The new Queensland Government has released its Draft Renewables Regulatory Framework. The Discussion Paper has recently finished an extended period of public consultation. It has identified five areas including enhanced environmental outcomes, effective community participation, access to information, landholder protections and industry facilitation.
The Framework includes a proposed mandatory Code of Conduct for renewable energy developers. This will include enhancing the level of community engagement required and ensuring there is a social licence to operate. To ensure there is transparency of planned developments, the Government is also exploring the introduction of a notification scheme for renewable energy projects to allow for early community engagement. In addition, the Framework considers establishing minimum community benefit contribution requirements. This includes exploring different models for communities to benefit, such as ownership or pooled funds for Renewable Energy Zones (REZs), and may also include reporting on community contributions and outcomes.
The Framework aims to promote strategic land use to ensure renewable energy demand is balanced with environmental conservation and other land interests. Statutory regional plans currently exist, but the Government has said they will review any plans that have been in existence for more than five years. Other planning initiatives include conducting cumulative impact analysis when planning REZs and investigating strategic advanced offsets for the REZs.
Initiatives to protect landholders, include investigating a statutory land access code for transmission providers and introducing the Powerlink’s SuperGrid Landholder Payment Framework. Other potential options include making access to advice more cost-effective for landholders, developing model contracts and enabling clearer complaint and dispute resolution processes.
One of the key initiatives in the Framework that has recently been implemented are changes to ensure the process for assessing wind farm projects are consistent with other land uses, such as mining. The Planning (Wind Farms) Amendment Regulation 2025 now ensures that development applications for materially changing the use of wind farms are subject to an impact assessment.
The Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning has issued a notice to pause three wind farm applications and a notice proposing to call in the development application for the Moonlight Range Wind Farm, all under code assessment. Under code assessment no public consultation is required and third parties do not have a right of appeal. The notice to pause the applications were made on several grounds including that the proposed developments were significant and complex and had the potential to have social, economic and environmental impacts. The changes will allow the applications to be subject to a broader assessment process that includes public consultation and considers social, economic and environmental impacts of the development.
The State Assessment and Referral Agency (SARA) assesses applications for wind farms. They must now assess these applications under enhanced benchmarks including ensuring the wind farm does not result in impacts on individuals, communities and the environment and that community and local government have been engaged. In addition, applicants must demonstrate that their proposed development will not create a significant loss of high-quality agricultural land values, that it manages, mitigates and remediates impacts on infrastructure and services and avoids adverse impacts on communities.
These changes apply to new wind farm applications and other changes and are likely to increase the time to approve an application from about 6 to up to 18 months.