“We’re losing time:” Planning delays adding costs and complexity to new renewable projects

Investors are ranking the slow pace of transmission construction as their biggest hurdle to getting projects built, but the grid is no longer a total red flag for wind and solar developers, with two leading energy executives praising the rate of connection approvals.

AGL head of power development Richard Mackie and Westwind managing director Tobias Geiger both say grid connections are improving – even if the pace of transmission projects remains nightmarish.

“I am impressed with the way that network companies are able to deal with a vast number of connections and steadily improving connection processes, despite the number of applications and complexity there,” Mackie said at the AuWE conference in Melbourne earlier this month. 

It is the planning process, which the Clean Energy Investor Group’s (CEIG) recent survey ranked at number two in a list of turn-offs, that the energy executives saved their wrath for. 

“The period that is by far the fastest is the delivery phase,” Geiger said during the AuWE forum.

“Where we’re losing our time is … in that development phase beforehand, and that development phase has increased in time quite significantly over the last two decades that I have worked in this space. 

‘We have seen the longest increase in delays in that planning and permitting phase.

“What keeps me awake at night at the moment in that development space is… a propensity to use curtailment as a cure for everything, and it’s the perfect cure for a wind farm, because it [means the project] will never get built, it will never kill a bird. 

“It’s really something we need to work our way through, so we don’t end up with permit conditions that make the project unfinanceable.”

Developers are complaining that the approvals limbo is exposing wind projects to continually changing prices, making offtake contracts and Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) bids effectively worthless as costs climb. 

The concerns were borne out in the latest AEMO Connections Scorecard, released this week, which found that only 6.4 gigawatts had progressed through the proponent implementation stage, out of 14.4 GW of projects that had entered it in the past year.

AEMO sa median duration of the proponent implementation phase increased from 14 to 18 months, with one third of projects having remained in this stage for more than two years – largely as a result of changes brought about by planning factors and supply chain issues.

“Design changes and equipment substitutions can require additional assessment and rework, while the sale of projects, extended financing and commercial readiness activities are also contributing factors,” AEMO Group Manager, Onboarding and Connections, Margarida Pimentel, said.

The new Queensland state planning process is proving challenging for developers to adapt to, but the federal environmental process is also a major bugbear.

The regulations guiding last year’s EPBC reforms are expected to be in place by the end of this year, but the amount of time and unpredictability of how an application is assessed is dragging out timelines, a CEIG submission pointed out in May. 

The letter to environment minister Murray Watt said average gateway processing times for renewable energy referrals grew from 23 days in 2018 to 92 days in 2023. 

“The number of controlled actions has risen, peaking at 46 in 2024, while the number of projects receiving final approval has tailed off with three in 2023, one in 2024 and 0 in 2025,” it said.

“A significant driver of this trajectory was not the complexity of the underlying environmental questions but the unpredictability of the process: undefined information requirements, iterative and late requests for further information, inconsistent officer practice and shifting expectations about what constituted an adequate assessment.”

Eight wind and solar projects have been deemed controlled actions in 2026 and 16 in 2025, according to project tracker Renewmap. 

Windlab’s Nathan Blundell says the EPBC uncertainty is creating a cascade of problems, from investors who can’t predict what the final bill for a project will be to developers unable to lock in contractors because they don’t know when it will be approved.

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