The Renewable Energy Alliance (or RE-Alliance) today welcomed Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt's confirmation that federal environmental law reforms will include legislative changes to allow for greater use of regional planning, but highlighted how critical it will be to get the planning right.
RE-Alliance is an independent not-for-profit working for more than a decade with regional communities at the centre of the shift to renewables.
RE-Alliance National Director Andrew Bray said regional planning is an important tool to identify local areas of high environmental value that need to be protected, and those where development will be more appropriate.
"The key to getting regional planning right will be in ensuring local communities are engaged on where 'go zones' and 'no go zones' are located in their regions," Mr Bray said. "Desktop environmental data is a useful first step, but must be validated by local expertise."
"Some regional communities at the centre of the shift to renewables are telling us they're concerned about the environmental impacts of projects, so we welcome measures that give communities confidence that projects are being built in the right places," Andrew Bray said.
"We need renewable energy projects to replace increasingly unreliable coal plants, but we need developments to be sited and built in the right places to ensure the lowest possible environmental impacts. Getting regional planning right will help to provide further assurance that vulnerable native wildlife and their homes are further protected as we move to a renewable future," he said.
Andrew Bray said that regional communities need to be able to trust that legislative requirements are properly protecting local environments, while removing unnecessary barriers that delay projects and increase uncertainty.
The full detail on what is being proposed in relation to regional planning as part of reforms to environmental laws is yet to be released by the federal government. RE-Alliance will be keeping an eye on:
Making sure the Federal Government keeps its important role in protecting Ramsar wetlands, nationally threatened species and world heritage areas
Ensuring communities can engage on individual project decisions
And that biodiversity offsets are robust and only used as a last resort.
