Areas of practice

Coexistence between mining, energy and renewables

As renewables, transmission, gas and mining increasingly compete for the same ground, overlapping tenure becomes overlapping conflict. We resolve who builds what, where, and on what terms.

Solar panels and wind turbines sharing farmland, renewables and resources on the same ground.

A new kind of dispute

The energy transition has put more projects on the same land than ever before: a wind or solar development over a mining tenement, transmission across a gas field, competing access to a single corridor. The law of tenure was not designed for this density, and litigation between two proponents is slow, expensive and tends to leave both worse off. Much of that ground also sits within native title, adding a further layer of native title and cultural heritage obligations to an already crowded tenure.

Why fighting it rarely works

Two well-advised companies can each be partly right. A court can decide priority, but it cannot design a workable operating arrangement, and the judgment often leaves both parties bound to each other on terms neither chose. Meanwhile capital sits idle on both sides.

How we resolve them

Equipoise sits between the proponents as a neutral, not a representative, and works the problem as a shared one: sequencing, access windows, infrastructure sharing, buffer zones and compensation. The result is a coexistence arrangement both sides can operate under, reached faster and more cheaply than a contested hearing. Each proponent typically still carries its own separate land access and compensation negotiation with the landholders beneath the shared ground, which we can resolve alongside the coexistence arrangement.

The principle When two projects are both right, the question is not who wins — it is how both proceed.
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