Community trust: From renewable energy to data centres

Australia’s renewable energy sector has spent around two decades navigating one of the hardest parts of infrastructure delivery: building and maintaining community trust. 

As renewable energy development has accelerated, the sector has learnt that project success depends on more than technical design, financing and approvals. It also depends on meaningful early engagement, clear communication about impacts and a shared understanding of local benefits. 

Trust gaps can emerge when infrastructure grows faster than community understanding of its purpose, impacts and benefits. 

This has been evident in parts of Australia where renewable energy project activity has outpaced broader community awareness of the energy transition. 

In those regions, communities have often been asked to respond to multiple projects without a clear understanding of the cumulative change or how benefits would be shared. And the response has often been negative. 

The experience shows why community understanding needs to be built alongside project planning, not after it. 

Those lessons have helped shape a more mature approach to community engagement, social value and benefit sharing, reflected in frameworks such as VicGrid’s recently released Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines for renewable energy developers. 

As data centres expand to support cloud computing, artificial intelligence and Australia’s digital economy, they are beginning to encounter similar community challenges. 

That means data centre developers have a unique opportunity to draw on the renewable energy industry’s experience early, rather than learning the same lessons the hard way. 

Renewable energy has helped reshape expectations 

Victoria’s Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines show how expectations are changing. 

The Guidelines set clear expectations for engagement, Traditional Owner participation, social value, local industry involvement, benefit sharing and ongoing monitoring. They also point to a broader shift in how communities are engaged around infrastructure projects. 

Early engagement gives communities and other stakeholders the opportunity to be heard, influence decisions, shape how impacts are managed and understand how benefits will be shared. 

The underlying principle is that communities expect more than consultation; they expect to see how their input has been considered. 

Communities are looking for evidence, not promises 

Success is no longer measured by the number of engagement sessions held or newsletters distributed. It is measured by whether communities can see how their input has influenced project outcomes and local benefits. 

Projects that demonstrate responsiveness, transparency and accountability, and treat communities as partners, are generally better positioned to build trust and maintain support over time. 

That expectation is increasingly relevant for data centre projects. 

Data centres are entering a similar phase 

Few sectors are experiencing growth as rapid as data centres. 

Driven by rising demand for digital services and AI infrastructure, investment is accelerating across Australia. As that growth continues, communities are beginning to ask many of the same questions that emerged during the expansion of renewable energy, including why a location has been chosen, how impacts will be managed, what infrastructure will be required and how local communities will benefit. 

Data centres require land, electricity, water and network connections, creating both opportunities and impacts that are of genuine interest to local communities. 

The renewable energy sector offers practical guidance here. The best examples typically: 

• engage with community and other key stakeholders well before key decisions are made; 

• communicate impacts, benefits and trade-offs transparently; 

• demonstrate how feedback has influenced outcomes; 

• treat communities as long-term partners; and 

• listen to communities and do not make assumptions about what they value. 

Together, these actions show why early engagement, robust social and economic impact assessment, and community benefit planning matters. 

A planning notice should not be the first interaction a community has with a project, because by then communities often perceive that key decisions have already been made. 

Engaging early helps build understanding, address concerns and establish trust before positions become entrenched. 

Location and community benefit matter 

Renewable energy has shown that effective engagement is about both communication and decision-making. 

Communities increasingly expect major infrastructure to be located where impacts can be appropriately managed and development aligns with broader planning objectives. 

For data centres, site selection will increasingly be scrutinised through both a planning lens and a community lens, including whether locations are appropriate for long-term operation and compatible with surrounding land uses. 

Communities are also placing greater emphasis on local benefits. 

For data centres, this may include employment, skills and training programs, improvements to local infrastructure, local business and industry procurement opportunities, digital inclusion initiatives, support for local environmental or community initiatives and strategic community partnerships. 

The most successful projects build community value into planning from the outset, rather than introducing benefits later in response to concerns. 

Importantly, community benefits should complement, not replace, efforts to avoid and manage impacts. 

Stronger frameworks are a positive development 

State and Commonwealth Governments are increasingly strengthening expectations around community engagement, social value and benefit sharing. 

This reflects a more mature approach to infrastructure delivery, where social licence is central to project success. 

Clearer frameworks create consistent expectations, improve transparency and support better engagement. They also help separate credible, deliverable projects from speculative proposals that can consume planning resources, infrastructure capacity and community goodwill without a realistic pathway to delivery. 

For fast-growing sectors, that discipline benefits both industry and communities. 

Getting the balance right 

To be successful, Australia needs renewable energy, transmission and digital infrastructure. The question is not whether these projects should be built, but how they are built. 

The Community Engagement and Social Value Guidelines is another step towards best practice for renewable energy projects in Victoria as well as a useful reference point for data centres, offering the opportunity to apply renewable energy’s lessons early and avoid repeating the same mistakes. 

Successful infrastructure delivery is not only measured in megawatts generated, data processed or capital invested. It is also measured by the level of community trust in the development, and whether communities share in the value it creates. 

To find out how Fyfe can partner with your business on data centre projects, contact us.