trainer model into Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory to support communities facing cost-of-living vulnerability.

The SoS marks the Council’s first collaborative commitment under the Priority #BetterTogether (#BT) on Cost of Living and compliments work already underway through the Landholder and Community Social Licence and Knock to Stay Connected Priority #BTs.

Reflecting on the year, it has been terrific to see the outcomes of the 3-Year Strategic Review come to life, with cross-sector collaboration through the #BetterTogether initiatives now a core focus.

Recently, we saw the culmination of collaboration through the #BT Resilience with the launch of the Disaster Response Playbook, and the launch of the National Customer Code for Energy Comparators & Energy Moving Services earlier this year. It’s also exciting to see conservation groups and signatories in Queensland co-designing a new #BT Biodiversity, with focus on mapping and better practice across biodiversity and renewables development.

The 3-Year Strategic Review also kept accountability and transparency at the heart of the Energy Charter commitment, with fifteen Disclosures submitted and supported by stakeholder feedback summaries, as part of the new decentralised accountability process.

Critically, the Disclosure process has allowed us to track signatory maturity over time, with improvements now evident across each of the five principles. While the commitment of each individual business has been essential, the Energy Charter has also played a key role inspiring customer centric culture change across the sector.

In 2022, this has included fifteen insight sharing and capability building events, across the #BT Know Your Customers & Communities Community of Practice, the #BT First Nations Better Practice engagement workshop series and the FIAP Champions of Change Series.

With this growth, commitment and action has come increasing credibility. As CEO Council Chair, it has been a privilege to share our work with industry bodies, including the Australian Energy Market Commission, the Australian Energy Regulator and Australian Energy Market Operator. It’s also wonderful to see the Energy Charter invited to participate in the AER’s Game Changers initiative and called out in the Toward Energy Equity Strategy.

Before handing over the reins for 2023, I’ll take a moment to remind signatories, collaborators and supporters of the Energy Charter that Energy customers rely on all of us.

For Energy Charter signatories, the opportunity is to keep humans at the centre of the design and delivery of energy solutions; to navigate the changing needs of customers and communities as we transform to a cleaner energy future.

What gives us power, is our ability to take a whole-of-sector view; to collaborate, innovate and strive for better. To share knowledge and connections from all sides and, importantly, to proactively co-design solutions.

There really is no other collaboration like us; and the work we do, together, has never been more important than it is today.

I hope all you have happy and joyful festive season, and importantly, a chance to recharge for a big year of collaboration ahead!

The Energy Charter December News Update

Message from the Chair of the CEO Council, Rebecca Kardos, #BT Resilience Disaster Response Playbook, Customer Voice – Landholder and Community Social Licence, Customer Code to Knock to Stay Connected, Decentralised Accountability Process Feedback Summaries Read More

Community of Practice – Compassion in Conflict

“Conflict is simply energy – the energy caused by a gap between what you want and what you are experiencing. This energy can be misused in ‘drama’ or harnessed to create something positive and useful.”

This is just one of many insights human-centered communication expert Ilona Vass shared at our final #BetterTogether Know Your Customers and Communities event for 2022.

With ‘conflict’ a common feature of infrastructure projects, it’s essential we build capability around compassionate, human-centered conflict strategies.

In the session, Ilona introduced several handy ideas to help us conceptualise, understand, and apply compassion in conflict situations.

Here’s our wrap up of the top tips from the session…

Tip 1 – Remember there is a purpose in conflict: to ‘create’.

We have conflict because, in the creation process, we bring a diversity of opinions and perspectives, which can lead to misunderstanding. Reminding ourselves that conflict serves a purpose is the first step in taking a more positive approach to managing it.

Tip 2 – Positive and negative energies

If we think about conflict as a gap in energy – we can then differentiate between the positive and negative energies being created. When energy is used as a weapon, the result is unhelpful ‘drama’, where those involved need to be right, justify their position and intention and stay emotionally detached.

When conflict is met with compassion, those involved connect at a human level, invite collaboration, listen with empathy, and aim to move forward with mutual agreement. Applying a compassionate approach is not only more likely to resolve the conflict, but helps to avoid ‘explosive’ responses and results in a much more positive experience for those involved.

Tip 3 – The 4 C’s to work towards conflict with compassion

When approaching conflict with compassion, there’s four ‘C’s’ to work toward – ‘Courage’, ‘Clarity’, ‘Conversations’ and ‘Consistency’.

Courage – we must be willing to move away from an emotionally detached position and address the emotions sitting at the heart of the problem.
Clarity – it’s critical to stay clear on your message and avoid confusion by changing positions in ‘the heat of the moment’. By being transparent, we allow other party the opportunity understand our perspective and consider our suggestions for an agreeable solution.
Conversation – we must make time to have the conversations that allow us to listen deeply and find mutually aggregable pathways forward. Resolutions cannot be found without a willingness to keep the conversation going.
Consistency – the above C’s need to be applied consistently. Remaining clear, being consistent in our willingness to converse and staying courageous, is crucial to avoiding drama-fuelled, adversarial communication.

Tip 4 – Open communication.

This can be challenging, especially in situations where the other party is aggressive, however, open communication is a great tactic for keeping conversations on track toward a solution. In the frame of conflict communication, openness means being emotionally transparent and creating a safe space for others, including by maintaining the mindset that all parties are worthwhile. Empathising with other parties by sharing a similar personal experience, or showing that you resonate with their experience is one way to keep a conversation open.

It’s also essential to validate the other person’s emotions, including by asking questions around the feelings that are being felt and talking time explore them together. It can be helpful to actively disclose your own emotions also, for example, by letting the other person know how you are feeling about the conversation. Being open doesn’t mean being vulnerable in a way that makes you feel unsafe, or in a way that is not relevant to solving the specific problem at hand – it simply means being willing to connect with the other person on a human level

So, why does this matter?

Inevitability, infrastructure projects across the water and energy sector will involve conflict because of the creation process. As the energy sector embarks on a once-in-a-generation infrastructure build to transition to renewables, community and landholder engagement is increasingly in the spotlight. With hundreds of conversations occurring with impacted landowners, host communities and advocates every day, it’s essential that those responsible have the skills and know-how to manage conflict with compassion.

Positive conflict strategies not only reduce the inevitable costs of miscommunication and increase the likelihood of reaching a mutually agreed solutions faster, they also materially reduce stress and improve the experience for all involved.

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This event was held as part of The Energy Charter’s #BetterTogether Know Your Customers and Communities collaboration with Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA). This unique collaboration connects water and energy sector participants with a new guest speaker every month, to discuss customer and community engagement and facilitate a practical conversation on how to apply better practice in business.

Thanks to Ilona Vass for sharing her knowledge on this very important topic. To learn more about Ilona’s work on communication and positive conflict strategies visit: Dancing with the Dragons – Leadership and Team Communication Expert

#BT

#BetterTogether – Agricultural Landholders and Transmission: On the Ground Insights

How could electricity transmission infrastructure and agriculture co-exist and create shared value? That’s the question we’re seeking to answer through our social licence research exploring co-existence and shared value opportunities for landholders affected by transmission infrastructure.

As Australia moves towards a renewable energy future, a growing number of agricultural landholders are being approached to host electricity transmission infrastructure of their land.

Our energy businesses recognise that these transmission development projects, as well as the maintenance of existing infrastructure, may impact the lives and livelihoods of agricultural landholders.

They also understand that they have a responsibility to recognise and minimise these impacts and work towards agreeable outcomes for everyone.

What will this research be used for?

Our social licence research will be used to guide the development of practical guidelines for co-existence between electricity transmission infrastructure, agricultural landholders and their communities. Our goal is to develop guidelines that will:

Provide a plain English understanding of the practical impacts that energy transmission infrastructure may have on agricultural operations
Identify practical modifications and mitigations that could be considered, by both agricultural operators and transmission infrastructure businesses, to minimise potential impacts
Identify shared value opportunities, to dually support sustainable agricultural production and transmission planning and operation.

Who’s involved?

This initiative is the result industry collaboration between Transgrid, Powerlink, TasNetworks, ElectraNet and AusNet.

A key part of this collaboration has also been the formation of a Community Outcomes Group (COG). The purpose of the COG is to provide strategic insights into the agricultural sector to co-design the research and resulting guideline.

Our Landholder Community Outcomes Group includes representatives from: Ag Energy Taskforce, Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner, Bundaberg Canegrowers, National Farmers’ Federation, National Irrigators Council, RE-Alliance, Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, Queensland Farmers’ Federation and Victorian Farmers Federation.

Our research partner is KPMG Australia.

What’s involved in the research?

The research component of this initiative involved a landholder survey, which was completed by 144 landowners across QLD, NSW, TAS, VIC and SA. Eighteen deep-dive interviews were also conducted with landholders committed to sharing their experiences on how transmission infrastructure has, or is expected to, impact them.

What have we learnt so far?

Agricultural landholders are, of course, not a homogenous group – there are many variables which affect how transmission impacts them and the way they use their land. This includes the type of farming activities that are being undertaken, the value an individual, or farming business, places on any particular feature of a property and the quality of the engagement that has taken place, just to name a few.

It is not surprising then, that when it comes to assessing impacts, our research validated 34 individual impacts across the areas of agricultural operations, wellbeing, financial and environmental.

Here’s some of the themes industry collaborators are working through with ag sector representatives:

Visual impacts, financial loss and biosecurity risk were reported as the most significantly felt impacts for landholders.
At community level, landholders reported that the most likely negative impacts relate to decreased property value, visual amenity, and neighbour relations.
The impacts felt by landholders change over the planning, construction and operation phase of the infrastructure lifecycle, with many impacts appearing to lessen over time.
Landholders identified a range of economic and social benefits for their wider communities, however, identified few benefits as infrastructure hosts.
Landholders identified a range of mitigation measures that could help with co-existence, ranking ‘input into the planning process’ as the most important action transmission businesses can take. More local, community involvement was also rated as a key action to improve co-existence outcomes.
While few benefits were reported, a range of shared value options were suggested. Broadly these related to improving energy affordability and reliability, further investment in rural infrastructure, and utilisation of transmission project resources (both during and after construction).

The better practice guidelines, which will utilise the finding of the research to offer a smorgasbord of options and opportunities to improve coexistence outcomes and realise shared value is expected to be released in Q1 2023.

More about this project

The Energy Charter is a unique coalition of like-minded energy organisations with a shared purpose and passion for customers. Our purpose is to empower one another across the energy supply chain to deliver better energy outcomes for customers and communities.

One of the ways this is achieved is through collaborative projects, called #BetterTogether initiatives, that focus on delivering tangible customer and community outcomes. This Landholder and Community Social Licence Research has been endorsed by the Energy Charter’s CEO Council as a Priority #BetterTogether initiative, recognising the importance of ensuring that no one is left behind in Australia’s transition to renewables.