Payments to farmers providing land to power the nation are expected to top $1 billion by 2030, and already provide a lifeline during drought and fickle global commodity prices.
Releasing a report at Parliament House on Monday as battlelines are drawn ahead of the next election, Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton said the energy transition was bringing benefits across the economy.
"These are regions that have been doing it tough, they're parts of the country that have been suffering from drought, from fire, from challenges in global commodity prices and difficult geopolitics," he said.
Since 2020, there had been $40 billion in renewable energy investment in rural and regional Australia, creating tens of thousands of jobs, and putting more electricity into the system to support lower-cost power, he said.
Luke Osborne said his family had been farming next to Lake George near Canberra for about 170 years and it was a rare opportunity for the bush to get an injection of finance.
"More of that is great for the rural economy, particularly as projects today make sure that neighbours are involved as well, and make sure the benefits are shared around communities," he said.
After installing wind turbines 15 years ago, productivity doubled because of a dependable income, he said.
"We've been able to invest in our farm, we've been able to get to parts of the farm through access tracks that we couldn't get to before. That's allowed us to get in bigger machinery, renovate pastures and do tree-planting to prevent erosion," he said.
A solar farm, designed to use the shading to prevent evaporation, was next, he said, as farming was always limited by water not sunlight.
Wind and solar projects are expected to deliver landholder payments and contributions to regional communities and councils for decades, according to the research with Farmers for Climate Action.
Every landholder who chooses to host a wind or solar project, or allows developers to explore opportunities for a project, is paid for the use of their land.
Grain and wind farmer Susan Findlay-Tickner, who joined with other farmers to create the Murra Warra Wind Farm in Victoria's north, said farming with transmission lines and wind turbines had become "business as usual".
"We've farmed under transmission lines for about 50 years and now we're farming around the wind turbines too," she said.
"It's been a game-changer for us on our farm ... we can rely on that income year-in year out while we can't always rely on our grain income."
Some $80 million had also gone into the local community, which was the most important aspect, she said.
Based the Australian Energy Market Operator's "step-change scenario", direct landholder payments from 2024 would reach up to $1.1 billion by 2030 and almost $10 billion by 2050, the report found.
Modelling by the Regional Australia Institute found large scale wind and solar projects - not including pumped hydro or battery storage - could generate up to $68 billion in economic activity across Australia by 2030.
