Sweeping reforms to Australia’s national environment laws are at risk of baking in major pitfalls for renewable energy developers, a new report has warned, and of sending the beleaguered wind sector further into the development wilderness.
Last November, federal parliament passed the most significant reforms to the EPBC Act in a generation, in a bid to strengthen environmental protections while delivering more efficient, robust and transparent project assessments.
But the Clean Energy Investor Group (CEIG) says it is still hearing from developers, and particularly developers of wind farms, that some of the draft conditions that are being explored are “way too conservative” and will have disproportionate impacts on the viability of their projects.
A report published on Wednesday by the CEIG finds that, while the proposed reforms introduce significant changes to the operation of the EPBC Act, they do not resolve some of the biggest challenges being experienced by the renewables sector.
Even more worryingly, the report warns that the addition of new statutory tests for EPBC decision making – weighing projects against National Environmental Standards, “unacceptable impacts,” and “net gains” – there is a risk of adding a further layer of complexity, rather than clarity.
