Hey there, welcome to The Forward! I’m Bronwyn, I spent many years leading social performance and community relations in mining, including as Head of Social Performance at Rio Tinto. Now I run Cantilever, where I advise mining and resources companies on sustainability strategy and complex stakeholder engagement.
If you want to talk about your strategy, get in touch with me here.
Read time: 4 mins
Last week we looked at Evolution Mining and what happens when a government steps back from a transition project it had previously supported. This week, government influence runs the other way: helping a project go faster by shrinking the steps where affected people get a say.
Some background first. To build a new transmission line, a company needs rights over thousands of privately owned properties along the route. The approval and consultation processes that give those landholders and communities a voice take time.
In March, the Victorian Parliament changed the law so that a transmission company can now compulsorily acquire an easement. This gives the company the legal right to build and operate on someone else's land, before an environmental assessment of the project has finished, meaning the project build can go faster, but at what cost to the landholders?
So this week, our first energy issue since AGL in April, we read the FY25 Annual Sustainability Report of the company at the centre of Australia's transmission build-out: Transgrid.
— Bronwyn
Transgrid
Source: Annual Sustainability Report 2025 (48pp) · Published 5 December 2025 · Voluntary AASB S2-informed climate disclosure · GRESB Infrastructure 94/100 · ISO 45001, 14001, 55001, 9001
Transgrid operates the high-voltage transmission network in NSW and the ACT: 13,461 kilometres of lines held under a 99-year lease, owned by a consortium of global investment funds including GIC and Australia's Future Fund. It is building the backbone of the renewable transition. EnergyConnect completed Stage 1 in December 2024, HumeLink is at peak construction with conductor stringing underway this month, and VNI West is in planning, currently delayed on the Victorian side for further landholder engagement. Two regulatory determinations this year approved nearly $5 billion in capex across HumeLink and VNI West.
Two things make this report worth your time. First, Transgrid is not legally required to report climate-related financial information under AASB S2, and does so anyway. Second, this is a company whose entire delivery schedule now runs through other people's land: more than 18,000 landowners hold easements on their properties.
Passage 1: The route drawn by community
"From the outset, we worked with Riverina-Murray communities to choose a route that respects local values and land use, and cultural heritage. While planning the route, we listened to a wide range of voices through a transparent process with feedback loops at every stage... The result: a 200-metre-wide transmission line corridor, shaped by the community and supported by best practice, which is being taken forward for environmental assessment. We have now formalised this approach to route selection into a new planning model for future projects and shared it with the energy sector."
Route selection is where consent is won or lost, and this is the strongest version we have seen this reporting cycle. Transgrid began with a study corridor one to two kilometres wide, the band within which the line could run. They held community reference groups, published corridor reports and feedback rounds then narrowed that band to the final 200-metre corridor where the easements will actually sit. Transgrid then formalised the approach into a planning model for future projects and shared it with the sector demonstrating engagement as a transferable methodology. The model's first test ended with Victoria delaying its section of VNI West for more landholder engagement.
Plain english: Route selection done with communities, then made into a repeatable model shows effective progress in stakeholder engagement.
Passage 2: The conflict between project pace and consent
"We're privileged to work on First Nations land. We are aware that our operations have the potential to significantly enhance or diminish the quality of life of one of the world's oldest surviving cultures... With all these communities, we need to earn and maintain social licence to deliver at the pace and scale the future demands."
The last sentence there promises consent will be earned, yet the timeline will not move. Those two promises collide the moment a community has concerns, or takes longer than the schedule allows. When they collide, one of them is forced to break, and in March the Victorian Parliament showed us which one. The law there now lets a transmission company compulsorily acquire an easement over someone's land before the environmental assessment of the project has finished. Transgrid did not determine that change, and nothing in their sustainability report relies on it, but I note a law can only speed up the build, it cannot create consent. The company still has to operate among those same landholders for decades afterwards.
Plain english: When consent must be earned but the pace is non-negotiable, one of the two will have to give.
The Frame
Our industry operates on a comfortable equation: instrument equals right. In mining it reads "we have the tenement and lease, so we can mine". In transmission it reads "we have the easement, so we can build". Both confuse a legal position with a social one.
The Victorian Government is now introducing legislation, letting easement acquisition run ahead of environmental assessment. I’d argue that even if a process is legislated to provide proponents a smoother pathway, consent is still required, which is a longer process.
Consent unresolved transfers onto the proponent, who must operate the asset among those same communities for fifty years or more. Transgrid's 18,000 landowner easements are 18,000 standing relationships, and a negotiation compressed by statute has a way of returning later as a grievance. Two practical takeaways:
Treat engagement and consent as schedule-critical work and resource it like you would engineering, because as VNI West shows, it is the engagement timeline that often sets the delivery date.
When a government removes a consent step from the approvals path, add your own engagement step in its place. The risk was transferred to you, not resolved.
Glossary
Easement (transmission). A legal right to install, operate and access infrastructure on land someone else owns. The landowner keeps the title; the proponent gets the corridor. Transgrid holds easements across more than 18,000 properties.
Compulsory acquisition. The acquisition of land or an easement by a government or authorised corporation without the owner's agreement, with compensation set by statute. In Victoria this runs under the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1986. The March 2026 change discussed in this issue was made by section 12A of the Energy and Other Legislation Amendment (Resilience Reforms and Other Matters) Act 2026, which amended section 86 of the Electricity Industry Act 2000 so an easement that "is, or may be, required" can be acquired while the environmental assessment is still underway.
Environment Effects Statement (EES). Victoria's assessment process for projects with potentially significant environmental impacts, broadly equivalent to an EIS. The March 2026 amendment allows easement acquisition to run concurrently with the EES rather than after it.
Contingent Project Application (CPA). The mechanism through which the Australian Energy Regulator approves funding for large projects triggered mid-regulatory-period. VNI West's CPA1 approved $948.8 million; together with HumeLink's CPA2, nearly $5 billion in capex was approved this year.
Renewable Energy Zone (REZ). A designated area where renewable generation and storage are concentrated and connected by new transmission. The corridors linking REZs to demand centres are where the consent question now lands hardest.