ESG Snapshot: Issue 80

This week's highlights include:

• New bills. The NT government has introduced new bills that curtail appeal rights and provide a path for the approval of projects that don't meet legislative requirements.
• Asbestos. Instead of requiring that waste containing any level of asbestos go to landfill, NSW's Chief Scientist has recommended that some reuse be allowed if the asbestos is present below threshold levels.
• Coalition warning. The Coalition has argued nature positive legislation would increase electricity prices, in debate on a government Bill.
• Renewables surge. 2024 was Australia's best year for large-scale renewable energy investment since 2018, says the Clean Energy Council. 
• Revegetation credits. Human-induced regeneration projects will deliver up to 170 million tonnes of abatement, says the Clean Energy Regulator, and CSIRO says ACCU issuances for these projects match modelling estimates.
• Nature positive ACCUs. Ken Henry says we need to amend the ACCU scheme so that it favours nature repair projects.
• Clean energy levy. The Greens, who could hold the balance of power in WA's Upper House, want a clean energy levy imposed on the state's gas projects.

ESG Snapshot - powered by the Business Council for Sustainable Development Australia and curated by ESG communications and content consultancy Earthed.

Statutory development - tax incentives for hydrogen and critical minerals. The Senate has passed a government Bill that introduces tax credits for the production of hydrogen and critical minerals.

Producers of renewable hydrogen will receive a $2 incentive per kilogram of hydrogen produced for up to ten years.

The critical minerals incentive will provide a refundable tax offset of 10% for the costs of processing the 31 critical minerals currently listed in Australia. The credit will be available for a maximum of 10 years.

The Bill passed after the Senate accepted Greens amendments to prevent uranium benefitting from the scheme.

ARENA and RACE 2030 have published a National Roadmap for Bidirectional EV Charging. The roadmap outlines 18 actions for governments to facilitate "bidi".

"Many stakeholders consider uptake rates for bidirectional EV charging could be comparable to those achieved for rooftop solar in Australia, achieving 2.6 million residential V2G installations by 2040," the roadmap says.

Statutory development - offshore wind. Parliament has passed a Bill that ensures applications for offshore wind licences are treated the same, whether they were made before or after regulations gazetted last December.

The Coalition unsuccessfully moved an amendment stating that the Bill is "specifically designed to make electricity more expensive for Australian families" and that "a Labor-Greens minority government would introduce super-charged nature positive laws to make electricity even more expensive".

The reporting date for a Senate committee inquiry into consultation about offshore wind has been delayed until 13 March, and the reporting date for an inquiry into greenwashing has been delayed until 28 March.

The first Safeguard Mechanism Credits have been issued by the Clean Energy Regulator.

Human-induced regeneration (HIR) projects under the ACCU scheme are expected to deliver between 123 million tonnes and 170 million tonnes of abatement over their cumulative crediting life, says a new paper from the Clean Energy Regulator that includes a new analysis from CSIRO.

The CSIRO component of the paper confirms that ACCU issuances for HIR projects "closely agree" with expectations under the FullCAM method, which is used to estimate sequestration by all landscape-based ACCU methods.

As at May 2024, there were 467 HIR projects registered across Australia, covering an area of 42 million hectares – more than 5% of Australia’s land area. Current reporting projects cover 13.6 million hectares, but not all of this area is eligible to earn credits – only 4.9 million hectares of this area were determined as suitable for regeneration. 

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has appointed four new part-time members to the Clean Energy Regulator - Oliver Costello, Anna Hancock and Jo Sheppard from 3 February 2025, and Matt Cahill from 4 April 2025.

Representatives of CSIRO, DCCEEW and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources appeared before a hearing on Friday of a Senate committee inquiry into waste and recycling.

Representatives of DCCEEW and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources appeared before a hearing on Friday of a Senate committee inquiry into the transition to electric vehicles.

The federal government has granted major project status to three more projects, which means they will receive assistance in seeking regulatory approvals from the Major Project Facilitation Agency:

• Nico Resources' Wingellina Nickel-Cobalt Project near Uluru will develop one of the largest deposits of nickel-cobalt in Australia and the world, providing nickel that is used to manufacture lithium-ion batteries. 
• Renascor's Battery Anode Materials (BAM) Project in South Australia will commercialise the Siviour graphite deposit, one of the world's largest proven reserves of graphite. 
• Tivan's Speewah Fluorite Project in the East Kimberley region will produce 97% acid-grade fluorspar, which is used to make semiconductors, solar cells and electric vehicle batteries.

Grant opportunity. Applications close 20 March for grant funding in round 17 of the federal Cooperative Research Centres program.

Applications are open to all industry sectors, with a focus on supporting Australian Government priorities including:
•    transitioning to a net zero future.
•    supporting healthy and thriving communities.
•    elevating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders knowledge systems.
•    protecting and restoring Australia's environment.
•    building a secure and resilient nation.

Projects can apply for funding of between $100,000 and $3 million over three years.

The momentum for new grid connections continued to build in the December quarter, with 20 projects (4.9GW) getting application approval, 11 projects (1.7GW) registered, and four projects (0.6GW) reaching full output, according to new data from the Australian Energy Market Operator.

"Project registrations in the last six months are more than double those in the previous 12 months. This surge reflects the wave of application approvals in 2023," said AEMO Onboarding & Connections Group Manager Margarida Pimentel.

Solar projects led registrations in the December quarter with 831MW, followed by wind (440 MW), batteries (350 MW), and upgrades to existing facilities (49 MW).

"These registered projects are built, connected to the grid and can now move through to the final commissioning phase," Pimentel said.

Application approval volumes over the past six months are similar to the same period last year with 7.5GW reaching this important milestone, while 2GW achieved full output, compared to 2.2GW through the entire FY 2024.

As of 31 December 2024, 49.6GW of projects were progressing through the connections process, up from 36.4GW at the end of 2023.

"Given the NEM’s total generation and storage capacity of 66 GW, nearly 50 GW of new projects marks a significant pipeline of future energy supply," Pimentel said.

Around 36% of this capacity was in NSW, 32% in Queensland, 21% in Victoria, and 10% in South Australia.

The new data also shows that 18.1GW of the 49.6GW within the connections pipeline are battery projects, representing a 97% increase on the 9.2GW in progress at the same time last year.

Australia has seen its best year for large-scale renewable energy investment since 2018, finishing 2024 with $9 billion in total capital investment committed to new projects, according to new figures from the Clean Energy Council. 

The Council's latest Quarterly Clean Energy Investment Report found seven new large scale renewable energy projects, representing 1598MW of new generation capacity and $2.4 billion of capital investment were financially committed in Q4 of 2024.  

Clean Energy Council Chief Executive, Kane Thornton, said the strong quarterly result was in line with the pace required for Australia to hit its target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030.

The Australian National Audit Office has released an audit report on DCCEEW's strategic water purchasing in the Murray Darling Basin, which finds the arrangements to support strategic purchasing are largely effective.

DCCEEW started a procurement process in March 2023 to recover 44.3GL of water. The procurement process was finalised in January 2024. As at 17 January 2025, approximately 21.62GL of water has been recovered, fully bridging the gap in two of the six target catchments, with a gap of approximately 23.07GL remaining in the other four catchments.

The majority of a Labor-chaired Senate committee inquiring into a National Organic Standard Bill that was proposed by Nationals Senator Bridget Mackenzie has recommended that the Bill not be passed in its current form.

The Bill would require that organics goods imported or sold in Australia must be certified as having met the requirements of a proposed standard.

The majority said additional consideration needs to be given to the proposed definition of organic, and to the federal government's capacity to enforce it.

It calls for a scoping exercise "regarding the need for a domestic regulation".

Coalition senators said the Bill's definition was appropriate, and recommended that the government commit to a domestic regulation framework that includes a legislated definition of 'organic' and a mandatory standard.

Committee member Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said the Greens are yet to finalise a position on the Bill.

In 2022–2023, the Australian domestic and export organic industry was valued at $2.3 billion, with organic goods being exported to 55 countries.

Australia has 53 million hectares of certified organic farmland, which constitutes approximately 12.4 per cent of the nation’s arable farming land, and 60 per cent of the world’s total organic agricultural land.

Delivering the 2025 Ann Moyal Lecture, Chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, Dr Ken Henry, said the ACBF has been working on a proposal for a "nature positive ACCU scheme", in which land-based ACCU projects that don't contribute directly to nature repair would pay a royalty in the form of the surrender of a proportion of their ACCUs.

This would be used to invest in land-based "cost effective, high priority nature repair".

"This is very, very different from current land based ACCU that deliver carbon sequestration with little or no nature benefits, either through monoculture plantations or through the regeneration of habitat in low priority locations, typically in regions with low land values and high levels of remnant native vegetation," he said.

"Analysis commissioned by the ACBF finds that the nature positive scheme could deliver significant restoration of high priority habitat reversing past damage and materially reducing extinction risk for Australia's endangered flora and fauna," Henry said.

"It would deliver spending on nature repair of the magnitude recommended by the Wentworth group ... around about $7 billion a year."

The ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions has hosted its 2025 climate update.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced a Great Australian Bight (World Heritage Protection) Bill, which would rule out any fossil fuel activity in the area.

The federal government has awarded a $1.85 million Industry Growth Program grant to Allegro Energy, to scale its Redox Flow Battery technology to mass production.

Another $100,000 grant has gone to Victoria-based Magic Valley, to transition from research to commercial production of cultivated meat.

The Monash Sustainable Development Institute has released its 2024 SDG Progress Report, titled Transforming Australia, which updates a previous 2020 report. Findings include:

• The share of renewable electricity has almost quadrupled to 35% since 2010.
• Rates of unemployment (3.7% ), underemployment (6.4%) and youth unemployment (8.5%) have declined considerably.
• Wealth equality is in steep decline. The share of the nation's wealth held by the bottom 40 per cent of Australians has declined by a third since 2004 to just 5.5%.
• Around 42% of lower income renter households are living in housing stress.
• Resource efficiency as measured by the circularity rate is almost three times higher in Europe (11.5%) than Australia (4.4%).

EPBC developments:

• Ark Energy has lodged an EPBC referral for the Bowman Creek Stage 2 wind farm near Muswellbrook.
• A referral has been lodged for the 350MW Cellars Hill wind farm and associated battery system near Bothwell, Tasmania.

A report by the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer has recommended ending existing arrangements that require waste containing asbestos at any level to be sent to landfill.

The report recommends that the state government consider implementing a threshold for asbestos in recovered fines and materials, below which they would be considered suitable for beneficial reuse.

The threshold should be based on an existing Western Australian criterion of 0.001% w/w (asbestos in any form), it says.

The Chief Scientist and Engineer also recommends that NSW engage with other jurisdictions to work towards a consistent approach.

The NSW government has appointed Alison Stone as the state's inaugural Agriculture Commissioner. Her responsibilities include:

• Assisting in developing an ongoing system for defining, identifying, and mapping agricultural lands.
• Progressing the pilot of a Farm Practices Panel, which will look at ways to reduce conflict between agricultural producers and neighbours.
• Providing advice to address challenges related to critical renewable energy infrastructure.
• Working with the Net Zero Commissioner to promote a cohesive approach to policy making.

The NSW native forest logging industry is proposing to log 100,000 hectares of public native forests that are currently being assessed for inclusion in a proposed Great Koala National Park on the mid-north coast, according to a new spatial analysis by the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation.

"The native forest logging industry wants to log 100,000 hectares of the Koala Park on a permanent basis, in exchange for protecting just 20,000 hectares of forest currently available for logging," ACBF Chair Ken Henry said.

"An industry proposal to protect less than a fifth of the harvestable area of the GKNP while logging the other 83% is clearly not a genuine effort to deliver protection for endangered species or establish a truly sustainable timber industry," he said.

The NSW government and wind farm developer WestWind Energy Pty Ltd have signed a lease agreement to help facilitate a 1.5GW wind farm on Crown land in south-west NSW. 

WestWind Energy is aiming to construct the $3.8 billion Lake Victoria wind farm from 2029 to 2032, subject to planning approvals and community consultation.  

The project is listed on the NSW Planning website to be assessed as a State Significant Development once a development application is lodged.  

The NSW government has placed on exhibition a proposal by Whitehaven to build a solar farm and associated battery storage system next to its Narrabri coal mine.

Victoria's Essential Services Commission has banned a company trading as Care for Environment from the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, for alleged rule breaches.

The Commission has also ordered the company to surrender VEU certificates worth about $10 million.

Open consultations:

• Biosecurity. Agriculture Victoria is consulting on the merits of introducing a general biosecurity duty for animals and plants. Comments are due by 28 February.

Tasmania's container deposit refund scheme will start on 1 May, the government has announced.

Grant opportunity - waste and recycling. The state government has invited applications for a share in $2 million in grants available for projects that recover resources from waste that would otherwise be lost to landfill.

Applications will be accepted from operators of landfill or resource recovery facilities that receive more than 1,000 tonnes of material per year. Grants ranging between $50,000 and $500,000 are on offer.

The South Australian government has released a draft Eyre and Western regional plan, and similar plans for the Far North, and for the Yorke Peninsula and Mid-North.

Comments are due by 7 May.

The South Australian government has contributed $1.8 million to a ReBird the Ranges initiative that aims to restore woodland bird habitat in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

The Mount Lofty Ranges have one of the highest concentrations of threatened woodland bird species in Australia. Seventy-eight species are declining, and twelve species are already regionally extinct.

Open consultations:

• Scrap metal theft. The state government is canvassing views on introducing a law to prevent scrap metal and copper theft. Comments are due by 25 February.

The WA Greens, who could hold the balance of power in the Legislative Council after next month's state election, have announced their 2025 climate platform.

The plan includes: 

• A 10% clean energy transition levy on gas revenue. 
• The development of a gas transition plan for WA.
• The setting of state-specific 2030 targets for emissions reductions and renewable energy.

Statutory development - Territory Coordinator. The NT government has introduced a Bill to establish the new role of Territory Coordinator, to facilitate major projects.

The Bill would also empower the Minister to exempt a project from being subject to a particular law, in specified circumstances.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro described the Bill as "a game-changing initiative for the Northern Territory". 

"The message is very clear: the Territory is open for business," she told the Territory Assembly. "This is about creating jobs, delivering results and is key to unlocking the potential of the Northern Territory."

Statutory development - appeal rights. NT Lands, Planning and Environment Minister Joshua Burgoyne has introduced a Bill to remove provisions for third-party merits review of decisions, except for proponents and interest holders.

The NT gas industry says the Territory Government’s moves to clamp down on lawfare will boost investment and energy security.

Burgoyne acknowledged removing merit appeal rights would not align with recommendations of the 2018 Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the NT.

However, there is now "a robust regulatory regime to manage risks of the onshore gas industry", he told the Territory Assembly.

The Australian Energy Producers, which represents upstream gas producers, welcomed the Bill.

"We commend the Territory government for moving decisively to stamp out activist lawfare putting at risk economic and energy security for Territorians,” said AEP NT director David Slama.

New listings are in blue.

The deadline for countries to submit their new international climate pledges passed on 10 February, with many countries - including Australia - yet to make new pledges.

Countries that have lodged new pledges include the Marshall Islands, which announces in its pledge that it will join the Coalition on Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Incentives Including Subsidies, which was launched at COP26.

UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell said in a recent speech that all new pledges must be submitted by September, to be properly taken into account at COP30 in Brazil.

The Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has announced new expert working groups and a second public consultation for its revision of the Corporate Net-Zero Standard.

A first draft of the new Standard will be released next month, at the earliest.

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