Boosting Australia’s productivity isn’t difficult, it’s logical.
18 August, 2025
The energy transition is nation-building change and is as much about creating a safer climate as it is about our economic prosperity.
Right now, the transition is off track and emissions reduction targets are under threat in large part because of a huge bottleneck of legitimate projects stalled by a complex, often duplicating and web of state and federal environmental planning regulations.
Faster approvals would reduce emissions, lower costs for developers, attract investment and make energy cheaper… all supporting productivity growth.
Fixing this with a ‘one stop’ system would also better protect our special wildlife and natural landscapes.
A review of national environmental laws by former competition regulator Graeme Samuel in 2020 recommended a new national set of rules to replace the current overlapping or duplicating system of state and federal approvals processes.
Samuel recommended a one stop, or “single touch” system: states and territories would be accredited to assess and determine environmental approvals under a strict set of Commonwealth-mandated standards and rules.
At the National Press Club last month, former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry urged the Albanese government to implement Samuel’s proposal for a one-stop approach backed up by robust national environmental standards enforced by an independent federal environmental protection agency.
Fixing Australia’s ‘broken’ environmental laws would not only be a win for nature, he said, but also for the economy and productivity because Australia cannot afford the current “slow, opaque, duplicative and contested environmental planning decisions mired in administrative complexity”.
- Do your project a favour, save nature and boost productivity along the way
Antiquated environmental planning regulations are significantly delaying Australia’s transition to renewable energy. Not only does this threaten science-based action to reduce emissions and create a safer climate, but it is a root cause of our declining productivity.
New, streamlined national environment laws and planning regulations would change all this. But developers can also do themselves a favour and make sure site selection and design thinking reduces the likelihood of damage to nature and also getting local communities offside.
Hookey Creek, ZEN’s joint venture ZEBRE project with HDRE, was approved by the federal environment department in just 17 days.
We are a values-based business, and this includes valuing Australia’s unique biodiversity and landscapes. We focus on developing assets in regions with limited existing renewable energy supply but also seek to re-purpose sites that have had previous commercial or industrial uses, minimising impacts on the natural environment.
This is the key reason why Hookey Creek has been approved, but is also why our Templers Battery in South Australia will be fully operational in the next month (its on cleared former agricultural land).
ZEN is also proposing a landmark pumped hydro project in Western Sydney, converting degraded land at a former coal washery at Nattai and adjacent to Lake Burragagorang into a 1GW energy storage project that could power 500,000 homes and businesses for up to 14 continuous hours.
- ZEN’s 5-point plan to economic and environmental prosperity
Australia can and must transition quickly to 100 per cent renewable energy, and nature can and must be an equal priority.
Rapid deployment of renewable energy is a critical need for the Australian economy. Slow and complex environmental approvals present a material challenge to the timely rollout of renewable projects.
Renewable energy projects contribute directly to emissions reduction and therefore have a beneficial effect on reducing climate impacts on biodiversity.
We support substantial reforms to the EPBC Act to stop extinctions, improve assessment and approval speed, reduce complexity, and deliver improved environmental outcomes that deliver for nature and people.
- To achieve these goals, ZEN urges close consideration of:
- A ‘one stop’ environmental planning system to unshackle the speed of assessments and approvals. States and territories would be accredited to assess and determine environmental approvals under a strict set of Commonwealth-mandated standards and rules.
- Regional planning that provides clear direction on shorter and more efficient approval pathways for specific locations and regions.
- Regional planning and reformed biodiversity offsetting that provide flexible and environmentally robust options for addressing residual project impacts on listed species.
- Consideration of the climate change benefits of renewable energy projects through the assessment and approvals process.
- Transparent and consistent mechanisms for the renewables sector to participate in the development of planning and conservation approaches that meet the sector’s needs, for example, through regional plan development.
