Renewable energy developments are having significant negative impacts on rural and regional communities and environments across Australia.
PRA has the following concerns:
• Deficiencies within current governance arrangements regulating the development and planning of this activity.
• There are limited legislative and approval mechanisms as opposed to the regulatory burden placed on other industries like agriculture, mining, and commercial tourism ventures.
• The resulting lack of governance arrangements are producing perverse social, economic, and environmental impacts throughout rural and regional communities unlucky enough to be within renewable energy zones.
• Outside of each defined project area there are no triple bottom line assessment for renewable energy developments and their transmission connections across each region.
• Foreign renewable energy companies have an open ticket from Government to develop these industrial wind and solar complexes with little or no regard to community and environmental values.