The energy transition is an enormous puzzle of policy, funding, technology, regulation and social considerations. Within this puzzle, governments set ambitious objectives, such as decarbonising the grid, strengthening network reliability, lowering power prices, and building new industries. Achieving these objectives requires outcomes to be delivered across the system by many different parties working together on the same time horizon.

The ecosystem and accountability without control 

At the core of the challenge is a tension every government faces. Governments are accountable for the objectives they set but do not control all the levers required to achieve them – nor are they meant to. This is because the various public and private organisations that get things done exist in somewhat-regulated, somewhat-coordinated and highly interdependent ecosystems. The energy system needs infrastructure delivered faster, cheaper and better, yet it is burdened by policy–delivery misalignment, interface failures across institutional boundaries, and systemic blockers that persist across projects.

This plays out in familiar ways. Transmission projects clear regulatory hurdles but sit idle because the generation pipeline they were built to serve has stalled. Renewable energy zones are declared, but land access, community consent, and grid connection processes run on separate timelines with no one owning the critical path across all three. Investors are ready to commit capital, but connection queue reform, planning approvals, and policy uncertainty move at different speeds, and no single actor is responsible for resolving the logjam. In each case, every actor is doing their job – and yet the objective slips.

The ecosystem of actors is broad. Policy departments, regulators, network planners, program managers, investors, developers, operators, state-owned enterprises, local governments and communities all have clear responsibilities across the value chain. Each actor is accountable for outputs within their mandate. Yet no one really is accountable for whether all these moving parts collectively come together, at the right time, and at the right cost to deliver on the objectives of the government. The current system can resolve process issues within agencies or projects, but only an orchestrator can address structural misalignment across the ecosystem.

From coordination to orchestration 

Consider the spectrum of roles typically found in an energy infrastructure ecosystem:

• The executive government provides strategic direction for the energy transition by establishing the long-term objectives that guide policy reform, investment, and delivery.

• Policy departments are accountable to the legislature for the quality and coherence of policy and regulatory reform. Their authority sits in legislation and regulation.

• Regulators are accountable for enforcing the rules as written and ensuring compliance through statutory authority.

• Program managers deliver grant programs and directed portfolios, focusing on milestones, expenditure and agreed outputs, with authority flowing through funding agreements and formal directives. ARENA is a key example.

• Facilitators operate at the front end of project development, focusing on progressing individual projects or defined pipelines through approvals and to financial close. They are accountable for getting projects investment‑ready and de‑risked, and their authority comes from case management mandates and control over procurement and investment processes. An example is the Green Energy Projects division within PoweringWA.

• Coordinators keep delivery moving by aligning schedules, managing interdependencies, and surfacing issues across projects and organisations. Their authority is one of visibility and reporting, not direct intervention or policy change. EnergyCo as NSW Infrastructure Planner illustrates this, coordinating delivery across REZ workstreams, partners, and network investment.

• Operators manage the real-time and ongoing performance of networks and systems, balancing supply and demand and maintaining security. Their accountability is to system performance and licence obligations, with authority exercised through operational control, dispatch, and network management. Examples include network operators such as Western Power, Powerlink, and Transgrid.

• Investors allocate capital based on risk-adjusted returns and bankability, accountable to capital providers through investment decisions and asset ownership. The investor base includes institutional infrastructure funds, superannuation funds, private equity, and development finance institutions like the CEFC.

• Deliverers, including project proponents and network owners, work with all of the above to build and operate the energy infrastructure.

• The community, who invariably fund and host all the people and infrastructure within the ecosystem, hold each actor to account.

Each ecosystem role is essential, but none are accountable for ensuring the ecosystem achieves government objectives. Facilitators and coordinators come close, and government has made great strides in improving this capability. But if you want to drive ecosystem-wide decarbonisation, reliability, affordability, or regional development, you need an orchestrator.

An orchestrator does not replace these actors. It works across them. It aligns incentives, resolves cross-boundary issues, and intervenes where systemic blockers prevent progress towards objectives. And importantly, it is accountable for whether the ecosystem achieves the objectives government has set.

This is not without precedent in Australia. The Energy Security Board was designed to provide whole-of-system oversight across the NEM, but as an advisory body without implementation authority, it became dependent on ministerial consensus and was disbanded in 2023. Coordination mandates alone are not enough – a genuine orchestrating function requires clear authority and accountability for system outcomes.

How an orchestrator can help with the problems of today

An orchestrator improves delivery in three ways.

Cheaper delivery

Systemic risk is reduced at its source rather than being priced into every project. Greater certainty lowers risk premiums and reduces redesign. Engagement approaches are also more consistent. Where constraints are systemic, such as supply chain bottlenecks and access infrastructure, an orchestrator allows them to be resolved across the pipeline rather than being repeatedly absorbed as cost and delay by individual projects. The cost of capital and delivery declines as confidence increases.

Better delivery (meaning objectives achieved)

Projects can meet milestones without delivering government objectives. Governments are measured on decarbonisation trajectories, grid reliability, affordability, regional economic uplift, and durable social licence. An orchestrator aligns levers across the ecosystem to ensure that these objectives are realised, not just that individual projects are completed.

By maintaining a whole-of-system view across the full ecosystem, the orchestrator can identify where commercially-driven activity misaligns with public goals — whether that is generation lagging behind transmission, reliability risks emerging from uncoordinated exits, or social outcomes being treated as externalities. It steps in where the absence of deliberate intervention will leave a gap between project completion and objective realisation. This means actively shaping how programs are designed, how grid constraints are unblocked, how economic benefits are structured and distributed, and how trade-offs between affordability and speed are resolved. Coordination keeps activity moving. Orchestration ensures objectives are achieved.

Why no and what next?

The scale and pace of the energy transition are increasing. Ecosystems are becoming more complex, not less. There are more projects, more stakeholders, more interfaces, and more interdependencies.

Governments already invest heavily in coordination mechanisms. The next maturity step is outcome-level accountability at the ecosystem level, through an organisation with orchestrator capability.

This is the first part of a multi-part series exploring why we need to move from coordination to orchestration. In Part 2 we will look at what orchestration actually does: sequencing, prioritisation and strategic intervention. In Part 3 we will examine the systemic blockers that prevent individual projects from delivering government objectives. Part 4 will focus on interface issues at the project level, and Part 5 will demonstrate how the orchestrator model applies beyond energy, including critical minerals and other complex sectors.

Where are you in your ecosystem maturity journey?

Ask yourself:

• Are the objectives you are responsible for achievable only if multiple actors work together across the system?

• Do you have visibility on all actors, programs, and regulatory levers that influence delivery?

• Is there a single point (person or function) accountable for achieving the system-level outcomes?

In the coming weeks we will unpack what orchestration looks like in practice. If you are unsure where your ecosystem sits on the journey from coordination to orchestration, Rennie has developed a simple maturity diagnostic to help you take the first step. Contact us to find out more.

About the Authors

Michael Panich is an Associate Director at Rennie, based in Sydney.

Tim Brunner is an Executive Director at Rennie, based in Perth