Date: Tuesday, 25 July, 2023

Time: 10 – 11am AEST

Forum: BSGIP online seminar

Speakers: Michael Frangos, Indigenous Energy Australia and Chris Briggs, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology

Location: Zoom

Contact: Sarah Wilson, Communications Manager, BSGIP

Watch the recording here.

About the event

The NSW Renewable Energy Zones (REZ) First Nations Guidelines, aim to contribute to a clear purpose of ensuring that First Nations communities through the five REZs gain appropriate benefit from the once in several generation developments.

Driven by the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, the guidelines aim to support the meaningful and genuine engagement with First Nations communities to implement the Roadmap, by guiding perspective proponents about best practice engagement and negotiation with local Aboriginal communities, and outlining factors decision makers should consider. This all sitting in the frame of how employment and income opportunities can be created for, and capitalised by, Aboriginal communities.

The General Guidelines aimed to be a high-level overview of best practice, setting the scene for the subsequent region-specific guidelines that provide detail on the aspirations, requirements, and expectations of the specific regions associated with renewable energy zones.

Key to the drafting of the guidelines, and the development of their contents, was the consultation of community, and reference to many other examples, good and bad, of infrastructure developed with/for First Nations communities. These examples were analysed and summarised in the accompanying Case Studies for Best Practice.

Format

  • 5 min welcome and introduction by Anna Cain, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program, ANU 
  • 30 min presentation by Michael Frangos, Indigenous Energy Australia and Chris Briggs, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology 
  • 15 min Q&A facilitated by Anna Cain, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program, ANU 

About the speakers

Michael Frangos is CEO and co-founder of Indigenous Energy Australia. He is also a renewable energy systems engineer, and organisational transformation specialist, who is passionate about doing infrastructure differently. For 14 years Michael has worked on renewable energy and the fundamental role decarbonisation can play in Closing of the Gap, and resultantly is one of the preeminent experts on this intersection. He continues to learn how energy and other infrastructure can be done better drawing from all knowledge sets. Michael is a published author covering topics including knowledge weaving, Indigenous water issues, and developing renewables On Country. Michael is deeply committed to playing his part in creating a decarbonised and reconciled Australia, achieving this in his day-to-day by working with community, government, and private industry.

Dr Chris Briggs is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology has a combination of climate, energy and labour market expertise developed over 20 years of experience in policy, research and advocacy in Federal, State and City Governments, as well as the university sector. Chris has worked in climate and energy roles as a political adviser, policy maker, program leader and researcher. As a policymaker and program-leader, his roles have included the State Coordinator for the NSW Renewable Energy Precincts and Senior Economist (Climate Change Policy Branch, Office of Environment and Heritage), working on the NSW Energy Efficiency Strategy, climate change policy, carbon market strategy and large-scale renewable energy policy and programs. As a political adviser, Chris led the policy unit in the Office of Lord Mayor for Sydney, Clover Moore (a leader in city energy policy) and worked as the climate and energy policy adviser for Senator Christine Milne (Leader, Australian Greens). At ISF, Chris has worked on a range of projects since joining in October 2017.