Powering the next chapter

Part 4 in a series of opinion pieces exploring how the Illawarra can shape its own future… together. By Neil Reilly, former mayor of Kiama

The Illawarra is a region built on energy, the kind drawn from deep underground, and the kind that lives in the people who work it.

From the early days of coal to the clang of steel at Port Kembla, we’ve powered a nation. Those industries built our towns, schools and sporting clubs. They gave us livelihoods and identity.

Now, we stand on the edge of another transformation. The furnaces that once shaped steel are giving way to the turbines and transmission lines of a renewable future.

Change on this scale can be unsettling. It stirs pride and apprehension in equal measure. But transition isn’t abandonment, it’s evolution. The challenge before us is not to mourn what’s passing, but to ensure what comes next belongs to us as much as what came before. New energy seems to be born out of the same controversy as the old. Late in the 1800s to 1900s, public outrage focused reactively on mining disasters, leading to formal inquiries, Royal Commissions, and industrial action to force safety reforms.

From heavy industry to smart energy

The Illawarra is set to become one of Australia’s renewable energy powerhouses, with proposed offshore wind zones, advanced manufacturing, and research partnerships already underway.

These projects will need technicians, electricians, engineers, planners, and communicators, many of the same skills our region already has.

That’s why local retraining and education must sit at the heart of this shift.
Our TAFEs, universities and unions can work together to ensure that today’s tradespeople can become tomorrow’s energy experts. Imagine apprenticeships in offshore wind maintenance, green steel fabrication, or circular-economy design, practical pathways that keep talent local.

A coordinated Illawarra Skills Transition Plan, built with industry and community input, could turn uncertainty into opportunity.

Rather than watching the future arrive down the Princes Highway, we could build it here.

Community power, literally

The new energy economy isn’t just infrastructure, it’s ownership.

Across Australia, community energy cooperatives are proving that locals can generate and share power affordably. Imagine neighbourhood solar farms, shared battery hubs, or renewable microgrids on public land, co-owned by residents and councils.

The model already works in towns like Yackandandah in Victoria, where a community-run energy network now supplies most of the town’s electricity.

Here in the Illawarra, the ingredients are ready: strong networks, technical skills, and a culture of cooperation. All we need is the confidence to plug them together.

Pride in reinvention

Some still see the phrase “industrial transition” as a polite way of saying “end of an era.”

I don’t. The real measure of a region isn’t how tightly it holds the past, but how boldly it shapes the next chapter.

We should see our industrial heritage not as a relic, but as raw material for renewal. The same hands that forged steel can now build the blades of wind turbines or components for electric transport.

This is an opportunity to re-tell the story of the Illawarra: a story of craft, courage, and ingenuity. Our fathers and mothers powered the country with coal and steel. Our children can power it with sunlight, wind and skill. That’s continuity, not rupture.

Practical steps now

• Support partnerships between TAFE, universities and local employers to train workers for renewable industries.
• Encourage councils to explore community energy cooperatives and shared solar infrastructure.
• Recognise and celebrate industrial heritage through creative reuse of old sites, maybe museums, start-ups, arts spaces and clean manufacturing hubs.
• Push for regional representation in renewable project planning, so the benefits stay here.

The Illawarra has done transformation before. We know what it means to build, adapt and endure.

If we get this right, we’ll not only power the nation again, but do it in a way that keeps our identity strong, skilled and proudly local.

The future doesn’t erase our past. It draws its strength from it.