The AER's Directions Paper on Social licence for electricity transmission projects sets out our current approach to social licence issues and covers how transmission networks may best address social licence under our regulatory framework, including:

• our expectations of transmission networks in undertaking community engagement
• when and how social licence issues can be factored into the regulatory tests for the approval of and recovery of costs for new transmission development
• the evidence that we want to see in support of proposed transmission network expansion and associated expenditure.

This report provides a framework for the AER to assess social license. In this report, we discuss and distinguish between social license engagement and activities.

We invited interested parties to make submissions on the AER’s Directions paper by 1 December 2023. We received 20 written submissions.