Growth in renewable energy projects could prove lucrative for land owners

High water prices meant irrigating crops would never add up.

"There wasn't enough land to have animals, and with no water you can't grow any produce, so the land was really just sitting there," she said.

"If I wanted to use the property for productive horticulture use, I'd never be able to afford the water to set up the land."

So when Ms Kruger was approached by a real estate agent from the local area in Loxton, about possibly hosting a solar farm on her property, her interest was piqued.

She has now leased six hectares to German energy giant Belelectric as part of a 40 year deal, to house solar panels on the land, earning a passive income of more than $10,000 a year.

Ms Kruger said it was pleasing to see the land used for something useful, and that housing the solar farm had no detriments to living on her property.

Farmers can earn $100K a year-plus in passive income due to demand for land for renewable energy projects as companies strive to be net zero.

Rok Solid, a renewable energy land acquisition agency, has secured four gigawatts (GW) of storage projects, and 800 megawatts (MW) of solar projects across 30 individual land deals brokered across NSW, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

"There's a huge race for battery energy storage sites across the country at the moment to help states reduce demand on the grid and prevent blackouts," Rok Solid founder and chief executive Daniel Moroko said.

"Many farmers have big parcels of land that can be used for these sites and make in the vicinity of a million dollars a year leasing out 800 to a 1000 hectares, while others can lease a small portion of that, even just 20 hectares and still earn six figures.

"In the past few years we've secured land which will deliver more than 4000MW of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) back into the grid, including major BESS projects on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula and South Australia's Gould Creek, which are now development application approved and ready to build."

Rok Solid has also secured 800MW of solar farm projects, by amalgamating a number of landholders and introducing major companies like Atlas Renewables, Valent Energy, RWE and Ratch to bring these large scale projects to fruition.

"There's huge demand for land for these projects with Australia aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050," Mr Moroko said.

"There's a whole-of-government approach with every state and territory having their own target timeline, even setting up renewable energy zones, but the problem is the time it's taking to get development applications approved."

Mr Moroko said the time taken to get development applications approved varied by states.

"It takes a bit longer in NSW, in SA and WA is a bit quicker and Vic is notoriously slow," he said.

Rok Solid facilitate the first steps, negotiating and helping to structure land purchases and making sure landholders are rightly compensated.

"We are about bringing opportunities to farmers and major landholders on their terms," he said.

"A lot of farmers are skeptical and feel unsure about the process of selling or leasing part of the land to a company for a renewable project, but once they get a chance to see the various projects and have their questions answered, they actually realise this opens them up to a whole new income stream."

Mr Moroko said properties did need certain attributes to make them suitable for renewable energy projects.

"The flatter the land the better it is, but you can't just build these renewable projects in the desert, because you need the supporting infrastructure," he said.