Are environmental approvals holding your project back?

Approvals feel like a quagmire? They don't have to

When thinking about project approvals, it’s easy to see red lights turning green, ticked boxes, and rapid progression towards the construction phase. Sometimes that’s true. But often, it’s not.

Right now, Australia’s energy sector is running hot. Not only are there solar, wind and BESS projects popping up everywhere, there is huge investment happening in the transmission infrastructure that will transport all of the renewable energy generated in regional areas to homes and businesses in our cities and towns. 

All this project work means a lot of competition to find the best sites. And a lot of environmental investigation, planning and consenting applications once they are found. In the environmental planning and management space, we often see project owners getting bogged down in the approvals phase. 

Missteps in the approvals phase

You can see it in the amount of energy and focus that gets placed on adjustments that ease approval within a project’s immediate spatial envelope but ignore aspects beyond the boundary line that make things harder later on.

Enabling works are a great example. Often, too narrow a focus is placed on the site. If you’re building a wind farm, you spend a lot of time investigating the sites where your turbines will be installed. In reality, you need to understand the wider environmental implications of their entire journey from the point of manufacture or import (usually the nearest port) to their eventual home atop a remote ridgeline, or high over a regional pasture. Almost invariably, this means building (or at the very least upgrading) public and private roads. And this is work that needs to happen long before you start putting up towers, rotor blades, or hubs. If the environmental due diligence hasn’t been done properly for this entire route, project owners can find themselves heading back to the regulator for another round of approvals, or forking out contingency for unanticipated field work, or offsets.  

So, what can project owners do to ensure the environmental approvals process isn’t one step forward, two steps back? Here are my top tips.

Make a plan, make it “approvable”

In the planning phase, much of your budget can be eaten up by reports, studies and field work. These things are necessary to develop a good project and mitigate negative impacts to the environment. However, the last thing you want to do is pay for studies that you don’t need. Or figure out years down the track that you’ve missed something that could stall or cancel your project.

It’s an extremely competitive market, so it’s understandable that you want to move as quickly as possible from studies to approvals. But ‘go slow to go fast’ is often the best approach. And engaging a team who can examine and challenge the proposed layout and design considerations of your project is key.

What flexibility can be introduced into the design, investigation or approvals approach that can protect you from unknowns? How does the site look in comparison to the desktop constraints analysis? Are the features that show on the constraints map that a regulator would assess against even there? Are there other environmental values or constraints that need to be considered? Where do your assets and construction materials need to come from?

At this point, it’s not about doing the detailed fieldwork, it’s about creating a robust strategy for what fieldwork even needs to be done. It’s making sure your environmental investigations, approvals and management plans encompass everything they need, and absolutely nothing that they don’t.

Make time, plan for rain

To build a great project, you want to know as much as possible about your environmental risks and values. Understanding this properly takes time. And when it comes to certain work, the conditions have to be right. We’ve seen bushfire, flooding, or even snow wreak havoc on fieldwork schedules. And while the weather is the one thing you can never truly anticipate, there are small risk mitigation measures that projects can take. For example, the right approach to scheduling can ensure there’s time contingency at the end of the season if certain study blocks get washed out early on.

Perhaps the most important advice here is to keep ‘calm and carry on’. Rushing fieldwork after delays or leaving things out to claw back time doesn’t pay dividends. There can be real time, legal, or cost implications if things aren’t done properly. Due diligence often feels expensive, but it’s a cost saver in the long run.

It’s okay to ask questions

Just like projects themselves, regulators are trying to gain the best possible outcomes with limited resources. This means that they can prescribe certain requirements by default, on the basis of outdated information, or in lieu of specific guidelines. It’s okay to question whether these apply to your site. 

A good example might be the application of urban noise constraints to renewables projects or transmission lines in a rural area. Another thing we quite often see is state vegetation mapping that no longer reflects conditions on the ground. It’s worth it to invite the regulator out to see your site. If you can show them that the mapping is no longer accurate, you can unlock a whole host of potential savings on unnecessary offsets, studies, or management plans.   

Invest up front, succeed faster

There’s a theme running through all of these tips, and it’s about investing in knowledge upfront. As environmental consultants, we want all your renewable energy projects to succeed, and we’re committed to helping you get there. But in reality, we know not every project will reach the construction phase. To help you understand which way your proposal is likely to go, we perform targeted, evidence-based due diligence that will flag key risks as early as possible.

If your project can’t proceed, we will deliver clear, actionable insights quickly so you can make an informed decision early. This can help you preserve your capital and pivot quickly to alternative sites. This early-risk approach reduces costly delays, protects your stakeholders, and keeps your development pipeline moving.

After all, the more time and money you spend on a project that won’t proceed, the less time and money you will have to invest in projects that will transition our energy sector faster and yield better environmental outcomes overall.