I am writing from the ACT. I would recommend that you mine the recently amended ACT legislation for ideas. I made submissions to the review on problems we encountered trying to get some sustainability measures in place. I am pleased to say that every one of those issues was addressed in pretty much the way I recommended in the new legislation. Feel free to quote any of the below in submissions to the NSW review. And take heart, sometimes democratic processes do work!
If anyone wants further detail please get in touch. In particular, think of the benefits if, embedded within the load, there was solar generation on the roof of every strata building across our cities. This would seriously save some money for the strata buildings but also reduce the need for new generation and distribution upgrades to cope with air-conditioning loads. This saves money for everyone else too. Much of the increase in electricity costs if for infrastructure upgrades and very little is for various measures such as the renewable energy target, in spite of the rhetoric of some pollies. For obvious reasons solar electric output tends to track air-conditioning loads pretty well.
See https://www.legislation.act.gov.au/a/2011-41/default.asp for the ACT legislation.
In particular see Section 23. It says an OC can approve sustainability equipment on the common property with a single, ordinary resolution. A plan must be presented that covers how it is to be financed, any easements required, a maintenance plan, the costs and long term environmental benefits, but if you cover all that in a plan it can be voted on once and simply. Previously this might have required different classes of motions for its various parts.
The sustainability infrastructure can be held ‘in trust’ for the owners, rather than as ‘agent’. The point of this bit is that any feed-in tariff you might earn from solar PV is taxed differently depending on the relationship between the OC and the owners. When it is ‘agent’ income in respect of the common property is taxed in tiny slices in the hands of individual owners who will be on different marginal rates or might have effect on a pension. In any case a nuisance and not an equal benefit to all owners. As far as I know our OC was the first to get a tax ruling on this question and were able to feed that to the review of the Act.
The ACT legislation has always had a ‘prohibition on business’ section. This was the only bit that had been anticipated by the local pollies as an impediment. The tax office gave us a ruling that our proposed PV system would not be business because it was of a scale that matched our costs for utilities (IE we could cover our electricity costs by making as much electricity as we use) and not on the much larger scale of typical commercial electricity generation. This has been picked up in the Act so that PV on this scale even when profitable via feed-in tariffs is explicitly not contravening the prohibition on business section. However, the Act also includes a note suggesting the mechanism by which PV on a grander scale could be installed. IE a route is left open for every large building to have commercial scale generation across the roofs.
Elsewhere the Act says that an owners corporation can use funds from the sinking fund for the above if the sustainability infrastructure is an improvement of the common property that was anticipated as part of a properly constituted sinking fund plan.
Also, the Act prohibits Rules (By-Laws) that prevent sustainability measures. IE you can’t ban a clothes line or curtains/blinds that insulate well or solar hot water or electricity.
Good Luck!