Approvals systems must change

A leading property veteran says emissions reduction will create unprecedented demand for Western Australian resources, but the state must improve its approvals process to capitalise on this.

Speaking at a Property Council of Australia WA Division event today, Ian Campbell said the transition to clean energy was one of the most significant global events in history.

“Our in-house view is that it’s bigger than the industrial revolution but at the speed of the digital transformation,” the Brookfield Properties group executive said.

“It’s going to happen very quickly.”

Mr Campbell referred to Brookfield’s acquisition of Origin Energy, which it says is driven by the company’s drive to play a part in cutting global emissions, would pave the way for Brookfield to create significant renewable energy infrastructure.

“[WA has] got all of these commodities ... the demand is going to be insane; you can’t start to envisage it,” he said.  

“Brookfield if we’re able to close the Origin transaction a bit later in the year we’ll build fourteen gigawatts of energy to replace what origin sells to customers.

“To put it in some context, that’s two and a half times all the power generated in WA and one company will do that, our company.”

WA plans to build 50GW of renewable energy in the next 15 years, multiplying its existing 5.9GW of renewable power by almost five-fold.

“We’re going to need in Australia 10,000 more kilometres of transmission lines, huge copper cables, all held up by massive steel pylons, around the world seven million kilometres.

“The demand for minerals, and the demand for land for solar and wind turbines and mega batteries and some hydro, some more gas peaking plants … it’s hard to contemplate.”

Mr Campbell, who spent 17 years as a senator and three years as Federal Environment Minister, said the state would need to improve its approvals processes to realise the amazing intergenerational opportunity the energy transition presented.

“To achieve the targets by 2030 that we’ve set ourselves … how can we get companies like Chalice [Mining] to get their approvals to get minerals in the ground? How can Liontown get the approvals they need?," he said.

"How can the Pilbara iron ore miners replace their entire energy system in the next 10 years? How can they double the number of iron ore mines we've got at the moment, quadruple the number of Nickel Mines we've got at the moment and do it in a very short timeframe?

“We’ve got approvals and planning and permitting processes that were designed in the ’60s ’70s and ’80s, and it could take years just to get to the approvals for some of those projects ... and we don't have that time.

“[We’ve] to get ahead of it, make our own luck, and have state, federal and local governments getting together and saying what can we do to speed up the permitting processes for making sure that we can get this stuff done.”

Mr Campbell referred to the German government’s recent commitment to halve approval times for expansions to its electricity grids, and said WA should adopt a similar approach.

“What we need, and this applies to the energy transition, for student housing, and the whole WA economy is that the timelines for approvals and permits and environmental approvals are something that we've struggled with for decades,” he said.

“You have got to have good science … good processes … good stakeholder engagement, but it doesn't need to take years.

“You've got all of the algorithms, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, that can actually pull together all the data you need to make a good decision in a fraction of the time, but somehow that people in charge of permits and approvals and environmental assessments haven't sort of figured out how to use those.

“We need to apply all of that, we might need more resources, we might need to contract out some of that work, but we can’t wait that length of time.

“Whether we want to be at the forefront of the energy transition and make sure we do that right, we’d have to change the way these approvals and environmental assessments take place, or we will stuff it up.”