From the opening ministerial keynotes to investor panels, the sold-out 2026 CEIG conference returned one consistent verdict: Australia’s clean energy transition has a need for speed.
There’s a point at events like this where the data cuts through. That moment came early at CEIG 2026, when RenewMap co-founder Alex Thompson put two numbers side by side.
AEMO estimates around 200GW is needed to reach net zero by 2050, while RenewMap has identified over 670GW of utility-scale renewable projects under development nationally. This not a supply problem. It is a delivery problem. The challenge is not ambition or scale, but the pace at which projects move from pipeline to power.
Alex Thompson – RenewMap Co-Founder
That reframing from “do we have enough?” to “can we build it fast enough?” helped shape the discussions that followed across a day of high-quality, high-stakes conversation.
RenewMap’s analysis of over 1,500 development applications nationally was the empirical spine of the conference. When WA is approving batteries in two months and onshore wind in three to six, while NSW is taking up to 30 months for wind, rational capital adjusts accordingly.
As Alex observed, changes in government can shift approval conditions mid-process and directly impact investor confidence.
The Productivity Commission quantified the cost in December 2025: a one-year acceleration in approvals for wind and key transmission could reduce electricity bills by seven per cent over a decade.
Queensland’s onshore wind sector has effectively paused since late 2024, with no wind project reaching FID following the change of government. Solar and BESS continue moving strongly, and Alex noted there are plenty of opportunities as developers and the new government recalibrate. But the signal that the pause sends to capital markets is real and consequential. Queensland has a 109GW onshore wind development pipeline, the largest of any state. The gap between that potential and current delivery pace was one of the Conference’s sharpest illustrations of the cost of policy uncertainty.
Ed Coper of Populares opened with a frame worth keeping, social licence is the security screen on the front door of the transition. Everything else can’t happen without social licence.
Support for the clean energy transition has fallen four per cent in the last six months alone, and eight per cent over the past two and a half years. Support for onshore wind, offshore wind, and solar has all declined. This is not organic public sentiment shifting – it is the product of well-resourced, highly organised opposition running a playbook refined in the United States, involving funded astroturfing, AI-generated content, and coordinated campaigns designed to kill projects before they reach a public vote.
Ed Coper – CEO, Populares
The CSIRO’s 2024 survey found that more than 80% of Australians would at least tolerate living within 10km of renewable energy infrastructure, including wind farms. Farmers for Climate Action found 70% support clean energy projects on farmland in their local community. The broad public is not opposed; it is under-informed with a vacuum of clear human storytelling that is being filled by organised misinformation.
The prescription Coper outlined is simple in principle and demanding in practice: treat social licence as a whole-of-industry, whole-of-society responsibility. Lead with the human story of jobs, energy security, community benefit – not technology specifications. As he closed: social licence should be a forethought, not an afterthought.
Victoria’s Minister for Climate Action, Energy and Resources, the Hon. Lily D’Ambrosio, delivered the conference’s opening address and made the case for what policy confidence looks like in practice. Victoria has met every renewable energy target since its scheme began in 2014, reaching 44.6% renewable generation last calendar year – well above its 40% target. Wind provided 24% of the state’s generation; solar farms and homes supplied a further 16%.
“Confidence doesn’t just come from saying you’ll do something. It comes from certainty, coordination, and execution,” said The Hon Lily D’Ambrosio, Minister for Climate Action, Energy and Resources (Vic)
The Hon Lily D’Ambrosio, Minister for Climate Action, Energy and Resources (Victoria)
Victoria’s offshore wind auction is set to launch formally in August this year, and Minister D’Ambrosio emphasised the need for the developing ESEM to enable offshore wind – critical, she argued, to diversifying and stabilising the energy mix. The state currently has 54 solar farms, 43 onshore wind projects, and 23 batteries operating. What Victoria has demonstrated, and what the Minister made clear, is that when governments coordinate effectively and align capital with delivery, decarbonisation of the grid also underpins broader economic growth.
Federal Environment and Water Minister Senator the Hon Murray Watt addressed the conference by video from Canberra, with a clear and direct message.
The EPBC landmark reforms passed by Parliament in November 2025, which he described as a major overhaul of the federal approvals process, introduces a streamlined assessment pathway that reduces timeframes from 70 to 50 business days from referral to approval for proponents. Planning and approvals remain a key concern for investors, as reflected in CEIG’s member survey, and CEIG continues to engage with government to help improve outcomes in this area.
[Bioregional planning] will provide clarity to developers about where and how to deliver projects with minimal environmental impact…go zones and no-go zones…where projects in development zones can proceed without needing separate approvals at all.
– Senator the Hon Murray Watt, Federal Minister for the Environment and Water
The go zone / no-go zone framework is the most significant structural shift for developers in the federal environmental approvals process since 2000. Conservation zones will identify ecologically sensitive areas where development will not be permitted. Projects in designated development zones, by contrast, can proceed without needing separate approvals – removing one of the most significant sources of project-by-project uncertainty that has defined the approvals landscape for the past decade.
Our Principal Partner HSF Kramer provided a cutting analysis of EPBC approvals, courtesy of Kathryn Pacey, environment and planning partner.
In 2024, 46 renewable energy projects were declared controlled actions. Only one received final approval that year.
In 2025, 25 were declared controlled actions. Zero received final approval.
Kathyrn Pacey – Environment and planning partner, HSF Kramer
Average time to final approval has ranged between 555 and over 1,000 days across recent years. The backlog is not clearing, it is growing. New reforms include a streamlined 30-day pathway, but the clock only starts when the Minister decides to act, not when the developer lodges a referral.
These challenges are not new. CEIG has been working with HSF Kramer over a number of years on planning and approvals, including the 2023 report, ‘Delivering Major Clean Energy Projects in NSW’, which reviewed NSW statutory planning processes, with an updated review to be released in the coming weeks.
Projects must navigate a complex web of systems and government bodies. This includes: EPBC, state planning, reconfiguration, vegetation clearing, cultural heritage, native title, land access, neighbour agreements, community benefit agreements, grid connection, and offtake – all in parallel, across multiple agencies, with no single point of coordination.
L to R: Kathryn Pacey, Nathan Rhodes, Alistair Parker, Katie-Anne Mulder, Peter Briggs
The Australian recently described this environment as one where proponents “get the go-ahead rapidly, with everything fast-tracked.” Industry participants in the room found that characterisation difficult to recognise.
What industry needs, as Kathryn articulated, is consistency, predictability, stability, and alignment in policy and law. The federal EPBC reforms create genuine tools to deliver exactly that – but only if states engage with bilateral agreement negotiations ambitiously, and if bioregional planning processes are used proactively to establish go-zones aligned with each jurisdiction’s energy strategy. The choice between passive and active engagement with these reforms will define Australia’s investment landscape for the next decade.
John Martin’s presentation on the future of wind was a necessary corrective to any assumption that solar and storage can carry the system alone.
While approvals have slowed in some jurisdictions, Martin noted there are signs of momentum returning, describing 2026 as potentially a “boomer” year for wind.
Wind has a bias to night-time and winter generation that makes it irreplaceable in a system targeting 82% renewables. An over-indexed solar system faces curtailment and cost problems that no amount of storage fully solves.
John Martin, Windlab – CEIG 2026
John’s modelling showed that curtailing wind development from 2030 would push NSW wholesale electricity prices significantly higher through the 2030s and beyond. The optimal generation mix sits at roughly 50-60% solar by generation fraction – beyond that, both curtailment rates and total system costs rise sharply together.
John Martin – CEO, Windlab
We are building an increasingly solar-heavy system at precisely the moment wind approvals have stalled in key states. That is a structural risk to system reliability and household costs that the industry needs to name clearly and publicly. The wind sector’s slowdown is not a market signal – it is a policy signal.
RWE’s Matthew Dickie was optimistic: he is positive for wind in 2026 and sees pent-up growth coming to significant investment decisions. The pipeline exists. The policy environment needs to catch up.
The headline from the panel on mobilising domestic capital is that Australia’s deep pools of superannuation and institutional capital exist and the appetite is real, but the conditions to unlock it at scale are not yet in place.
L to R: Chris Miller, Rob Wheals, Mary Delahunty, Mitesh Kushwaha, Jo Ruitenberg
Mitesh Kushwaha from QIC described the situation as a dormant volcano – enormous latent energy waiting for the right conditions. Mary Delahunty from ASFA noted that direct superannuation investment sits at around five per cent of Australia’s renewable energy generation, with 60 cents of every investment dollar currently going overseas. The opportunity to shift that ratio is significant, but it requires the right risk-sharing frameworks, not just appeals to domestic obligation.
Chris Miller from SEC Victoria offered a different perspective: beyond financial returns, domestic investment carries a credibility dividend with communities. When Australians can see a connection between their superannuation and the infrastructure being built in their region, it changes the social licence conversation. Super funds could be among the industry’s most powerful community trust-builders if they step into that role.
The market signals panel was animated by a genuine tension: the Capacity Investment Scheme has been transformative, but it is not sufficient on its own to see the transition through. With CIS tenders concluding in 2027, the ESEM was designed as its successor that is more flexible, more market-responsive, reduces government exposure while providing the revenue certainty investors require. Claire Stewart from FTI Consulting identified the live risk: there is a real possibility that we reach 2031 and the conditions required to make the ESEM work are simply not in place, putting additional pressure on the CIS right up to its conclusion.
L to R: Paul Peters, Matthew Dickie, Claire Stewart, Marija Petkovic, Stephanie Bashir
The coal closure uncertainty thread ran through multiple sessions as what Marija Petkovic of Energy Synapse called the elephant in the room. Bipartisan support for coal closure timeframes – with firm sequencing of grid infrastructure, storage, and replacement generation – would be one of the single highest-impact improvements available. As Petkovic argued: if we keep saying coal assets will remain open, we are simultaneously failing to build enough long-duration energy storage. These decisions are connected. Treating them separately is costly.
Rod Sims – Chair, The Superpower Institute
Rod Sims made his case for a carbon price with characteristic directness: Australia’s emissions have barely moved since 2005 (excluding land use changes). The mechanisms currently relied upon to reduce emissions are inefficient while a ‘producer pays’ levy could raise $22 billion annually while returning half to consumers to fully compensate for price impacts. Recent polling shows 68% public support for this approach. The logic, Sims argued, is clear. The policy debate needs to catch up with it.
The conference closed with an international panel including a representative from Austrade that put Australia’s opportunity in sharp relief. Australia sits on the doorstep of the most dynamic region in the world. Europe trades 14% of its electricity across borders; Asia trades 0.3%. If Asia reached European interconnection levels, the emissions reduction would be equivalent to eliminating a country the size of Japan.
Francesca Muskovic from the IGCC offered a clear-eyed closing: the good vibes generated across regional relationships are real, and they must now crystallise into concrete policy – aligning safeguard mechanisms with key trading partners, establishing carbon border adjustment mechanisms, and greening Australia’s own grid as fast as possible. The lesson of the hydrogen bubble is instructive: market enthusiasm cannot run ahead of fundamental settings. Australia’s superannuation sector is on track to be the second-largest pool of finance in the world by the end of this decade. The ambition to be a green energy superpower is there. The grid needs to match it.
CEIG CEO Richie Merzian distilled the conference into three themes that cut across every session:
| Get Consultation Right | Increase Accountability, Lower Risk |
Send Better Signals |
| From First Nations voices to community engagement, consultation is non-negotiable, but it cannot become a barrier deployed at every stage of the process to frustrate delivery. Balance is essential. | Legislated timeframes, accountable grid delivery, and genuine coordinator-level oversight are needed. The ISP should be a binding blueprint with accountability mechanisms, not a planning aspiration. | Coal closure certainty, LDES investment, carbon pricing, ESEM contract design, and CGT settings for foreign investors – Australia’s dormant volcano of domestic and international capital needs the right conditions to flow. |
The optimism at the close of day is well placed. Australia leads the world in utility-scale battery deployment per capita. Victoria has hit every renewable energy target since 2014. The CIS has genuinely shifted the investment environment. The new EPBC reforms, if delivered as intended, have the potential to materially improve the approvals. The federal government’s’ Investor Front Door’ is open.
As Mitch King from Lighthouse Infrastructure noted, CEIG, at just six years old, is playing an increasingly important role in bringing institutional capital together to support Australia’s clean energy transition.
But as Richie concluded, there is still more work to do.
The capital is available, the resources are extraordinary, and the need is urgent. The decade of delivery is here. The task now is not to describe it, but to deliver it.
The conversation continues at the 2027 Clean Energy Investor Conference, returning to RACV Melbourne on Thursday 4 March 2027.
2027 sponsorship enquires are now open, following a sold-out 2026 event: conference@ceig.org.au.
For corporate partnership or membership enquiries: secretariat@ceig.org.au
