Rotary Melbourne's 45th Meeting of this Rotary year and our 5,035^th all time Club meeting, in its one 103rd yearwas an evening conversation with minimal Rotary Melbourne formalities optimising engagement with three impressive expert panellists discussing the concept of social license and its relevance to the transition to renewable energy production.

Chair for the meeting was President Elect Nominee Phil Cornish.  The three panellist’s were:

• Mary Barry, (not to be confused with Rotary Melbourne past President Mary Barry) is a Founding Director and CEO Women of Wind | CEO Xellence Pathways, CEO CircularEco is Founding Director CEO and CEO of CircularEco and Women of Offshore Wind (WOW). Mary and her team offer advisory development services across a diverse range of services pushing boundaries in renewable energy and fostering sustainable growth and commercialisation. Mary shares with Rotary a desire for gender equity and Mary has actively promoted women and girls in STEM. Among her accolades, Mary won the Innovation in Energy Transition award from Subsea Energy Australia, highlighting her exceptional contributions to the energy sector's evolution and her unwavering pursuit of innovative solutions. Mary holds the co-chair role of Subsea Energy Australia. Mary has wide interests and demonstrated outcomes in promoting innovation in the energy transition field. Mary is not a complete stranger to the club having attended a meeting when the then CEO of the Star of the South, prospective wind farm operator, came to speak to a lunch time meeting about future plans.
• Prof Dr Sara Bice is, amongst very many things is an author and the Foundation Director, Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Crawford School of Public Policy, at the Australian National University. She was involved in the largest study to date into community engagement in infrastructure. Sara has also the past president of the International Association for Impact Assessment. Her research looks at mitigating social and environmental risks of major projects. You can hear more from Sara on a recent Policy Forum Pod released on the 19^th of April on building for social inclusion.
• Prof Dr Alan Finkel AC is an Honorary Member of the Club and well known to Rotary Melbourne. Like Sir John Monash he is an engineer. Alan was Australia’s Eighth Chief Scientist and has been a special adviser to the Australian Government on Low Emissions Technologies and Chair of Australia's Low Emissions Technology Investment Advisory Council. He is continuing engaged in the education sector and was Chancellor of Monash University. He is the author of “Getting to Zero” and more recently in 2023 “Powering Up”, which both focus on the energy transition.

The panel conversation dealt with what our honorary member Dr Alan Finkel AC described as the largest issue facing the energy transition to net zero: social licence.

He said he slept easier knowing social scientists like Dr Sara Bice were working on the issue. Dr Bice has been engaged in researching the stress burden experienced by many people in the large-scale developments occurring. 
Mary Barry outlined the enterprise level steps her organisation, Ecocircular was undertaken across a range of fields and endeavours. 

The speakers were in fine form and there was a great deal of engagement and energy in question time.

Put simply, social license is the degree of community support for policy driven changes in the way energy is produced, and distributed along with the complexities of creating the necessary production and distribution infrastructure that the transition requires.

The key take-away from the discussion was that while the means to achieve zero carbon emission and complete the transition to renewables are available and technically feasible, by far the biggest impediment is the challenge if securing genuine social license for change. 

Gaining Social license requires careful consultation with those in affected communities most effected by the project proposals, being able to define and offer tangible benefits to these communities that help address concerns together with navigating complex regulatory processes that have resulted in part from the politicisation of renewable energy projects.  Governments have a central role in driving meaningful projects that bring communities along with them in implementing renewable energy projects.

The conversation between panellists and their response the Q&A touched on the relative cost of available renewable energy options, with wind and solar being the most cost effective, new hydroelectricity projects unlikely to be proposed and nuclear power plants currently being ruled out by legislation and appearing to be most costly and complex to implement potentially of as 15-year timeframe.  The attractiveness of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) was discussed as well, but the panellists pointed out that no developed western economy has implemented successfully electricity generation using SMRs.

We recommend you look at the video recording of the panel conversation by Clicking here

Copies of the PowerPoint overheads panellists used in the conversation can also be viewed BELOW:

1. Prof Dr Alan Finkel AC by clicking HERE.

2. Prof Dr Sara Bice by clicking HERE.

3. Mary Barry by clicking HERE.

Thanks to President Elect Nominee, Philip Cornish for his input to this meeting summary.

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