Become a Member
Membership is open to any organisation, group, agency or project which can demonstrate a genuine involvement with community energy and a commitment to growing a vibrant community energy sector in Australia.
Community Energy Groups and Community Energy Partners will become voting members. Supporters will have a voice on the leadership council. Your support and guidance is crucial for the sector’s impact and influence.
Embark Membership
Embark is the legal vehicle for Energy Together. Traditionally, a minimum of 50 members was required to ensure a charity had democratic underpinning and deep community support. We want to increase membership to the organisations that comprise the community energy sector. To ensure that we serve your needs effectively and help us achieve our sector vision, we encourage you to become a formal member of Embark.
Membership will help coordinate member collaboration and knowledge sharing with the goal of creating a vibrant community energy sector and movement throughout Australia.
The big-picture benefit of becoming a member is being directly involved with creating the community energy sector. In this way more community energy projects, including yours, can succeed. The more practical and immediate benefits of membership are being able to access technical and specialist knowledge with peers and service providers and build your networks in ways that benefit your community energy projects and priorities.
Our constitution can be found here. The Energy Together ACNC listing is here.
The benefits of becoming a Member of Energy Together are:
- Influence the direction of the community energy sector.
- Help shape our priorities and work by providing feedback about what the sector and your organisation need most.
- A voice on the leadership council to be held four times per year.
- A vote at the Annual General Meeting.
- Community Energy rates at Congress and events for all members of your organisation.
- Joining with and supporting a growing and coordinated voice to better advocate for the needs of the sector and have greater influence on the development of the sector
Inaugural membership will be free until the 2027 Annual General Meeting, at which stage we plan to introduce a modest membership fee. This will encourage us all to keep our membership details up to date and will create an incentive for us to collaborate in ensuring the community energy sector is seen as an essential pillar of the energy transition.
Membership Categories
Community Energy Group
We welcome community energy groups, whether you have incorporated, you are a subcommittee of a larger community organisation or are simply collaborating with neighbours and friends. We define community energy groups broadly as helping their communities to participate in the shift to clean energy. That may mean working to develop renewable energy, energy efficiency or electrification projects in your community. Community energy groups are often characterised by volunteer effort, sharing profits or benefits with their community, democratic governance and purpose-led rather than profit-led initiatives.
Community Energy Partner
Organisations which align with our purpose in making communities the beneficiaries of the shift to clean energy. Striving for equitable access to local solutions for every Australian community and building resilient, affordable energy systems that enhance wellbeing every day. Community energy partners often have skills and resources to share on a commercial basis with community energy groups, local government, regional development bodies and the energy sector. We expect our community energy partners to be purpose led and public good oriented organisations with democratic governance.
Supporter Organisation
Organisations that share our belief that local energy will make a substantial and inevitable contribution to our future energy system and therefore offer support for community level participation as an essential feature of the energy transition. We know that embedding community voices in energy reform helps build a cleaner energy system that is not only technologically advanced, but socially durable — built on trust, fairness, and collective strength.
