New Social Licence Toolkit for Renewable Energy Engagement

Working in renewable energy, major projects or communities experiencing rapid development? A new Queensland Government toolkit is worth adding to your resources.

The Queensland Government has released its Social Licence Toolkit for Local Government, designed to help councils prepare for and navigate renewable energy development in their communities.

Developed in partnership with the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ), the toolkit supports councils to understand their role, engage with proponents and communities, consider social and cumulative impacts, and negotiate Community Benefit Agreements.

But you don’t necessarily need to work in Queensland local government to find something useful.

Practical Tools You Can Pick Up and Use

The toolkit brings together templates, checklists, guides and practical prompts covering different stages of renewable energy development.

Resources include:

• Key questions to ask renewable energy proponents
• Tips for tracking cumulative impacts
• A renewable energy project pipeline register template
• A checklist for effective proponent engagement
• Guidance on social baseline inputs for Social Impact Assessments
• A checklist for assessing a proponent’s Social Impact Assessment
• Tools for developing community legacy benefits
• Guidance for capturing Community Benefit Agreement commitments
• Communication messaging and channel tips

Importantly, the resources are designed to build on strategies, policies and processes councils may already have in place, rather than requiring them to start from scratch.

Why It’s Worth a Look

While the toolkit responds directly to Queensland’s renewable energy planning environment, many of the questions behind it will be familiar to engagement practitioners elsewhere.

How do you engage early enough to influence outcomes? How do you hear beyond the loudest voices? How do you understand cumulative impacts when communities are facing multiple projects? And how do you turn community input into benefits that reflect local priorities?

The toolkit also reinforces an important principle: social licence isn’t a regulatory approval or something secured through a single engagement activity. It is built — and maintained — through relationships, trust, ongoing dialogue and how organisations respond to community expectations over time.

For practitioners working across renewable energy, infrastructure, regional development, social impact or community engagement, there’s plenty here to explore, adapt and put into practice.

Explore the Queensland Government Social Licence Toolkit for Local Government →