We can build renewable energy without leaving nature behind

A few years ago, I was at a community meeting for a large wind energy project near box-gum woodland in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.  A local farmer pulled me aside and pointed across the paddock to a ragged line of remnant box-gum trees along a creek  —  critical nesting habitat for superb parrots in spring. She said quietly, “If this project harms them, you’ll lose me and many others in this community.”

Having worked for Australia’s leading renewable energy developers for the past decade, I’ve seen how quickly support for projects evaporates when people feel nature is an afterthought; especially when it comes to charismatic birds, bats and habitats that define a place.

The Chalumbin Wind Farm in Far North Queensland, near the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, for example, became a flashpoint for what happens when renewable energy ambition collides with environmental uncertainty.

Conservation groups and local advocates raised concerns about impacts on threatened species and a globally significant ecosystem. Signals from the federal government indicated that approval was unlikely and the project was ultimately withdrawn.

With coordinated, science-led guidance and cross-sector collaboration, projects like Chalumbin might be identified as too high-risk from the outset, or alternatively, they may be redesigned with agreed, science-backed conditions that could give confidence for the project to proceed.

The Chalumbin case highlights what happens when there is no shared evidence base about environmental impact or alignment on environmental thresholds, and where there is no trusted forum to navigate trade-offs.

There are better ways to go about resolving the issues. In the United States, the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute (REWI) provides a trusted, cross-sector forum for collaborative research and has turned that collaboration into real-world results. For example, REWI has helped design and test operational curtailment strategies and smart detection technologies at commercial wind farms to reduce collisions of turbine blades with eagles and bats, demonstrating that technology can significantly reduce wildlife mortality while keeping projects financially viable.

Meanwhile in Europe, the Offshore Coalition for Energy and Nature brings wind developers, network operators and non-government organisations (NGOs) together to work out how to accelerate offshore wind development while protecting marine ecosystems. The European coalition agrees on best practice for siting, monitoring and mitigation, sharing data, and speaking with one voice to governments. Both of these examples show what’s possible when nature performance is treated as strategic, not just compliance. 

There is no equivalent in Australia. And that gap is now a constraint on both the pace of the energy transition and positive environmental outcomes.

That is why I have been working over the past year with the renewable energy industry and leading conservation scientists and environmental NGOs to establish the Biodiversity & Renewables Institute Australia (BRIA). Still in development, this national organisation will be dedicated to producing the shared science, data and cross-sector relationships needed to ensure Australia’s renewable energy transition accelerates without costing nature in the process.

Grounded in collaboration, BRIA will be a practical research platform that brings industry, scientists, conservation organisations, government and other key stakeholders together to ask the questions that matter: What are the real collision and mortality rates for key species? What mitigation measures reduce impacts on birds and bats, and under what conditions? How could ecological data collected across projects be standardised and shared to build a reliable evidence base?

Across Australia’s renewable energy sector, there is genuine appetite to deliver projects that are good for both climate and nature. Developers are investing heavily in environmental assessments, impact studies and offset strategies, often in good faith and at significant cost. But they are doing so in a system where expectations continue to evolve, shaped by reforms, shifting standards and a fragmented and incomplete evidence base on biodiversity impacts. This uncertainty is not confined to proponents. Regulators are also making high-stakes decisions about project approvals in this same context.

That uncertainty is also flowing through to investment and delivery. The number of renewable energy projects being referred under national environment law has almost doubled in recent years, while average decision times have blown out from roughly a year to well over two, leaving many proposals stuck in limbo.

New large-scale renewable investment has slumped. This is in a country that needs a dramatic lift in generation to get anywhere near 82 per cent renewables by 2030. The Clean Energy Investor Group’s 2025 annual member survey identified planning and environmental assessments as two of the top five challenges facing clean energy investors. This underscores a system under strain where uncertainty, delays and inconsistent evidence are slowing investment and deployment.

At its core, this is a coordination challenge. It’s not that Australia’s renewable energy industry lacks effort or ambition, innovation and self-funded research, but the work is siloed. The ecological survey process is repeated project by project and the same questions are asked slightly differently each time. Data is gathered, analysed within a single project boundary and rarely built upon. In aggregate, the sector is spending heavily without generating the shared scientific foundation that would reduce uncertainty, streamline approvals and deliver better outcomes for nature.

Our country now has a very narrow window to catch up. The Federal Government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act reforms will define new national environmental standards, approval conditions and bioregional planning that will determine where we protect, restore and develop. If investors and developers insist that clarity on nature is core to transition risk, we can hardwire something better and avoid another decade of mismatch between ambitious renewable targets and slow, contested approvals.

When I think back to the farmer pointing at the superb parrots’ trees, I think about what it would mean to return to that community with a real answer. One backed by shared data, independent science, and evidence that industry and conservation sectors can stand behind.

The next steps are simple: share resources, lean in and help make Australia a proving-ground for nature-positive clean energy development. That is what BRIA is being built to make possible, and the window to get it right is open now.

This article was written for and originally published in The Energy.