Australia’s Clean Energy Investor Group calls for faster, clearer EPBC Act implementation

The Environment Protection Reform Act 2025 was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament on 28 November 2025, making what CEIG describes as the most far-reaching changes to Australia’s national environment law in a generation.

The reforms established a new National Environmental Protection Agency (National EPA), introduced a streamlined 30-business-day assessment pathway for non-fossil-fuel projects, and replaced the existing “no net loss” offsets standard with a “net gain” requirement.

As of 1 July 2026, the Minister has delegated almost all assessment and approval powers under the EPBC Act to office holders within the National EPA.

Despite those changes already being in effect, the report identifies several critical areas where the framework remains incomplete.

National Environmental Standards covering matters of national environmental significance, environmental offsets, community consultation, data and information, and First Nations engagement are still under development, along with the offsets calculator and the definition of what constitutes a “net gain.”

The report notes that full commencement of the reforms must occur by December 2026, leaving limited time for the government and the National EPA to close those gaps.

“Whether that objective is realised will depend on two things occurring in parallel,” the report states, referring to the government’s aim of stronger environmental protection alongside faster, more efficient approvals.

“The first is the effective implementation and administration of the amended EPBC Act. The second is the finalisation of the regulatory framework that supports it.”

The report also draws on a progress scorecard against 10 recommendations from CEIG’s 2024 EPBC Act review. Of those, only one, relating to referral processing timeframes, was assessed as fully implemented.

Several others, including improvements to bilateral assessment arrangements, the finalisation of onshore wind farm guidance, and explicit recognition of renewable energy’s climate contributions in decision-making, recorded no progress.

The bilateral assessment arrangements between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments must be renegotiated under the new higher environmental standards, with a Western Australian memorandum of understanding targeting December 2026 as a completion date.

The report also points to persistent structural issues that the legislative amendments alone have not resolved.

These include inconsistent definitions of habitat across assessments, overly conservative decision-making driven by limited data on a relatively new industry, and approval conditions that CEIG members describe as disproportionate to actual ecological risk.

A Capability Review of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), released in June 2026, found that 56% of staff said the department’s risk appetite was a barrier to performing at their best, a finding the report highlights in support of its call for a more evidence-based approach to assessments.

A pipeline with EPBC Act exposure

The volume of battery storage capacity currently moving through, or recently cleared, from the EPBC Act process underscores why implementation speed matters to the sector.

Earlier this year, three battery storage projects totalling 5.5GWh across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia were added to the EPBC Act queue in a single month, spanning AMPYR Australia’s 1.5GWh Swallow Tail BESS in New South Wales, Alternate Path’s 2GWh Murchs Corner BESS in Victoria, and Revera Energy’s 2GWh Robertstown BESS in South Australia.

More recently, more than 3.8GWh of combined battery storage capacity either cleared or entered federal environmental assessment, with Spark Renewables’ 1,200MWh Dinawan Solar Farm in New South Wales securing EPBC approval alongside two Victorian projects from Potentia Energy and Celero Infrastructure entering the referral queue.

RES Australia’s 2,400MWh Bunyip North BESS in Victoria was deemed “not a controlled action” under the EPBC Act in late May, clearing the federal environmental hurdle and paving the way for construction to begin in mid-2027.

The project, located approximately 80km south-east of Melbourne in Victoria’s Gippsland region, will connect to the existing 220kV transmission network via a new Bunyip North Terminal Station.

The CEIG report notes that the new streamlined assessment pathway is expected to be particularly useful for projects with well-defined impacts, including solar farms and battery storage systems.

However, it cautions that the 30-business-day decision clock does not begin until the National EPA is satisfied that all required information has been provided, meaning proponents must front-load their referral documentation to access the pathway in practice.

Recommendations target consistency and certainty

On the administration side, CEIG recommends the National EPA develop a single, consistent internal view on habitat definitions and project conditioning within 12 months, and improve its working knowledge of the renewables industry to reduce excessive caution in assessments.

The report also calls for greater use of the new Restoration Contributions Holder, a body established under the reforms that can pool financial contributions from multiple projects to deliver coordinated, strategic environmental offsets, rather than the fragmented project-by-project arrangements that have applied until now.

On the regulatory side, CEIG urges the government to finalise the National Environmental Standards and the net gain framework with clear, objective criteria, and to make those instruments available to proponents well ahead of commencement to allow adequate preparation time.

It also recommends that the streamlined assessment pathway be supported by sector-level guidance, a formalised pre-lodgement advice service, and public reporting on pathway performance, including the time between referral lodgement and final decision and the proportion of projects accessing the pathway.

The report’s closing remarks state that getting both the framework and its administration right will be critical to achieving the shared objective of stronger environmental outcomes while enabling timely, efficient assessment and approval of renewable energy projects.

CEIG says it looks forward to continuing to work with the government, National EPA and the Department as the outstanding instruments are finalised over the remainder of 2026.

The broader EPBC Act overhaul has drawn mixed views from industry since the reform bills were introduced, with some stakeholders welcoming the prospect of faster approvals. In contrast, others have raised concerns about the adequacy of environmental protections under the new framework.

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