ESG Snapshot: Issue 121

This week's highlights include:

• Queensland targets big batteries. A new regulation captures storage batteries in Queensland's pre-assessment regime for renewables.
• NABERS - the next frontier. For the first time, the NABERS scheme has issued an embodied carbon rating.
• Cash advance. The Queensland government in June paid a coal supplier $116.1 million, for coal it won't start receiving until 2027.
• Coal mine water. The Victorian government says the Loy Yang coal mine can have up to 35.8GL of water annually for 30 years, for rehabilitation purposes.
• Costs leap. A biodiversity offset liability estimated at $500,000 in 2023, had skyrocketed to $2.4 million by 2024, a NSW tribunal has been told.
• Circularity strategy. South Australia has a new circular economy strategy and new circularity targets.
• Slow onset. A federal scheme offering cheap loans to farmers will be tweaked so those affected by slow onset ecological events can participate.
• No more coal. Continued extensions or expansions of current coal projects are inconsistent with the Paris Agreement and NSW law, says a new report.
• 'Outlandish claims'. Australia's first climate risk assessment included some outlandish claims, according to Coalition senators.

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The first official embodied carbon rating under the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) has been awarded to an industrial warehouse in western Sydney.

The embodied emissions pilot rating was conducted during the construction of pharmaceutical company Probiotec Multipack's facility within The YARDS industrial estate, which is owned by a Frasers Property Industrial and Aware Real Estate joint venture.

Mainbrace Constructions built the facility.

NABERS director Magali Wardle described embodied carbon as "the next frontier when it comes to reducing carbon emissions in buildings".

"The team at Frasers Property Industrial and Mainbrace has set a great example by collecting an exceptional level of construction data and choosing materials backed by Environmental Product Declarations," Wardle said. 

"The Australian government cannot waste the opportunity to leverage the regional industrial capability provided by the sugar manufacturing sector as an enabler for the development of sugar-based biofuel and bioenergy industry," says a submission by the Australian Sugar Manufacturers to a Senate inquiry.

"A free-market approach will not succeed," ASM warns the Senate committee inquiry into emerging industries across northern Australia.

It also urges the government to establish a national biofuels mandate and a $182 million decade-long regime of grants.

Initial submissions to the inquiry are now available.

Meanwhile, Professor Catherine Lovelock, a wetlands specialist, says in her submission that northern Australia's vast wetlands are degraded due to introduced hooves animals.

A proposed ACCU method could allow Traditional Owners to conserve and restore these wetlands, but one problem is that Australia currently doesn't include methane emissions from its wetlands in its National Greenhouse inventory.

Greens senators have called for a legislated requirement to release a National Climate Risk Assessment report every five years, with a government response required within three months of its release.

The call was made in the report of a Greens-instigated Senate committee inquiry into the time taken to release the inaugural risk assessment report.

In a dissenting report, Labor senators opposed a mandatory reporting regime.

Coalition senators also opposed a mandatory regime.

"Any report which predicts apocalyptic outcomes should be based on credible research," they added. "Regrettably, the assessment included some outlandish claims in relation to projected losses on Australian property values," they added.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has published its draft 2026 Integrated System Plan, ahead of the final 2026 ISP in June next year.

The draft "reaffirms that renewable energy, firmed with storage, backed up by gas and connected by upgraded networks, presents the least-cost way to supply secure and reliable electricity to consumers, while meeting government policies", says AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman in his introduction.

By 2050, the proposed Optimum Development Path would see the NEM have a total of 120GW of grid-scale wind and solar, 40GW of grid-scale storage and hydro, 14GW of flexible gas-powered generation, and an additional 6,000 km of transmission.

New gas supply chain investments would also be needed, it says.

AEMO estimates that consumers would by 2050 have invested in 87GW of rooftop and other small-scale solar, and 27GW of household and commercial batteries.

All of the future transmission projects in the Optimum Development Path would repay their upfront costs and deliver net market benefits to consumers of $24 billion, compared to a future with no additional transmission, AEMO says.

If near-term delivery constraints delay the Optimum Development Path, benefits for consumers would remain positive, but they would be reduced and some 2030 policy targets would be delayed, it says. 

Renew Economy has an analysis and a podcast on the draft ISP, and The Energy has also covered it.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has published a draft report proposing a package of electricity pricing reforms. The AEMC is hosting a webinar on the proposals later today.

Meanwhile, the AEMC has also made a final rule requiring newly connecting retail gas customers to pay the upfront cost of their connection, moving away from the old system where these costs were often shared across all customers.  

The federal government will expand the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, allocating about $7.2 billion to the program over the next four years, up from original estimates of $2.3 billion.

As a result, by 2030 more than 2 million households are expected to have installed a battery by 2030, delivering around 40GWh of additional storage capacity.

STC Factors will be adjusted, in conjunction with the additional funding.

Initial submissions close on Friday to a Productivity Commission inquiry into the impacts of heavy vehicle reform.

The Net Zero Economy Authority has launched a new, interactive investment map showing more than 800 federal government-supported renewable energy and research projects. 

Developed in partnership with RenewMap, the Net Zero Investment Map shows where projects are located, their status, the government support, the estimated number of jobs, total project investment, and expected power generation.

Meanwhile, the Net Zero Economy Authority has invited comments on whether an Energy Industry Jobs Plan is required to support workers affected by the scheduled closure of Yallourn Power Station in July 2028.

The federal government's response to a review of the Regional Investment Corporation Act includes several climate-related commitments.

The response says the government will expand the scope of the RIC concessional loan regime to include assistance for improving climate resilience, boosting sector productivity, supporting agriculture to be part of Australia's net zero transition.

As part of this process, the government will review the RIC Operating Mandate "to ensure the RIC's purpose and responsible Ministers' expectations are clearly articulated," it says.

The government will also create a new RIC slow-onset significant ecological event stream to cover slow-onset events like marine heat waves and algal blooms.

ARENA is providing grants totalling $21 million to expand EV charging infrastructure.

The biggest grant goes to FlowPower, which will use its $18 million to develop and operate a network of ultrafast battery electric vehicle charging stations across Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, in partnership with Gridserve Global.

Essential Energy will use its $2,300,000 to deploy public EV chargers in rural and regional NSW. 

UTS & RACE for 2030 CRC will spend their $1 million on establishing Australia's first national Vehicle-Grid Network, a three-year collaboration to accelerate EV grid integration with over 20 industry partners. 

Meanwhile, the CEFC is targeting heavy-duty battery electric trucks (HD BEVs), working in conjunction with Volvo to support an interest rate discount of up to 0.5% for eligible Volvo customers to lease electric trucks and install charging infrastructure.

A new CEFC-Baringa report calls for a big uplift in renewable energy and storage and coordinated policy reform to help manage the energy and emissions footprint of the rapidly growing data centre industry.

The report forecasts that data centres could represent up to 11% of Australia’s total electricity consumption by 2035, up from about 1% today.

Adding 3.2GW of renewable generation and 1.9GW of battery storage by 2035 to support data centre load would contain price rises and neutralise additional emissions, the report concludes.

About half of all planned capacity will be clustered in Sydney, it says, while Melbourne will host around 25% of national capacity.

The report recommends location coordination, clean energy enablement, greater transparency, and measures to ensure large loads are integrated safely and flexibly within the grid.

The federal government has announced five areas available for exploration as part of an acreage release in the Otway Basin. The release comprises three areas offshore from Tasmania, and two offshore from Victoria.

"Encouraging further exploration in the Otway Basin is a practical step toward unlocking new petroleum resources and avoiding future domestic gas shortages," the government says.

Companies can bid until 30 June 2026.

DCCEEW has released a recording of a webinar providing an update on implementation of the Murray Darling Basin water plan.

The federal government has appointed an independent panel to review the Snowy Water Inquiry Outcomes Implementation Deed, with the aim of enhancing the health of the upper Murrumbidgee River, above Burrinjuck Dam.

Optimising federal investment bodies such as the CEFC, ARENA and the Northern Australia Investment Facility, would have enormous benefits, according to a new Investor Group on Climate Change report.

The report says Australia's specialist investment vehicles, which also include Export Finance Australia and the National Construction Fund, collectively manage over $60 billion in public funds.

The Specialist Investment Vehicles have more than $30 billion yet to be deployed and it's crucial that Australia gets maximum value from those public funds, the report says.

The federal government has announced a renewables-backed plan to keep the Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW's Hunter region open beyond 2028.

"Over the coming months, Tomago Aluminium will work with the federal and NSW governments on a long-term renewable energy solution to support the smelter’s viability when its current energy contract expires in 2028," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

"The partnership aims to deliver a long-term, fixed-price power purchasing agreement for the smelter, along with concessional finance arrangements to accelerate renewable energy generation and storage developments in NSW," he said.

Tomago Aluminium will contribute at least $1 billion in capital and major maintenance investment over the next decade, which includes identifying further decarbonisation opportunities for the smelter.

Tomago is Australia's largest aluminium smelter, producing up to 590,000 tonnes of aluminium a year – almost 40% of Australia's annual aluminium production.

Tomago Aluminium is a joint venture that is majority owned by Rio Tinto and directly employs around 1,000 people. Its existing electricity supply contract with AGL expires in December 2028.

The latest update from Reliability Watch says that in total during the 2025 winter period (1 April to 30 September), there were 142 outages at coal-fired power stations across the NEM, including 23 scheduled and 119 unplanned breakdowns.

More than half of these outages occurred at just three power stations, Gladstone in Queensland, Bayswater in NSW, and Yallourn in Victoria.

Reliability Watch is a collaboration between the Queensland Conservation Council, the NSW Nature Conservation Council, and Environment Victoria.

Climate Resource has released a new report on Australia's coal outlook in a warming world: Insights from integrated assessment models.

"Planning for global action consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C - with up to 1.8°C overshoot - is essential for meeting Australia’s international commitments and guiding sound economic and decarbonisation policy," the report says.

According to its analysis, the median projections show that thermal coal exports decline by 64% to 78% by 2035 (relative to 2024) in 1.8°C scenarios, and by 96% to 98% in 1.6°C scenarios, across high and low-demand cases.

Metallurgical coal exports fall slightly less rapidly, by 28% to 54% by 2035 (relative to 2024) in 1.8°C scenarios, and by 69% to 80% in 1.6°C scenarios.

Norton Rose Fulbright has released a new briefing on The Growing Importance of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent Within Carbon Markets.

Just in time for the Christmas season, GEMS, which specifies national energy efficiency and labelling requirements, has issued an official exemption from efficiency requirements for a globe used in lava lamps.

Open consultations:

• ACCU register. The Clean Energy Regulator has released a discussion paper on proposed improvements to the ACCU projects and contracts register. Comments are due by 19 December.
• Decommissioning offshore oil and gas and CCS projects. The federal government is seeking feedback on proposed reforms to decommissioning and financial assurance arrangements for the offshore oil and gas industry. Comments are due by 13 January.
• Environmental standards. The federal government has released a draft National Environmental Standard on Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES), and another on environmental offsets. Comments are due by 30 January.

The latest Track Changes podcast, hosted by Dr Franziska Curran and Murray Griffin, is an open mic episode featuring short audio clips from a range of people on the net zero/real zero debate. Tune in on your favourite pod platform.

Battery storage projects in Queensland are now subject to the same pre-environmental assessment constraints as large-scale wind and solar projects, following the gazette of a new regulation.

The Planning (Battery Storage Facilities) and Other Legislation Amendment Regulation 2025 requires proponents of battery projects to prepare a social impact assessment enter into a community benefit agreement before lodging a development application.

The new requirements apply to projects that have already applied for environmental approval.

Queensland's Parliament has passed the government's Energy Roadmap Amendment Bill.

The Bill passed with government amendments that repeal a Bill intended to facilitate the Forest Wind Farm project, which would have been located in plantation forests.

A Greens amendment to rename the Bill the Propping Up Coal and Delaying Renewables Amendment Act 2025 was backed by the Labor Opposition, but was defeated.

A private entity that has long-term coal supply agreements with state government owned energy business Stanwell owed $604.2 million to Stanwell as at 30 June 2025, notes a new audit report from the Queensland Audit Office.

"During 2024–25, the supplier's operations were impacted by lower coal prices and industry-wide increases in operational costs," says the audit of state-owned energy businesses.

"In response, Stanwell and the supplier amended these agreements to provide the supplier with short-term liquidity support. Stanwell reassessed the risk that the supplier might not repay the full amount owing," it says.

"This resulted in Stanwell recognising expected losses of $124.0 million, reducing its profitability for 2024–25."

More details are contained in Stanwell's annual report, which shows that Stanwell provided Coronado Curragh Pty Ltd with a cash payment of $116.1 million in June 2025, representing an upfront payment for additional coal to be supplied over five years from 2027.

The arrangement will give Stanwell the rights to the supply of up to 800,000 tonnes of coal in each of the five years.

Coronado has also negotiated a separate financial support transaction with Stanwell, which was announced in October.

The Queensland government's new Supercharged Solar for Renters program launched last week.

The Net Zero Commission has released a Coal Mining Emissions Spotlight Report that identifies opportunities to reduce emissions, and highlights the need to support affected regional communities as the global economy shifts away from coal.

In the report, the Net Zero Commission finds:

• Reducing on-site emissions at NSW coal mines represents a significant opportunity to support the state's emissions reduction targets and technology exists to do it.
• Stronger regulation can help drive greater emissions reductions.
• Continued extensions or expansions to current projects are not consistent with the objectives of the Paris Agreement or the Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Act 2023.

Currently there are 37 coal mines operating in NSW that generate export revenue of $33.1 billion and $3.1 billion in royalties in 2023–24.

However, coal mining was the source of 96% of the NSW resources sector's emissions in 2022–23. 

The report says consent authorities should consider project Scope 3 emissions, as well as Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Meanwhile, the Net Zero Commission has also released its 2025 Engagement Summary Report.

The NSW government has released its response to a parliamentary committee inquiry into PFAS contamination in waterways.

The government has supported a recommendation that it work for the introduction of mandatory labelling of PFAS in consumer products at the national level

"Mandated national labelling of consumer products for PFAS, and a national PFAS product register, will require a collaborative approach between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments," it says.

The state government has also supported in principle a call for a phase-out of all non-essential sues of PFAS by 2030.

Consultation opportunity - industrial lands policy. The NSW government has released a draft statewide policy for industrial lands, which aims to plan, secure and manage the supply of industrial land across NSW by clearly categorising industrial land. 

The draft policy was released in conjunction with a draft Sydney plan, which describes how the state government will manage Sydney's growth over the next 20 years.

Organisations giving evidence to last Friday's NSW parliamentary hearing into waste to energy included the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association, Remondis, the City of Sydney, NSW Farmers Association, and Veolia.

Organisations giving evidence to last week's hearing convened by a parliamentary committee into modern slavery in regional NSW included St Vincent de Paul, Legal Aid, and the Catholic Women's League Australia.

The Independent Pricing And Regulatory Tribunal has released non-confidential submissions made to its review of the biodiversity credits market.

In its submission, Cement, Concrete and Aggregates Australia reports that a member company reported that in 2023, the estimated offset liability for a proposed site was approximately $500,000.

In 2024, without any change to the project footprint or underlying ecological impacts, the estimated liability increased to over $2.4 million, CCAA says.

The NSW government has awarded a $25.45 million High Emitting Industries grant to Boral for upgrades at its Berrima cement works kiln, which produces more than half of NSW's cement supply and employs more than 100 people.

The upgrades will enable the kiln to source up to 60% of its energy from non-coal sources, which is nearly double the average level achieved in the past three years.

Using alternate fuels at the kiln will also annually divert 73,000 tonnes of waste from landfill.

The NSW EPA has released new guidance on changes made by the Environmental Legislation Amendment Act, which commenced on 12 December.

The NSW EPA has released a progress report on implementing its climate change action plan.

Victoria's Water Minister Gayle Tierney has issued a Bulk Water Entitlement Order that provides up to 35.8GL of water annually for up to 30 years to rehabilitate the Loy Yang Mine.

The entitlements are subject to closure dates for the Loy Yang A and B power stations.

Victoria's Energy and Climate Minister Lily D'Ambrosio has invited tenders for onshore and offshore petroleum exploration permits.

Statutory development - planning Bill. The Legislative Council has passed the government's Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025.

The Bill will now return to the Legislative Assembly for its consideration of the amendments.

Consultation opportunity - EPA development licences. EPA Victoria is inviting comments on draft development licence guidance. Comments are due by 30 January.

EPA Victoria has released its latest annual report. The report makes no mention of any activities it is undertaking or contemplating to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of its licensees.

The report does describe activities the agency is undertaking to reduce its own emissions.

As staff of Sustainability Victoria absorb the news that the agency will be abolished some time next year, it has released a video marking its 20 years of activities.

Green Industries SA has released a new circularity strategy for 2025 to 2035, specifying targets and priority actions.

The overarching goal of the strategy is to double South Australia's circularity rate by 2035.

Targets include a 10% reduction in material footprint and a 30% increase in material productivity by 2035.

The Legislative Council has passed the government's State Development Bill with amendments, and the amendments will be considered by the Legislative Assembly early next year.

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NAB Chair Philip Cronican has acknowledged that nature-related risks, including deforestation, are of "growing concern" to shareholders.

"NAB is committed to managing nature-related risks, including deforestation, recognising the impact that they can have on sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and climate," Cronican said in his remarks to the AGM.

A group of shareholders had sought to put to the AGM a resolution requesting that the bank disclose a strategy to eliminate financed deforestation.

In its notice of annual AGM, NAB acknowledged it is Australia's leading agribusiness lender, which gives it a role in "supporting customers and supply chains to understand and adapt to evolving climate and biodiversity risks".

However, significant barriers exist to managing land use change, including data limitations, and a complex regulatory landscape, the bank said.

A separate shareholder resolution on climate, originally proposed for the NAB AGM, had earlier been withdrawn in recognition of progress in the bank's 2025 Climate Report.

Forestry business OneFortyOne has released its latest annual review.

The latest GlobeScan/ERM Sustainability Institute Leaders Survey report is now available.

The survey quizzed executives and experts from 57 countries on the most pressing sustainability challenges, breakthrough developments, and perceptions of government, NGO and corporate leadership.

Ten of the world's largest oil and gas companies would create significantly more shareholder value by ending exploration and sharply curtailing upstream development, according to a new analysis by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

Six organisations have submitted the first formal complaint to the Equator Principles detailing their concerns about the potential climate, biodiversity and human rights impacts of the proposed Papua LNG project in Papua New Guinea.

The project is led by TotalEnergies, with co-venturers ExxonMobil, Santos and ENEOS. 

The Equator Principles enable financial institutions to identify, assess and manage environmental and social risks when financing projects. 

Australian news items in all issues of ESG Snapshot can be searched by relevant Sustainable Development Goal category. To do this, click on the '17 SDGs' link at the top of this web page, or on any of the SDG keys below.

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