Article by Paul Garvey, courtesy of The Australian
08.08.2025
More renewable energy projects were pulled from the federal environmental approvals process in the first seven months of this year than in the two years before it, in the latest reality check for both the government and the renewables industry ahead of Jim Chalmers’s economic reform roundtable.
An analysis of the federal government’s EBPC portal – which tracks the environmental approval processes of large-scale industrial projects across the country – found that at least 14 renewable energy project approval referrals had been withdrawn since the start of the year.
That compares to the nine that were withdrawn in the entirety of 2024 and just three that were pulled in 2023.
The withdrawals come amid growing doubts around Australia’s ability to meet its renewable energy targets, calls from the Productivity Commission for more to be done to turbocharge the clean energy transition, and ongoing debates within the Coalition around the future of net zero.
The projects pulled from the approval process so far this year represented potential investment of well over $35bn and together would have generated up to 10 gigawatts a year of energy.
The list of withdrawn proposals is dominated by offshore wind, which experts say is struggling to gain a foothold in Australia despite attempts by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to get the sector off the ground.
No less than 11 offshore wind farm projects have been withdrawn from the EPBC process since the start of 2024, accounting for around half of the renewable energy projects that have fallen out of the system in that time.
Other projects to have been formally pulled this year include two hydrogen proposals, pumped hydro, solar, and carbon capture and storage.
While the number of withdrawn projects has increased sharply, the pace of new renewable projects coming into the system has continued to grow.
Surging interest in battery storage projects in particular has helped push the number of new renewables applications towards a fresh record, while solar and onshore wind applications have continued to emerge.
A growing number of wind and solar farm proposals now also include large battery storage components, a trend that is adding to project costs but improving the resilience of new projects in energy grids that are increasingly shaped by high daytime generation rates from rooftop solar.
University of Western Australia adjunct professor Bill Grace – who was previously both a deputy chair of the West Australian government’s WA Sustainability Roundtable and a member of the federal government’s Expert Working Group for Sustainable Regional Planning – told The Australian the rates of withdrawals for offshore wind and hydrogen projects were unsurprising given there was “lots of uncertainty” about their markets.
He said the high uptake of rooftop solar across Australia made it even harder for offshore wind projects to stack up.
“They have very high capital costs per megawatt compared to everything else, and they’re challenged because of this decrease in demand in the middle of the day, which means that they’re going to be producing power that is probably going to be significantly curtailed in the day,” he said.
“These are emerging challenges for offshore wind, as well as the fact that they’re extremely expensive and problematic from an approvals point of view.”
Two major hydrogen projects are among those withdrawn so far this year. The $14.75bn CQ-H2 hydrogen project in Queensland was scrapped this year after the state government-owned energy company Stanwell pulled its support for the project, while the Tiwi H2 project in the Northern Territory fell away after ASX-listed Provaris Energy chose to focus on its hydrogen efforts in Europe.
The list of withdrawn projects does not include other hydrogen projects that have suffered setbacks recently, such as Fortescue’s hydrogen electrolyser facility in Gladstone and BP’s decision to walk away from the Asian Renewable Energy Hub mega project in the Pilbara.
Andrew Forrest with hydrogen-powered ‘green fleet’ mining vehicles.
Andrew Forrest with hydrogen-powered ‘green fleet’ mining vehicles.
Adjunct Professor Grace said the hydrogen projects were mind-blowingly large developments that relied on a market that did not yet exist at scale.
“It was kind of surprising to see how much global interest there was in the hydrogen buzz,” he said. “Now we’re in a situation where everyone’s backed off waiting to see what everyone else is going to do, which is a recipe for not much happening.”
He said he expected to see the number of onshore wind projects “zoom along”, however, as long as they could secure connections to the energy grid.
Battery storage systems, he said, were also increasingly cheap, helped balance the energy grid, and – by virtue of their smaller footprint – did not attract the same issues around approvals.
He said political and policy uncertainty in Australia had dented momentum in the renewables sector.
“There’s concern now amongst the investors in renewables that the political imperative is reducing,” he said.
The director of the Curtin Institute of Energy Transition, Professor Peta Ashworth, agreed, telling The Australian that it was clear political uncertainty had added to the challenges in Australia’s renewables sector.
“Australia has always been talked about as having low sovereign risk but in actual fact our problem at the moment is the lack of bipartisan support,” she said.
“If we think back to pre-election and what the conservatives were campaigning on, that doesn’t help send a strong signal to big investors. They want to see certainty around policy.”
She said the continued influx of new solar, onshore wind and battery storage proposals reflected where the “best bang for buck” was in the renewables space.
Mr Bowen, who hosted an energy and adaptation roundtable on Friday, defended the pace of the energy transition.
“We’ve got the policy settings in place to drive record renewable investment into Australia and we’re working to remove further barriers, including through our Renewable Energy Transformation Agreements with states, our priority projects list and reform of EPBC,” he said.
“In the last financial year we’ve seen record-breaking levels of new renewable energy generated, doubling last year’s total, with a further 78 projects totalling 15.6GW on the way.”
“Ripping up targets and derailing the transition won’t see Australia thrive – policy uncertainty would only weaken our position in an increasingly uncertain world.”
Proponents are not required to publicly disclose a specific reason for withdrawing a project from the EPBC process.
Most of the time, the proposals are pulled because the project is no longer being pursued although there are instances – such as in the case of Hydro Tasmania’s Cethana pumped hydro energy storage project – where the scope of the proposal changes to such an extent that an initial application must be withdrawn and a fresh application started.
Hydro Tasmania on Friday confirmed that it expected to submit the new referral for Cethana later this year.
The Productivity Commission on Friday said the Federal approval process for renewable energy infrastructure was too slow, with projects on average taking more than 500 days to secure federal environmental sign-off.
The Commission wants a revamped Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to allow decision makers to consider “the needs of the energy transition” when approving energy projects.
“The approval process is and continues to be slower than what we would need,” PC Commissioner Martin Stokie told an online forum.
“Our focus around productivity is if we can speed those up it will cost less for Australia.”
Labor has set an 82 per cent renewables target by 2030 and the Commission this week warned the net zero transition would cost more than expected with greater government intervention needed to hit climate goals.
The Australian last month revealed that no new wind projects had entered development outside of WA in the first six months of this year.
Ross Garnaut, a long-time adviser to the Labor government and a backer of renewable energy, recently warned that Australia would miss its 2030 renewables goal by “a big margin” and criticised the Albanese government’s capital investment scheme for distorting the market.
