Our guest in The Sustainable Hour on 8 April 2026 is Mhairi [pronounced: Varie] Fraser from the newly opened Goulburn Solar Farm.
The episode weaves together two powerful threads: a growing unease about the state of our democracy, and a deeply inspiring example of what becomes possible when communities decide to act.
From global warnings about corporate influence and climate disruption, to a real-world story of a community-owned solar farm, the message is clear: the future is not something we wait for – it is something we build.
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A democracy under pressure Mik Aidt opens with a reflection many listeners will recognise. Australia likes to see itself as a strong and stable democracy, yet more and more people are sensing that something is not working.
When fossil fuel companies shape national policy, when political donations influence access to politicians, and when major decisions are made behind closed doors, trust begins to erode. As Senator David Pocock points out, many of today’s challenges are no longer about left versus right, but about vested interests versus the public good. This growing disconnect creates a dangerous space. When people feel unheard, that space is quickly filled with anger, division, and overly simple answers to complex problems.
The Democracy Project: a response to disconnection Out of this frustration comes a new initiative: The Democracy Project, launching in Melbourne in May [tickets here – you also can attend online]. At its heart is a simple but powerful idea: democracy is not something we have, it is something we do.
The project is a seven-year exploration of how citizens can be more directly involved in shaping decisions, rebuilding trust through participation and collaboration rather than leaving power in the hands of a few.
Climate whiplash Mik’s story is grounded in the reality we are already living through. Extreme weather events, from deadly floods overseas to record-breaking heat here in Australia, are no longer isolated incidents.
What scientists are now calling “climate whiplash” – rapid swings between extremes – is becoming the new normal. Even cooling weather patterns like La Niña are no longer enough to offset rising temperatures. The climate crisis is not a future event. It is already here.
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Global Outlook: the bigger forces at play Colin Mockett OAM’s Global Outlook adds another layer, pointing to a major international study showing that a significant share of global deaths can be traced back to just a handful of industries, including fossil fuels, tobacco, ultra-processed food, chemicals and alcohol.
The troubling pattern is not just the harm itself, but the way large corporations have historically influenced policy and public understanding to protect their interests.
At the same time, global politics continues to produce unexpected outcomes. Efforts to slow down renewable energy in some regions are, paradoxically, accelerating shifts elsewhere, particularly in the uptake of electric vehicles and the broader energy transition.
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From frustration to action – Goulburn’s sunshine story The heart of this episode is Mhairi Fraser‘s story of what happened in Goulburn. What began as frustration in 2014, during a time of political resistance to climate action, turned into something remarkable. A group of citizens came together, inspired by community energy projects overseas, and asked a simple question: could we do this ourselves?
Twelve years later, the answer is yes. The result is a community-owned solar farm which opened in March 2026:
• A 1.4 megawatt facility with battery storage • Built through a cooperative with around 290 members • Funded through a mix of grants and local investment • Delivering clean energy into the grid while keeping financial returns within the community
It is not just an energy project. It is a different way of organising ownership, decision-making and value.
What made it possible Importantly, the solar farm did not begin with technology, it began with people.
Years before the project, the community had already been building connections through sustainability initiatives, festivals, and even a large wetland restoration. These efforts created something less visible but far more important: trust, shared purpose, and social capital. By the time the solar project emerged, the groundwork had already been laid.
Mhairi is clear about the lessons:
• Build community before building infrastructure • Keep people engaged throughout the journey • Work with experienced partners for technical delivery • Be prepared for a long process – but stay the course
A shift in ownership – and in mindset What makes this story powerful is not just the solar panels – it is the shift in mindset.
Instead of relying on large external developers, the community chose to own the infrastructure themselves. Instead of profits flowing outward, they stay local. Instead of passive consumption, people become active participants.
This is what energy democracy begins to look like in practice.
Powering up – and powering down At the same time, the conversation introduces an important counterpoint. While renewable energy is essential, it is not the whole answer.
We also need to ask deeper questions about consumption. Do we need as much energy as we currently use? What would it mean to live well with less?
Powering up with renewables must be matched by learning how to power down – reducing demand, simplifying lifestyles, and focusing on what truly matters.
Resilience in uncertain times The discussion takes place against a backdrop of increasing global instability – disrupted supply chains, geopolitical tensions, and climate shocks.
In this context, local energy systems are not just environmental solutions. They are resilience strategies. They offer communities a degree of independence and stability in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Eldership and the long view One of the most moving parts of the conversation is the reflection on age and leadership. Rather than stepping back, older generations are stepping forward, bringing experience, persistence and long-term thinking. At a time when the future feels uncertain, this kind of eldership becomes a vital resource.
The future, as Mhairi says, is still an untold story. And it is up to all of us to help shape it.
Deeper message Beyond energy and politics, this episode points to something more fundamental:
It is about rebuilding trust. Strengthening community. And rediscovering meaning beyond consumption. Or, as it is simply put by Tony: Live simply so others can simply live.
B reflections • Be a model • Be resilient • Pay attention to what really matters
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NEW SONG: “Power up” The episode closes with an original song that captures the spirit of the journey – from frustration to action, from isolation to cooperation, from dependency to local empowerment. And with a final insight: Powering up is only the beginning. Learning how to power down is the real transformation.
– About communities reclaiming power, turning frustration into shared ownership, resilience and trust. Inspired by and containing audio excerpts from our guest in this episode: Mhairi Fraser.
“One of the projects was to look at the role of water in rejuvenating the landscape, but also rejuvenating the human spirit. And we embarked on a big project, 13 hectares of restoring a wetland in Goulburn. And a lot of people watched with incredible curiosity and interest in that restoration project. It went from effectively a rubbish tip to a beautiful wetland within a three year period we had a lot of community support and that’s a much loved place in Goulburn now. So it was a kind of soft approach of building this sort of, I suppose a shift in community aspiration around the environment as a centre rather than traditional ways of looking at the region.” ~ Mhairi Fraser, founding member of Community Energy for Goulburn and member of Goulburn Community Energy Co-operative
→ ABC News – 27 March 2026: Goulburn community solar farm plugs in after 12-year journey “The Goulburn Community Solar Farm has plugged into the grid, aiming to keep profits in the community. The facility is owned by 288 local investors and is one of the country’s largest community-owned solar farms. Investors will be paid a dividend, while some profits will be diverted to pay the power bills of struggling Goulburn residents.”
We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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What has become of the democratic promise?
Australia’s democracy didn’t build itself and its future won’t either.
On the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, it is time to take stock, assess our current predicament, place it in a deeply troubling global context, and reimagine a more promising future.
Join leading thinkers, public voices, and citizens from across the country for the national launch of Reclaiming Democracy Together — a bold seven-year initiative to renew democratic life in Australia.
Hear from distinguished speakers — Gillian Triggs, Marcia Langton AO, Yanis Varoufakis, and John Keane — experience performances by the Tarab Ensemble and the Victorian Trade Union Choir, engage with big ideas, and be part of a national conversation about where our democracy goes next.
In years to come, people will be able to say with pride: “I was there.”
📍 Melbourne Town Hall 📅 Saturday 9 May 2026
“Now look, before I get into this, I want to be fair. A lot of these people grew up in an era when we had lead in the petrol. Lead in the paint. We removed it for a reason. Exposed to it as kids, and the science is pretty clear on what prolonged lead exposure does to cognitive function and critical thinking. So when someone confidently tells me there’s not enough power to charge an EV in the sunniest country on earth, I don’t get angry. I take a breath. And I remember the lead. We have a responsibility as a community to gently help these people along. Think of it as a public service. So I’m going to do you a favour and give you the actual numbers. Australia has 41.8 GW of solar already installed. That’s rooftop panels on over 4.3 million homes and businesses, plus utility-scale solar farms. Combined, that generates roughly 209 GWh of electricity every single day. The average Australian drives about 35km a day. An EV uses about 7 kWh to cover that distance. So if every single one of Australia’s 22.7 million registered vehicles was an EV, the total daily charging need would be about 159 GWh. Read that again. We already generate more solar electricity than we’d need to charge every car in the country. Right now. Today. It’s done.”
“The fuel crisis has raised awareness everywhere about the benefits of renewables, energy efficiency and electrification. The spotlight is welcomed, but the community work remains largely invisible – to both the general public and our leaders.
This is no longer the case in the UK. The Local Power Plan allocates £1bn and aspires to the opportunity to own a local energy project for every community! The evidence base is comprehensively documented with a commitment to ongoing research. In the valuing community energy webinar last week, Caroline Bird highlighted the potential community benefits with commercial ownership (~$1,000/MW), co-ownership (~$40,000/MW) and community ownership (~$300,000/MW) delivering local benefits of completely different orders of magnitude.
AEMO’s quarterly update provides the evidence that renewables are mitigating our experience of the fuel crisis while the Vampire Index for cities reminds us that the impact is experienced disproportionately by those who can least afford it.” ~ Heather, Chair, Energy Together, Coalition for Community Energy
→ CNBC – 24 March 2026: Britain responds to Iran war energy shock by requiring solar panels and heat pumps in all new homes “The U.K. government has introduced new rules requiring all new homes in England to be installed with heat pumps and solar panels. “Whether through solar panels fitted as standard on new homes or making it possible for people to purchase plug-in solar in shops, we are determined to roll out clean power so we can give our country energy sovereignty,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said.”
“The economics of grid storage have flipped in the last few years – batteries are now cheaper than gas.
What’s remarkable is how quickly this transition has happened.
In 2021, electricity from batteries was significantly more expensive than electricity from gas turbines across all major markets.
Today, the opposite is true in most markets.
At the end of last year, the cost of electricity from a four-hour battery had fallen to around $78/MWh. Gas-fired power is still typically around $100/MWh in many markets, particularly those reliant on LNG.
What’s driving this?
✅ Battery costs have fallen rapidly, particularly for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries
✅ Gas-fired generation remains tied to fuel prices, especially in LNG-importing markets
✅ Cheap solar and wind are lowering charging costs for batteries even further
And why does this matter?
It matters because of the role batteries are increasingly playing in the system. Electricity prices are typically set by the most expensive (“marginal”) generator needed to meet demand. This is often gas.
Batteries are increasingly undercutting gas and setting the price at a lower level.
As this continues, electricity prices will increasingly be set by capital-intensive technologies, not fuel costs.”
“Breaking up with aviation was something that occurred gradually, but finally came with a rush and was easy. Once you start to question the industry’s approach to climate change, you don’t have to dig very deep to realise that it is little beyond enough tokenism and greenwashing to try to make you look away, while they continue push on with business as usual.” ~ Geoff Collis, former Jetstar Captain
→ Canada’s National Observer – 30 March 2026: The scariest climate statistic “The world’s top weather agency just added a new number to the climate story — and it may be the most fundamental one of all. It’s not 1.5 C. Not 2 C. Not the carbon loading of the atmosphere or the string of record-breaking annual temperatures. For the first time, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) annual assessment includes the “Earth’s energy imbalance” as a key climate indicator.”
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TRANSCRIPT of The Sustainable Hour no. 585
TRANSCRIPT: The Sustainable Hour no 585 on 8 April 2026
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00) Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:02) The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:25) Welcome to the Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land.
They’ve accumulated a great wealth of ancient wisdom that has been accumulated over millennia by nurturing both their land and their communities. And that ancient wisdom is what we’re going to need to mitigate against the climate crisis, the mega crisis that we are currently facing.
Mik Aidt: (01:21) Here, in Australia, we like to think of ourselves as a strong democracy. Stable and fair. But honestly, it’s not really working anymore. Not when we see fossil fuel companies shaping our national policy. Not when we see political donations buy access to writing our laws. When major decisions for our country are made behind closed doors, while communities are left out of the room. As Senator David Pocock pointed out the other day:
Senator David Pocock – Facebook video clip: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1D6w1Rfvxy/ The more time you spend in this place, you start to realise that there are so many issues that aren’t actually left versus right. They are vested interests versus the Australian people. You’re seeing more and more Australians looking at the decisions that are made and saying, “hang on, that doesn’t make sense to me. We’re one of the biggest gas exporters in the world. And every time the global LNG price goes up, we struggle. Aussies get smashed.”
We should have a 25 per cent tax on gas exports in this country. Had we had the political leadership and foresight when Russia invaded Ukraine to introduce that, we’d be sitting on over $60 billion worth of revenue from the sale of our gas. So we can pay for the services that Australians want now and ideally put some away for the future. We have to deal with this as a country. We can’t keep getting distracted by culture wars, by left-versus-right politics, when actually at the core of so many of the issues we face, it is vested interests and their stranglehold on the major parties.
Mik: We feel it. People feel it. Trust in democracy is eroding. And when people stop believing in the system, that the system listens to them, something really dangerous happens that space gets filled with anger and division and with simple answers to complex questions. And we see it in the rise of culture wars, the push back against something really scientifically obvious that we need to take action on climate. Even as the evidence, we can see it on the news every night.
Newsreader on ABC News on 31 March 2026 at 17:46: (03:34) At least 45 people have been killed and dozens have been injured in severe flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The highest toll has been recorded in central and eastern Afghanistan where flash flooding and landslides have destroyed more than 100 homes. The severe weather has also killed hundreds of animals, wiped out long stretches of road and destroyed irrigation…
Mik: (03:53) The evidence is overwhelming – in front of our eyes.
Andrew Watkins, Climate Councillor – linkedin video clip: (03:57) https://www.linkedin.com/posts/climate-expert-explains-why-our-summer-was-ugcPost-7442451135334080512-gxfH As a climate scientist, I can tell you climate change is upending what we thought we knew about extreme Summer weather. This Summer was hotter than every Summer in the 20th century, bar 1997-98. What’s unusual about this Summer’s near record heat is it occurred in a La Nina year. La Ninas are typically cooler and wetter for Summers in Australia. But even a cooling La Nina couldn’t prevent record heat and catastrophic fires over the summer.
What we’re seeing is “climate whiplash”, where the climate rapidly swings from one extreme to another. Take Marree in South Australia for example. Marree went from five consecutive days over 48°C degrees to eight consecutive days of rainfall that saw the town cut off by floodwaters. Our latest Climate Council report breaks down the climate whiplash we all experienced over the summer. What it’s costing us and why we must urgently cut climate pollution from oil, gas and coal for a safer future. So when someone says to you, it’s just been another hectic Aussie Summer, you can tell them, we’ve got the receipts, it’s just not the case.
Mik: (05:03) And those of us who are concerned about climate or about the impossibility of buying a house anymore and the rising inequality in our societies, well, we seem to keep hitting the same wall, which is the political system that just simply isn’t designed to respond to citizens. It responds to power, to money. And that’s why something new, something called The Democracy Project was born, starting from one simple idea: Democracy is not something we have, it’s something we do.
And right now we’re being asked to step back into it. To rethink how decisions are made. How we can create new ways for citizens to be heard. How we rebuild trust. Through participation and collaboration. Which is not about left or right. It’s about whether democracy still belongs to us, the people. Or whether we just sit back in our couches and watch it drift further into the hands of those who already hold power.
“The Democracy Project” is a seven-year effort to explore exactly that. To test new models and have new conversations, find new ways of making decisions together. Because the thing is, if we don’t renew democracy from the ground up, others are going to reshape it for us. And history tells us that is not going to end well.
The Democracy Project launches here in Victoria on the 9th of May at Melbourne Town Hall. There’s room for around a thousand people and 800 tickets have already gone. So I think you can say it’s likely it’s going to sell out. Which tells you something important. The appetite for this conversation about our failing democracy is growing. It’s real.
And if you want to be part of this event on the 9th of May with a thousand people at Melbourne Town Hall, you’ll find the link in our show notes at thesustainablehour.au. (See above).
And today in “The Sustainable Hour”, we’ll be digging deeper into, you could say, that topic of energy democracy, about how we as citizens can step up and take responsibility in this world of climate-related disasters… – I just heard that there’s a $84 billion bill on flood related losses of 2025! – about the destabilisation that we’re experiencing and how we find real solutions to that. But first, as always, it’s over to Colin Mockett OAM, who’s been keeping an eye on all the global news of the week and filtered out what was the most important for us to hear. We’re all ears, Colin.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK: (08:26) Thank you, Mik. Now our roundup this week begins in a new article that was published in the world’s top ranked medical journal. That’s the “New England Journal of Medicine”. And it published data from an international research team under a very dull title, ‘The Global Burden of Disease’, which concluded that 31 per cent of all deaths annually throughout the world are down to just five commercial products. All are produced by multinational corporations which, the report alleges, have a history of concealing data to influence governments that benefits their bottom lines.
Meanwhile, their products have contributed to a massive increase in chronic diseases, including cancers, diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions, which at the moment currently account for 74 per cent of global mortality. They’ve become, the report states, the world’s deadliest vectors of disease. And they use everyday products, fossil fuels, ultra-processed foods, chemicals, alcohol and tobacco.
The new analysis of disease data found that five commercial products are key factors in 31 per cent of all deaths around the world. Now these are fossil fuels, which includes plastics manufacturing, which is responsible for 8.1 million deaths annually. Tobacco kills 7.2 million people worldwide annually. Ultra-processed foods: 2.3 million deaths annually. Chemicals, as used in commerce and pesticides, 1.8 million deaths, and alcohol is responsible for 1.8 million deaths as well.
I tend to think that’s an underestimation, but that’s the figures that they printed. An additional 600,000 deaths per year are attributed to drug use primarily opioids and I tend to think that’s an underestimation as well. Now the paper underwent intense legal and scientific vetting before it was published. That’s according to the lead author Dr. Nicholas Chartres, he’s a scientist and corporate harm researcher. And it’s another report that’s only become available because new data centres are able to crunch huge numbers in relatively short times.
They uncovered also what can only be described as multinational corporations copying each other’s tactics to continue to sell their products which they know are deadly. Digging through the trove of industry documents, such records in their millions in San Francisco’s library, the authors used previous research into historical tobacco industry strategies.
And that’s being used as a blueprint to uncover three key methods that are deployed by other companies. The tobacco industry created an alliance to fight cigarette tax increases and waged a lobbying battle against proposed regulations on toxic fumigants that are used to treat tobacco. They were all used now and are being used now. The lobbying tactics are used by fossil fuels to make sure that governments still support them. That’s the tobacco, pure tobacco. And then tobacco companies themselves invested in junk food. They acquired a household names like Nabisco and Kraft. And those foods became ultra processed, filled with salt and sugar and caffeine in a mix that’s designed to keep people craving for more. Again, a pure tobacco tactics.
Now also the sugar industry funded much of the research that concluded that fat was the main cause of heart disease, which contributed to decades of low-fat diet advice when the true cause of diabetes and obesity is simply sugar. It’s big industries, multinational industries, are actually combining against the people of the world, and killing them.
And it all leads to the conclusion that multinationals can’t be trusted at all. None of them.
Now, last week the Trump administration did something that even by its own standards was unusual. It agreed to pay a French energy giant nearly a billion dollars not to build something. Now does this sound familiar? It’s what the Morrison government did with submarines in 2021. The difference was that then we paid France 90 billion dollars while Trump only paid them out to the tune of one billion dollars. That’s US dollars – well, 1.3 billion Australian dollars.
And there’s a kicker to the deal that only Trump would have come up with. What happened was that in exchange for cancelling plans to build an offshore wind farms that would serve New York and North Carolina, which the French company Total Energies had signed with the Biden administration, the companies will instead invest its funds in oil and gas projects in the US, including an LNG export terminal in Texas.
So it’s not ‘drill, baby, drill’. It’s stop environment and ‘build, baby, build’. That’s the Trump strategy now. And that billion-dollar deal came after his administration tried five separate attempts to stop other wind farm developments. All of them were defeated in the US courts, all within a three-week period earlier this year.
And there’s a nice closing of a circle here because it’s no secret that Donald Trump has a total hatred of wind turbines, or as he usually calls them windmills. It’s often attributed to his failed 2015 attempt to oppose a wind farm development off the coast of Scotland because it spoiled the view from one of his golf courses. He’s also claimed that the noise from turbines causes cancer, that windmills kill birds, they wipe them all out in his words, and they drive whales crazy, and Scotland as well. And finally, the first figures are in regarding the rush to buy electric vehicles because of the perceived oil crisis that’s occurred from Trump and his Iran war.
The figures now show, the latest figures show that GWM’s electric cars are now outselling Mitsubishi, so far in 2026. Chery is outselling Subaru. Geely is hot on the heels of Suzuki, and BYD is outselling them all. It’s very good news for China, also for Australia, and the environment and the planet.
And it’s another Trump initiative that has turned out to be the opposite of his anti-environmental intentions. And that sort of, I don’t know, wry mixed news ends our roundup for the week.
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Jingle: (16:34) Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
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Tony: (16:42) Our guest today is Mhairi Fraser. Mhairi’s been very involved in the exciting, cooperative solar farm project that’s come out of Goulburn recently. So we thought it’d a good idea to get her on to inspire other groups. think there are up to 100 groups, different groups in Australia that at some stage are rather of the same process. Let’s find out a little bit more about that. Mhairi, thanks for coming on The Sustainable Hour.
Mhairi: My pleasure.
Tony: Okay, tell us your story.
Mhairi: Okay. So, back in 2014, you might rewind your mind back, we had a federal government that was attacking the renewable energy target, that was throwing a lot of abuse at climate scientists, was rubbishing climate science. And it was a very depressing time. There was a lot of moral injury for people who really believed that the climate emergency was a thing and that really we needed a government to step up rather than step backwards. So in Goulburn there were a lot of people feeling that moral injury very deeply and really getting also very, very angry at a government that wasn’t speaking for them.
In 2014 the Community Power Agency held the first Australian Community Energy Congress in Canberra. And a few of us went to that, including some representatives from a big construction company in Goulburn. And we were really inspired by the kind of community owned renewable energy infrastructure projects that were happening mainly in overseas, in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, but also in Australia with Hepburn Wind, which was one of the first renewable energy projects owned entirely by the community.
And we thought, well, when we came back, we had a red wine, we thought, can’t be that hard to build a solar farm. So that was the beginning of the story. And at that time we held a public meeting and there was a lot of interest, 150 people came. And really because of the Abbott government and the feelings that were running in the community. And so we thought, okay, let’s start. at the same time, the New South Wales government, because it’s actually the states that keep the lights on, it’s not the federal government. They had seen that really communities needed to be behind renewable energy.
So they set up the community energy feasibility grant program and we got 50 grand to actually establish feasibility. So that’s how it all started. We undertook the feasibility study for a year. So that took us to 2016. During that time, we did a lot of community engagement because we door-knocked.
Let me take another step back. The construction company actually offered us land right in Goulburn City. So not out in a paddock, but actually at the entry point to Goulburn. And it’s on the Southern Railway line on one side and Sydney Road on the other, which is the main drag out of Goulburn. Very visible. And they already had completed some DA studies for another project that didn’t get off.
We actually got a lot of support from that construction company to make this happen because they were pretty angry too. The directors of that company really felt strongly about climate change and they also wanted to see something happen locally. So we undertook feasibility, we presented that to a packed crowd of 250 people in 2016 and then we needed to raise, it was a $5 million project. We needed to raise some serious money.
So we lobbied the government for another grant program, was called the infrastructure grant program. And it took them three years to actually establish that. And during that time, we kept engaging the community via media, public forums. And also we held a solar and battery bulk buy anything to keep people engaged with the idea of solar energy.
And in 2019, infrastructure grant program came up and we got 2.1 million. There were only five projects in New South Wales that succeeded in that. We got 2.1 million and within six weeks we raised 2.4 million from our community. We were astonished. People just stepped up. We then formed a cooperative in 2020-2021 to be the organisation that would carry the building of the farm.
And so we have 290 members, roughly 290 members. Everyone, no matter whether you’ve got a $400 share or $100,000 worth of shares, has exactly the same vote, so there’s no capacity for takeovers. And that community cooperative took another five years of hoops and hurdles to actually build the solar farm, which was opened Saturday a week ago to a big crowd again of about 250 people. So yeah, that’s the story in a nutshell.
Tony: Mhairi, how did you sell it to the local community? Raising that amount of money in a rural area in such a short time.
Mhairi: (22:24) It’s phenomenal, isn’t it? Look, it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, you know, 2014 was the catalyst. was the match that lit the flame. But we had also done five years of building social capital, really, in Goulburn around sustainability. So we got a bunch of students down from ANU to do a kind of assessment of what could actually shift people’s thinking away from traditional ways of looking at the world to looking at sustainability as a main driver of economic development but also social development in our region and environmental protection. And they came up with a few ideas, one of which was it was post-millennial drought. again, Goulburn had been hit very hard by that. People were actually quite depressed. The economy was depressed. People were depressed. We nearly ran out of water during that time.
So one of the projects was to look at the role of water in rejuvenating the landscape, but also rejuvenating the human spirit. And we embarked on a big project, 13 hectares of restoring a wetland in Goulburn. And a lot of people watched with incredible curiosity and interest in that restoration project. It went from effectively a rubbish tip to a beautiful wetland within a three year period we had a lot of community support and that’s a much loved place in Goulburn now. So it was a kind of soft approach of building this sort of, I suppose a shift in community aspiration around the environment as a centre rather than traditional ways of looking at the region. So I’m saying all that because that work went on before the idea of the solar farm. Then we got the Abbott government.
And it already was a lot of people. We also ran sustainability festivals during that time, three of them. People came to that. People were excited. People were meeting each other. There was a whole lot of networking now going on in Goldman and conversations around sustainability. And I think sometimes we underestimate the fact that there are these quiet people around in a community and they just need to be galvanised. And that’s what we did.
Colin: That’s wonderful news. Can I just ask you to fill in a couple of gaps for me?
Mhairi: Yeah, please do.
Colin: I always think of Goulburn as being a fruit growing valley. Is that still a major product of…
Mhairi: I think you’re thinking of Goulburn Valley in Victoria. This is Goulburn, New South Wales, which with the big merino, this is a big sheep raising area. Yeah, this is the riding on the sheep’s back country.
Colin: In that case, what’s the population?
Mhairi: 28,000 in the LGA?
Colin: What sort of facility did you end up with that was opened two weeks ago?
Mhairi: (25:18) Yes, sorry I didn’t even talk about that. We have a 2.2 hectares of solar farm. It is a 1.4 megawatt solar farm with a battery. So we’re able to store energy in the middle of the day and then dispatch it at night. So it’s a dispatchable facility. Yeah, so the equivalent of 500 homes is what we’re estimating it will.
Colin: How many homes are there in Goulburn at the moment?
Mhairi: Oh, I actually can’t tell you because we’re not a retailer. So one of the things we did during the process of construction and feasibility was looking at, what are we going to do with this electricity? So basically it’s going into the grid. We are negotiating a power purchase agreement with a company which has an ethical alignment with us. So that will secure the price of our electricity for a period of time, which gives our member investors some certainty. So at the moment the model is that the investors will receive money, they’re in Goulburn, the money stays in Goulburn.
Colin: You essentially created a power source, a power station. Your product is not actually electricity, it’s money that’s going to be distributed to the people of…
Mhairi: (26:40) Yes, is that. It’s also electricity. It’s clean energy that’s going into the grid. And with the battery, we’re actually stabilising the grid because with the energy transition to renewables, the grid is finding it difficult to handle peak periods. With the battery, we don’t shoot this huge amount of solar into the grid and destabilise it. We actually stabilise the grid using the battery. So we are helping the clean energy transition from that point of view.
Environmentally, we’re saving emissions in terms of what’s going in the atmosphere because it’s not a coal-fired power station or a gas-fired power It’s a clean energy power station. And the third thing is we own it. We’re not just getting a charity from a multinational who’s building a big solar farm somewhere else. They might give a few benefits to the community. We actually own this facility in Goulburn. And yes, you’re right. It does provide some resilience potentially in the future.
Colin: I’m interested because, I mean, there’s a potential that you would have panels on your roof and a battery which means that you don’t really need the power from the grid that you’re providing as a community. Did your decades of awareness following the Abbott government, did that result in many people in Goulburn putting panels on their roofs and batteries?
Mhairi: When in New South Wales back in about 2010 there was a very generous feedin tariff which was designed to encourage people to put solar. We ran a big project then, really giving people the nudge, this is the time, get your solar on your roof. And we had a project called Goulburn Goes Solar. And huge number of people, including some of these investors, went and put solar on their roof. There’s a lot of solar in Goulburn as there is everywhere now.
So yes, there’s a lot of uptake, but not everybody can put solar on their roofs. People are renting, there’s a lot of renting in Goulburn. So some investors are renters in our solar farm. So in one sense, they’re not getting a direct benefit, but they’re getting a dividend for panels that they own in this community energy project.
Colin: And are you as a community involved in other sustainable thrusts? Have you got lot of electric cars for example?
Mhairi: Goulburn was the first place that there was a Tesla supercharging station outside of Sydney when Tesla was building the electric superhighway. And it came to Goulburn because again, the sustainability group that we were involved with lobbied very hard with Tesla to locate it in Goulburn.
We had the first Tesla S come to Goulburn as part of an EV Expo that we had. We had electric trucks, we had everything there, but we had the S there and this was back in 2013. So we got the Tesla charging station for Goulburn really with a collaboration from Council obviously. Now there’s two superchargers in Goulburn. So yes, and there’s a reasonable uptake of EVs in Goulburn as well now.
Tony: You mentioned the big Marino ramp before. I’m just wondering are there any sheep running around underneath the solar panels? I know some communities are doing that.
Mhairi: Yeah, that’s a really great way to do things. But no, this is not zoned agricultural land. The land that we’re building on was actually originally a fuel depot. Therefore, it is a contaminated site, but it’s an interesting metaphor really. It’s gone from fossil fuel to clean energy, but it’s a contaminated site. had to do a lot of… And it’s adjacent to the Mulwaree River.
So we had to do a lot of work to make sure that everything stayed on site. So if there’s ever a rain event or even the drips from the panels that they don’t take the soil into the river. So we’re a bit of a test case really for what can be done with sediment control and contaminant control. We’ve done a lot of planting. We’ve done a lot to actually improve the site, I think. But yeah, we don’t graze sheep. It’s a contaminated site.
Colin: And you’ve got runs on the board from turning a dump into a wet…
Mhairi: Yeah, well that’s just over the other side of the river. So we’ve got a wetland on one side and we’ve got a clean energy plant on the other. So I think they’re great symbols for Goulburn of what can be done.
Mik: (31:18) If we want to copy-paste what you did, but we don’t want to spend 12 years on doing it, how do we make a shortcut? Let’s say, here in Geelong, we get 200 people around, we’re gonna start a solar farm in Geelong…
Mhairi: Yeah, good luck to you. So I think the first thing is get a really good piece of land. So square, hopefully, with the right orientation. That’s the first thing. Then certainly build social capital. So if there’s a really strong interest in owning a renewable energy power plant, do that and make sure you’ve got a battery as part of it. Thirdly, get a good development partner.
Ordinary people can’t do this. There’s so much technical knowledge that has to be done. There’s so many contracts that need to be formulated with various stakeholders and construction contractors. You need a development partner. And we were very, very lucky to partner with Como Energy. They were doing small-scale stuff. One of the directors was also a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney in the Institute for Sustainability Futures had a really good history. So you’ve to find a good development partner. I’m going to be quick here. Then community doesn’t just mean local residents, it means businesses.
So widening those circles of connection to get local contractors so people actually benefit from being employed during the construction phase. And we did that. Not everybody was local, but we did that as much as we could. All the soil testing, and the studies for the DA were done locally. Let me just think, what else would you need to do? Keep the community engaged the whole way through, because it won’t be, it hopefully won’t be 12 years. Hepburn Wind took 10, we took 12, but it will take years. So keep the community engaged.
Colin: One of the beauties of your project, as far as I’m concerned, is that you took a contaminated former oil storage place. So you really are doing the significant thing. When you say get a good square pump first, if you can recycle something which has been abused in the past, especially by the oil industry, you get extra brownie points all the way down the line. Have you been involved in this project from the very beginning?
Mhairi: Absolutely. I was one of the people who went to the Community Energy Congress in 2014. I was also part of the Wetlands project. So I’ve been involved with this community organisation which has morphed into a community energy organisation since 2008. So yeah, I’ve been involved all the way through.
Colin: I mean, you’ve got Mik really engrossed in it now and he’s thinking, yeah what can we use here in Geelong? We can use your expertise, that’s what we can use.
Mhairi: Yeah, look, the other player is having a very good relationship with council because council obviously has to approve, you know, all the steps all the way through. And the other organisation, I don’t know what it’s like in Victoria, but Essential Energy is the energy regulator for the poles and wires and all of that and getting connection certificates and all of that. You’d have to have a good relationship with whoever’s doing the networking stuff down there.
Colin: State government because at that time when you were negotiating, that was when the environment minister in New South Wales was Matt Keane, wasn’t it?
Mhairi: (34:54) He was involved in Rob Stokes as another fellow, but Matt Keane was involved in certainly getting up the construction grant. Rob Stokes, again, a very progressive liberal, was involved with the feasibility grant program. So we had some really good liberals then. We had some really not so good liberals. So they were a bit at war within themselves at the time. Goulburn also has a lot of large scale renewable energy projects in the, not in the LGA, but around and at the moment. a lot of big solar farms wanting to get into Goulburn because of the good solar intensity of our region. And there’s a lot of politically motivated opposition to that, unfortunately, that’s being… Yeah, so we’re having to deal with a lot of that.
Colin: At all from the federal government?
Mhairi: We had Angus Taylor as our local member. Yep. So we had all, yeah, we, yeah, we didn’t have any support at all. We suspect there might’ve even been occasionally. No, I’m not going to say that because he’s quite litigious. yeah, it was very difficult. The boundaries have now changed. have Christie McBain now as we’re in Monaro. So we’ve got a different, different minister. Thank heavens. but no, no, no! No support from the federal government.
Can I also say, one of things you need to know about if you’re going to build a solar farm is that the federal government, under Angus Taylor, not when he was treasurer, came up with this great tax that was imposed on construction grants, all construction grants at state and federal level. So any arena grants, the grants that we got, no one knew about it.
So we were given a $2.1 million grant. We lost 25 per cent of that in having to pay a tax to the federal government upfront before we generating any revenue. And that applies to every community energy project. And it has taken one or two to the wall. So you need to be aware, if you’re going to build a plant with government money, that that grant money is taxed and there needs to be an adjustment made for that tax. So that was a really big hurdle for us.
Colin: I’ve got a final question. You’ve really done incredibly well. You’re not going to leave it at that. What are you doing next?
Mhairi: Look, for me personally and my husband who was the leader of the troop, we’re gonna go on a one week decompressed holiday. A few of us want a break, but look, you can’t stop. You had someone on tour from Denmark, tour, I don’t know how to pronounce it. Amazing! And he just, at the solar farm opening, there was this young guy who came up to me and he said, I looked around, he said he was a shareholder, most of the people were quite old. He said, “I’ve just got this renewed respect for what older people can pull off. I’m amazed. It’s not, isn’t where it’s at”. And I was quite shocked too that he said this to me.
And then I came across your podcast with Tor and I thought we need, those of us who are older, I’m nearly 70 and we’ve just got to keep going because we have so much to offer and we can support youth young leadership, but we can also provide an eldership at a time of a meta crisis. It’s not just the climate crisis. It’s the toxic load on the planet. It’s the loss of biodiversity. It’s everything that we are facing and the future is a story as yet untold and we need to be part of crafting a different story than the one at the moment.
Mik: (38:48) Tor talks about the eldership revolution, know, the fact that when people get 65, 70, they actually have 20 years at their disposal, similar to when they were young, which they could, instead of, you know, using it on going on holidays, they could use it as you’re doing, on doing things that protect the future generations. If listeners want to listen to Tor, I think it’s quite inspiring. The podcast is available on climatsafety.info. Just write T-O-R in the search engine and he will come up.
Mhairi: Yeah, well, I think he’s great. And I have a very similar philosophy as to a lot of my colleagues here in Goulburn. I don’t think you stop. I think you keep going. But you do it very carefully because what we’ve found is collective effort needs to mean something. And you don’t want to embark on projects which are just bolstering up a system that is not working. You want something where the needle shifts, where the mindsets shift, where the environment benefits directly and the story that you carry gets told and gets passed on. It’s really important that whatever we do next, like the wetlands, like the EV work we did, like the solar farm, means something to the people of Goulburn and means something for the future.
Tony: It’s a model for other communities to follow as well. I’ve got to say it doesn’t look like this whole process has done you too much harm.
Mhairi: No, I don’t think it has. Because one of the things that we realised is that we’ve built a solar farm, we own it. That is a new model in Australia. mean, with Hepburn and the other projects, it’s a new model. It’s not the benefit sharing model, which is a charity model from big companies. We own it. And that model needs to be enacted much, much more. Secondly, we’ve built a cooperative. Now, Australia went through this period of demutualising everything.
And now we’re seeing that we’ve lost something. We’ve got this opportunity to put cooperatives back on the agenda as the vehicles that carry ethical projects and projects where people’s mutual interest is more important than self-interest. So we’ve done that as well. And I think you asked what could we do next? I think the cooperative can carry some more projects and we’re doing some thinking about that even in the midst of wanting to have a rest.
Colin: Yeah, good. More power to you. And that’s in every regard.
Mhairi: Thank you.
Tony: (41:37) I would imagine, I don’t know if can correct me on this if I’m wrong, but I would imagine that project, the restoration of the wetland project would have added to tourism in the area, would people have come just to check that out? Yeah. Well while we’re here we might as check out the solar farm.
Mhairi: Yeah, well, I was down at the wetlands just last week and there was a guy and his two sons with big lenses for photography cameras and he was from Canada and he’d heard about the wetlands in his travels in Australia and thought I’ve got to detour into Goulburn just to have a look at the bird life and so that’s an example. Yes, people who care about things find out about the wetlands.
Even within Goulburn, people are there all the time and it is a passive recreation site. It’s not a site where there are barbecues and all this sort of stuff. It’s for nature, but it’s got beautiful walks and cycleways through it and it’s a really beautiful, it’s got kangaroos, it’s got everything going for it. So it is a good tourist attraction.
Colin: Mhairi, don’t listen to the people who say let’s put a big solar panel up instead of the merino.
Mhairi: (42:49) I don’t think Rambo is going to go anywhere. But in one of our sustainability festivals, we lit up his eyes using LEDs. So that was a really good thing. Can I just say one other thing about building a power plant? We live in a very uncertain times and we live in an increasingly fractured world. We’ve got the Straits of Hormuz, you know closed at the moment and the supply chain’s all suffering. One of the things we encountered, which was completely unexpected, was COVID in the early stages of building this program. The reason I’m saying this is whatever we do now in the world is in the context of chaos. people need to be aware that they have to have some sort of emotional resilience and really strong connections with each other to ride the waves of unpredictability that can happen in the midst of a regulatory environment that is trying to hold everything together, but where COVID can just throw everything out of whack. or a war in the Middle East. So people need to be aware, have that capacity to be aware of that.
Colin: Did you use that as part of your sales pitch, you know, that we will have our own source of power in case everything goes pear-shaped with the staff?
Mhairi: You can do that now. Back then we just thought up yours Tony Abbott basically. But yes, that’s a sense of purpose. Let’s make our community resilient. We want to own our own electricity because it may not be as secure in the future.
Tony: No, that resilience is going to be absolutely crucial for communities living locally more and more.
Mhairi: Absolutely. Look, we need to be rooted in place. We need to look at our own communities, really be rooted in the environment that we’re in, to love the place we’re in and to love the people we’re with and to fashion projects that give a future to that community and a sense of meaning, purpose and connectivity. And I think that’s really as important as the renewable energy project is and that’s what we set out to do. We also achieved greater connections within Goulburn, a sense of pride, a sense of love for the place. And I think that’s as important going forward. We need to build communities of trust, social trust, because that’s the world we live in. We’ve got to go… Mik, you talked about you had to go through the war to get home. I think we’ve got to go through a metacrisis, and we’ve got to be prepared to go through that together. That’s our strength is the togetherness as we hit what’s next.
Colin: Yep. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced change as severe and as fast as we have over the past decade. And it’s not going to get any slower.
Mhairi: (46:01) No, no, and people’s capacity for attention is decreasing and people’s anxiety is increasing and so there’s a fight-flight mode in a lot of people today. So again in building a leadership team for something like building a power plant you need people who are very resilient emotionally, very connected socially, and can ride the waves of anxiety that are all around us. We’re just swimming in it. I really feel for our young people at the moment. I think it’s a very uncertain world that they’re in. And it’s uncertain for us older people as well. So yeah.
Tony: Who would have thought that Tony Abbott would be responsible for something like this? We might let him know.
Mhairi: Thank you, Tony. Well, you know, if everything’s swimming along well, people just sit on the couch. But when we hit a problem, or we really feel angry, that’s the time to hop off the couch because you’ve got a fire in your belly. And there’s so much to be concerned about now. Now is not the time to put our feet up and sit on the couch. It’s to look at our local area and say, “What could really shift the needle here?” It might not be a power plant. It might be an ethical cafe. It might be anything, an urban farm. It might be anything that provides a place for people to come together around something that means something to them and takes them a step along the way to a more resilient, more loving, more connected community to take us into the future. A place to nurture our young and to nurture our elderly, to nurture our environment.
That’s what I’m more more interested in and I think our cooperative in Goulburn and the community associations around connected with that co-op. There’s some interesting work we can do, continue to do around social connection and social cohesion.
Colin: (47:54) I have an idea, it’s no more than that at the moment, that just as Tony Abbott pushed you into taking the course that you did, I think that Trump may find that his war in the Middle East has pushed an awful lot of Australians away from oil, because we’re now very much aware of just how vulnerable we are to oil as a power source. And so if we’ve got any now at all in our federal government, which is supposed to be that way, we will be fast tracking away from fossil fuels and into more and more renewables. So we’re not found in the same situation that we are right now in the future.
And the same is true across the board with communities because I mean, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people are thinking, “Hey, I’m going to get an EV because I don’t like the fact that I’m paying through the nose for fuel, which we now know is coming from Putin or from Iran and being processed in India and China before it arrives here”. And we’re all saying, “Yippie, yippie, we’ve got some oil at last”. Well, in truth, we’re backing Putin.
Mhairi: Yeah, I think that’s true. But you know, I’m old enough and I think we’re most of us here, maybe not Mik, but old enough to understand shifting baselines. And I think the conversation we’re not having enough of is how do we power down? We keep talking about getting more and more and more energy. And at the moment, even though there’s a massive transition going on worldwide for renewables, we’re still not making the dent we need to make if we’re still powering growth economies.
And I think what the conversation we need to be having at the local level and at every level is frugality. It’s about do we need as much energy for our daily consumption needs as we are? How do we power down? How do we become much more economical and efficient with our power loads? And how do we shift ourselves away from being consumers? Because consumption is enormous. requires an enormous amount of energy and see ourselves as citizens and see ourselves as communities first. So the power down thing has to happen as well as the transition, I think.
Colin: So yeah, power down. Yeah, I’m with you on that. Whatever we can do to help with that, just sign us up. We’ll be with you.
Tony: Thanks.
Mhairi: (50:37) Well, look, my mum was a great… she was really frugal. She came out of the war and the depression. We know there’s a lot of generations of people that can tell us about what it was like and they were happy. My mum had a lovely childhood during World War II in a very poor part of Scotland with very little but a very strong community. And I think we need to really stop thinking we need as much crap as we do or as much comfort, but actually invest in what we really need, is relationships and family and community and the environment. Living well, but with things that really matter, not being consumers.
Tony: Yeah, another way of looking at that one is live simply so others can simply live.
Mhairi: Yeah, it’s not new, it’s a really good wisdom from decades ago.
Jingle
. . .
Mik: (51:33) This was all we could fit in a very empowering Sustainable Hour today, I do believe, and powering down. We have come to the Be-section, which is trying to be creative with what do we say we should be – now that we have heard all this talk about power.
Colin: From Mhairi’s perspective, I would say ‘Be a model’. May your model of cooperation and creating power become a model for other communities of similar size, Mhairi.
Mik: And be resilient.
Mhairi: (52:11) Pay attention! Start paying attention to what really matters, what’s going on.
Intro: [António Guterres: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security” (52:17)]
[News reader at ABC News on 28 March 2026 at 17:15: “Wave heights of 5.7 metres were recorded in Sydney in the early hours of this morning. Elsewhere, wild winds have been wreaking havoc…” (52:31)]
[Mhairi Fraser: “People’s capacity for attention is decreasing. And people’s anxiety is increasing.”]
Verse 1: When our leaders fail us The rules are not fair Our safety is ignored It’s normal to despair
So we sat down at a table over a glass of red Said: if no one else will do it we can do it ourselves
Chorus: Power up Prices down We have got the power in this town
Verse 2: From a dump to something living From a plan to acquiring land From a handful round a table to many joining hands
Two hundred people in a room Then more came through the door [António Guterres: “We are all in this together”] And once trust was established they all gave a little more
Chorus: Power up Prices down [Mhairi Fraser: “We need to build communities of trust – social trust”] We have got the power in this town
[Mhairi Fraser: “I think we’ve got to go through a metacrisis to our home. And we’ve got to be prepared to go through that together. Actually invest in what we really need, which is relationships and family and community and the environment. And a sense of meaning, purpose and connectivity.” (54:18)]
Bridge: Once you build your own You can’t be stopped Not for profit Enough for all The sun rises while fossils fall
We’re alright, mate! We got the power!
We cooperate! This is ours now We got the power – wow!
How we own it changes everything The money stays in our community
Chorus: Power up [Mhairi Fraser: “We need to build communities of trust – social trust”] Prices down We have got the power in this town
Outro: Power down is next step up Learning how to stop Making less into more More of what we share Relationships and care
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CALENDARS Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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