Source : Perth Now news
Solar farm and big battery approval times have blown out in Australia’s largest electricity market and wind projects are still taking nearly 1400 days to be green-lit despite improvement.
The planning system remains a bottleneck for major renewables projects in NSW, which needs more grid-scale generation and storage so it can retire its ageing and emissions-intensive coal-fired power stations.
The average large scale solar project is now taking almost 1140 days to satisfy planning rules, a report from the Clean Energy Investor Group finds.
This was up from roughly 700 days when average approval time-frames were last calculated in 2023, and was more than three times Queensland’s 355-day typical approval times.
Grid-scale battery projects are averaging 614 days before they exit the planning system.
Wind farms are making it through the state’s planning system quicker than the 3488 days averaged in 2023, but still take longer than in other states.
Renewable energy is now generating almost half of Australia’s electricity and is increasingly muscling out emissions-intensive coal and gas.
But a national target of an 82 per cent renewably-powered grid by 2030 faces headwinds as large-scale projects struggle to get off the ground.
Financial commitments for renewable energy fell sharply in 2025, with investments halving to $4.4 billion, according to the Clean Energy Council’s latest industry update.
Planning is not the only bottleneck, with rising capital costs, transmission and curtailment risk and logistics constraints among post-approval barriers.
CEIG chief executive Richie Merzian said planning systems still needed improvement to speed up decision-making, especially in NSW.
“NSW is charging developers up to 48 times more for a planning application than Queensland but taking three times longer to approve solar and wind farms. Something has to change,” he said.
Steps taken to streamline the system were helping but approvals for major clean energy projects were still “too slow, too uncertain and too expensive”.
Better-resourced development agencies and streamlined planning pathways for clean energy was recommended by the group, as well as a review of application fees.
NSW developers pay 48 times more on application fees than in Queensland and more than 10 times more than in Victoria and Western Australia.
Mr Merzian said clean energy investors were geared up to deploy billions into renewables infrastructure in the state, further supporting an economy already relying heavily on the energy transition for stimulus as flagged recently by Treasurer Daniel Mookhey.
During an address at the National Press Club, prominent energy policy expert Michael Liebreich urged Australia to rein in cost pressures in renewables supply chains, especially for wind projects.
“Its price has soared more than double since 2019,” he said during his address in Canberra.
“Some of that is inflation, some is interest rates, but a big chunk is not.”
