The regions that prosper over generations are seldom those that simply host major infrastructure. They are the regions that build upon it.
There is a habit in regional Australia of measuring history by the arrival of great projects.
We remember the opening of a mine, the first train to leave a new railway, the lighting of a blast furnace or the commissioning of a power station. Today, the milestones are different. They are marked by the approval of a wind farm, the declaration of a Renewable Energy Zone or the construction of a transmission corridor stretching across the landscape. These moments become part of a region’s collective memory because they are visible. They alter skylines, generate headlines and provide tangible evidence that change has arrived.
Yet the history of regional Australia suggests that projects themselves rarely determine the long-term fortunes of a community.
The regions that prosper over generations are seldom those that simply host major infrastructure. They are the regions that build upon it. Railways become significant because towns, industries and markets emerge around them. Ports matter because manufacturers, exporters and logistics businesses follow. Power stations create value not only through the electricity they generate, but through the industries that choose to locate nearby because reliable energy exists. The catalyst is important, but it is almost never the whole story.
The Central West has lived through this cycle more than once.
Few regions possess an industrial heritage as rich or as influential as that stretching from Lithgow to Portland. It is a landscape shaped by geology, engineering and enterprise, but also by an enduring belief that things could be designed, made and built here. That belief created industries whose influence extended well beyond the valleys in which they stood.
Lithgow’s steel industry did far more than produce steel. It produced engineers, machinists, pattern makers, boilermakers and generations of tradespeople whose expertise travelled throughout Australia. Around the furnaces grew workshops, foundries, transport companies, suppliers and engineering firms. Skills accumulated over decades, businesses reinvested locally and practical knowledge was passed from one generation to the next. The blast furnaces forged capability as surely as they forged iron.
A short drive away, Portland followed a remarkably similar trajectory. The cement works transformed abundant limestone into one of the essential materials of a growing nation. Roads, bridges, dams, ports and cities across Australia were built with Portland cement, but the significance of the works extended well beyond what left the kiln. Quarrying operations, rail freight, engineering contractors, maintenance businesses, equipment suppliers and local retailers all prospered because a major industry had taken root.
The cement was the product. The ecosystem that developed around it became the enduring legacy.
It is tempting to look back on these industries through the lens of nostalgia, but nostalgia contributes little to the conversation now unfolding across regional Australia. Their value lies not in what they once were, but in what they reveal about how prosperous regional economies are created.
Neither the steelworks nor the cement works existed in isolation. They became anchors around which increasingly sophisticated economies developed. Every apprentice who completed a trade, every contractor who expanded a business, every supplier who invested in new equipment and every family who chose to remain in the region added another layer of economic capability. Prosperity emerged not because a single employer dominated the local economy, but because that employer created opportunities for countless others.
Economists have long observed this tendency for businesses, suppliers, skills and knowledge to cluster together, each reinforcing the competitiveness of the others. Regional communities have experienced the phenomenon without necessarily giving it a name. The lesson is a simple one.
Major industries become truly significant not because of what they produce, but because of what they enable.
The distinction matters because economies have changed. Increasingly, value is created not simply through the extraction of resources, but through the knowledge, technology and specialised services that develop around them. A tonne of steel has value, but so too does the engineering expertise that improves its manufacture. Cement builds a bridge, but the design, logistics, environmental science and advanced manufacturing that surround modern infrastructure often generate even greater economic returns than the material itself. The primary industry becomes the platform from which increasingly diverse forms of economic activity emerge.
The Central West has experienced this before, although we have not always recognised it in those terms. We celebrate the opening of a mine and lament the closure of a factory because these moments are visible and emotionally significant. Far less attention is paid to the hundreds of businesses quietly established because those industries existed, or to the generations of confidence and entrepreneurial ambition that grew alongside them. Those are the legacies that determine whether a region continues to prosper long after the original investment has been made.
Today the Central West finds itself at another of these defining moments.
Across the region, wind farms, solar developments, battery storage projects and transmission infrastructure represent one of the largest waves of industrial investment seen since the decline of traditional manufacturing. Construction activity will continue for years, bringing employment, contracts and substantial capital into regional communities. There is every reason to regard this as an extraordinary opportunity.
Whether it becomes a turning point in the region’s economic history, however, will depend on choices that have very little to do with the projects themselves.
There is a natural temptation to assume that investment of this scale will inevitably translate into long-term prosperity. It is an understandable conclusion. Construction creates employment, local businesses benefit from increased activity, and communities see visible evidence of economic momentum. For many regional towns, projects of this magnitude are unlike anything experienced for generations.
History, however, encourages a more cautious view.
Regional Australia has often supplied the resources that have driven national prosperity while watching much of the enduring economic value accumulate elsewhere. The minerals are extracted here. The energy is generated here. The infrastructure is constructed here. Yet the advanced manufacturing, research capability, intellectual property and corporate investment that follow have too often been concentrated somewhere else. The result is that regions become essential to the national economy without necessarily becoming more complex or more resilient themselves.
The risk facing the Central West is not that the renewable energy transition will fail. On almost every measure it is likely to succeed. New generating capacity will come online, transmission infrastructure will expand and Australia will move further towards a lower-emissions energy system. Those outcomes are significant.
The more difficult question is whether the communities hosting that transition will also become the places where the next generation of industries chooses to locate.
There is nothing inevitable about that outcome. It will depend less on the projects themselves than on the decisions made around them. Education, planning, procurement, infrastructure, research partnerships, investment attraction and local leadership will collectively determine whether the renewable energy transition becomes another chapter in Australia’s history of resource development or the beginning of a broader industrial transformation.
There is contemporary evidence that regional economies are capable of making that transition deliberately.
When BHP closed its steelworks in Newcastle in 1999, the city faced the loss of one of its defining industries. Predictions of long-term decline were common. Yet Newcastle did not spend the following decades searching for another steelworks. It gradually built something more resilient. Advanced manufacturing, defence industries, logistics, health, education, research and technology expanded alongside one another, supported by institutions that recognised economic diversity as a strategy rather than an accident. The transition was neither immediate nor painless, but it demonstrated that regional prosperity can be designed as much as inherited.
The Central West does not need to become another Newcastle. Its history, geography and economy are fundamentally different. The lesson lies elsewhere.
Regional economies are shaped not only by investment but by intention.
The industries that define a place tomorrow are often determined by the choices made while today’s industries are still emerging. That is the opportunity now before the Central West.
The renewable energy transition arrives at a time when the region already possesses many of the characteristics upon which modern industrial economies are built. Reliable renewable energy is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage for industries that require abundant electricity. Established freight corridors connect regional centres with domestic and international markets. Manufacturing capability remains embedded within local communities. Engineering expertise has not disappeared. Educational institutions, local government, industry and business all possess the capacity to influence the direction of growth if they work towards a shared objective.
What is required is a subtle but important shift in perspective.
For decades, regional development has largely been measured by the ability to attract projects. Success has been announced in terms of capital investment, construction employment and infrastructure delivered. These are valuable indicators, but they tell us remarkably little about whether a regional economy will be stronger a generation later. Projects are temporary by their very nature. Prosperity depends on what remains after the construction workforce has departed.
History suggests that some industries play a unique role in regional development. Their greatest contribution is not simply the product they manufacture or the service they provide, but the industries they encourage others to establish alongside them. They attract suppliers, stimulate research, create specialist skills, encourage entrepreneurs and give investors confidence that further opportunity exists. Their influence extends well beyond their own balance sheets because they change the trajectory of an entire regional economy.
They are ignition industries.
The term describes industries whose true value lies not in what they produce, but in what they enable. A steelworks can become an ignition industry. So can a university, a major hospital, an advanced manufacturing precinct or a port. Their significance is measured not simply by employment or output, but by the networks of businesses, skills and innovation that emerge around them.
Viewed through that lens, the renewable energy transition begins to look rather different.
Electricity generation is not, in itself, an economic strategy. It is enabling infrastructure. Its importance lies in the industries it allows to flourish. Reliable renewable energy has the potential to attract advanced manufacturing, precision agriculture, food processing, data infrastructure, defence industries and technology businesses seeking locations where energy, transport, skilled labour and available land intersect. Around those industries can grow engineering firms, specialist fabricators, software developers, researchers, logistics providers and professional services, each strengthening the competitiveness of the others.
This is how sophisticated regional economies evolve. They are not built by replacing one dominant industry with another. They become stronger because each new capability creates the conditions for the next. Over time, knowledge accumulates alongside capital, businesses become increasingly interconnected, and innovation becomes a characteristic of the region rather than of individual firms.
That is the opportunity presented by the renewable energy transition. Not simply to generate electricity, but to create the conditions from which an entirely new generation of industries can emerge. The implications of that shift in thinking extend well beyond the renewable energy transition itself.
For much of Australia’s history, regional development has been treated as a question of attraction. Communities have competed for mines, factories, processing plants and major infrastructure on the assumption that prosperity would naturally follow investment. Sometimes it has. Often it has not. The difference has rarely been the project itself. It has been debated whether the project became the foundation for something larger.
The Central West has an opportunity to approach this transition differently. Rather than asking how many renewable energy projects the region can accommodate, it might instead ask what kind of economy those projects should help create. That is a fundamentally different conversation. It shifts the focus from construction to capability, from infrastructure to innovation, and from individual investments to the economic systems that grow around them.
That conversation belongs to more than governments or project proponents. It belongs equally to local businesses considering their next investment, educators designing tomorrow’s courses, researchers seeking new partnerships, entrepreneurs identifying emerging markets and councils deciding how land, infrastructure and policy will shape the next generation of industry. Economic transformation is rarely the work of a single institution. It emerges from thousands of decisions that gradually begin reinforcing one another until a new pattern becomes visible. This is why the language we use matters.
If we describe renewable energy simply as an industry, we risk measuring its success by the electricity it generates or the infrastructure it leaves behind. If we understand it as an ignition industry, our attention shifts to the businesses it creates, the knowledge it attracts, the skills it develops and the confidence it gives others to invest. The infrastructure remains important, but it is no longer the destination. It becomes the beginning.
History offers a quiet reminder that regions are rarely transformed in the moment everyone is watching.
When the first furnaces were lit in Lithgow, few people could have anticipated the generations of engineers, manufacturers and tradespeople who would follow. When Portland’s cement works began production, its significance could not be measured solely by tonnes of cement leaving the plant. Its deeper legacy would emerge over decades through the businesses it sustained, the skills it nurtured and the confidence it gave a community to imagine a future built on industry.
The renewable energy transition deserves to be viewed with the same patience.
Its greatest contribution may not be measured in megawatts, emissions targets or investment announcements, important though those things are. It may instead be measured in businesses that have not yet been established, technologies that have not yet been developed and careers that have not yet been imagined. The workshops, laboratories, start-ups and manufacturers that define the Central West in thirty years’ time may owe their existence to decisions being made today, even if that connection is not immediately obvious.
History has a habit of remembering the visible moments. It remembers the railway, the steelworks, the cement works and, perhaps, the wind farms that now rise across the ridgelines of the Central West. Those become the photographs in museums, the dates engraved on plaques and the milestones by which communities tell their stories.
What history remembers less readily are the businesses quietly established because those projects existed, the apprentices who became business owners, the manufacturers who solved new problems, or the families who stayed because meaningful work could still be found close to home. Yet these are the things that determine whether a region merely hosts industry or is transformed by it.
Perhaps that is the enduring lesson of the Central West’s industrial history. Prosperity is rarely delivered by the project itself. It is built, often quietly, by everything the project makes possible.
Long after today’s turbines have become familiar features on the horizon, their significance will not be measured by the electricity they produce. It will be measured by everything they enabled others to build.
by Rich Evans
