For years, renewable energy projects have largely been assessed, by both industry and government, on an individual basis.

• Can the project achieve approval?

• Can environmental impacts be managed?

• Can land access be secured?

• Can the infrastructure be delivered?

But across parts of regional NSW, something is changing.

Communities are no longer evaluating projects individually. They are evaluating the combined impact of an entire energy transition happening around them.

And that shift may become one of the most important strategic challenges facing the renewable energy sector over the next decade, as Principal – Engagement and Social Planning Alysia Bradshaw explains.

Nyah Moore joined Onward’s Graduate Program in February after graduating from the University of Newcastle in late 2025. We invited her to write about her first months working as an Environmental Consultant.

As Australia’s renewable energy rollout accelerates so are expectations from communities, landholders and regulators. The challenge is no longer just building projects quickly. It’s about building them well, responsibly, and with trust. That’s the context behind the Australian Government’s Developer Rating Scheme (DRS).

At Onward, we’re proud to have delivered Queensland’s very first progressive rehabilitation and closure plan (PRCP) schedule audit in 2024. It was a milestone not just for us, but for the state’s mining industry, which is navigating an evolving regulatory landscape that puts rehabilitation and closure front and centre.

The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) has released a revised set of independent audit (IA) post approval requirements for state significant projects. The requirements introduce a more structured and prescriptive framework for how audits are planned, approved, and delivered across the project lifecycle.

The updated requirements signal a clear shift toward tighter audit governance, greater consistency, and earlier engagement with DPHI. For proponents and project teams, understanding these changes is essential to maintaining compliance and avoiding unnecessary delays, as Principal – Auditing and Compliance Elliot Holland explains.

Field tripping in the Torres Strait

Environmental Project Manager Sabrina Newton and Principal – Environmental Management Callum Gawne travelled to the Torres Strait recently to carry out preliminary inspections in support of future environmental approvals for a potential minerals project.

More data doesn’t fix community concern. In fact, it can often make it worse.

In many projects across QLD and NSW, the instinctive response to community resistance is to provide more information. We release more studies, more technical detail, more reports. On paper, this makes sense. If people are concerned, surely better data will resolve the issue.

Queensland’s renewable energy landscape is changing and battery storage has also now entered a new phase of regulatory scrutiny. In December 2025, the Queensland Government introduced significant planning reforms that bring large-scale BESS projects into the same assessment framework already applied to wind and solar farms.

These reforms follow on from earlier changes in 2025 that made solar and wind developments impact assessable and required developers to complete social impact assessments and community benefit agreements before applications could proceed

When it comes to project management, we know that good record-keeping is a must. We track budgets and deliverables, milestones and hold points. We have project control groups and RFI registers and every process to ensure we meet our timeframes. But how are you capturing your stakeholder interactions?