Social Licence in Practice: How Projects Are Earning Trust in 2025

National guidance has converged: Infrastructure Australia says decisions must be transparent and reflect place-based needs to build community trust (Recommendation 2.3). Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Integrated System Plan (2024) highlights social licence across local, regional/owner and system-wide acceptance—meaning engagement can’t be a single consultation; it must run through planning, delivery and operation. And the National Guidelines for Community Engagement and Benefits on Electricity Transmission Projects set practical expectations for early engagement and co-designed benefits.

Award-recognised projects show how that works:

• Sunshine Energy Park — stitched together environmental, recreational and community priorities around a contested precinct by being explicit about constraints and benefits, and reporting them visibly at each stage.

• Jemena Electricity — demonstrated how utilities can move past “inform” by designing localised conversations around impacts, mitigation and timing, tying updates to what the community said previously.

• Boorloo Bridge: Building a Bridge Between Two Cultures — embedded cultural governance with Whadjuk Noongar Elders from feasibility through opening, making recognition, story and ongoing involvement part of the project’s core (not a side stream).

If you’re running major projects, the baseline is now: publish constraints and options, co-design benefits with host communities, track commitments publicly, and keep communicating after approvals. That’s how acceptance holds under pressure.

Sources

• Infrastructure Australia – Recommendation 2.3: “Transparency and collaboration build trust in decisions”

• AEMO – 2024 Integrated System Plan (main report)

• AEMO – 2024 ISP, Appendix 8: Social Licence (PDF)

• Australian Government – National Guidelines for Community Engagement and Benefits for Electricity Transmission Projects (PDF)

• Core Values Awards (2025) – Winners (for Sunshine Energy Park; Jemena Electricity; Boorloo Bridge)