EngAige

With Trevor Slater, Executive Chair, EngAige

Australia’s Approval Challenge

Australia faces significant delays in delivering major energy, resources, critical minerals, and infrastructure projects. More than A$157 billion in nationally important projects remain locked in environmental assessment pipelines across federal and state jurisdictions, slowing the energy transition, impacting supply-chain security, restricting export growth, and reducing national competitiveness (Source: Resources & Energy Major Projects list, 2025; AEMO ISP, 2025).

These delays affect critical energy infrastructure, traditional energy including gas projects essential for the transition, and mining—one of the fundamental pillars of Australia’s economy.

EngAige explores how a combination of AI-enabled platforms and expert knowledge could greatly assist in reducing these delays, drawing on decades of experience in environmental management, offshore energy, mining, governance, and digital innovation. The goal is to improve workflow quality, reduce administrative pressure, and strengthen decision-making capability across jurisdictions.

Note: The following examples and modelling are hypothetical and intended to illustrate potential impact, rather than to represent guaranteed outcomes.

How Intelligent Platforms Could Strengthen Government and Industry Capability

With the Federal Parliament passing significant reforms to the EPBC Act—including binding National Environmental Standards, a new national EPA, and the establishment of Environment Information Australia—assessment expectations will increase. These reforms emphasise the need for consistent, referenced, auditable, and defensible environmental documentation.

As these changes come into effect, proponents, consultants, and assessment teams will require modern tools to meet higher regulatory expectations efficiently. This includes reducing duplication, improving data quality, and supporting more transparent assessment pathways.

A system designed like EngAige could deliver:

• Higher-quality, fully referenced assessment inputs
• Rapid verification of regulatory compliance
• Consistent assessment baselines
• Structured, evidence-based decision support for senior officials and Ministers
• Reduced administrative burden across departments
• Transparent, auditable outputs aligned to policy and statutory frameworks

These capabilities become even more important in light of recent legislative reforms, where expectations for quality, traceability, and defensibility will materially increase.

Illustrative economic modelling suggests that accelerating approvals by:

• Three months could generate ~A$3–4 billion in national benefit.
• Nine months could increase benefits to ~A$10 billion+, including earlier tax receipts, accelerated export income, improved budget flexibility, faster delivery of critical infrastructure, and strengthened energy security.

The table below shows the compounding effect of longer approval acceleration:

Impact Type	3-Month Acceleration	9-Month Acceleration
NPV uplift	A$3.3b	A$10.2b
Earlier tax receipts	A$1.4b	A$4.4b
Earlier royalty receipts	A$0.4b	A$1.2b
Developer carrying-cost savings	A$3.1b	A$9.4b
Total national benefit	A$3–4b	A$10b+
Government fiscal benefit	A$1.8b	A$5.6b

Again, these figures are conceptual, demonstrating the potential value of smarter assessment workflows.

Why This Matters

Energy Transition

• Meeting 2030 and 2050 emissions goals.
• Delivering the Rewiring the Nation transmission program.
• Deploying large-scale batteries, firming capacity, and renewable generation.
• Preventing reliability gaps identified by AEMO.

Traditional Energy & Gas

• Ensuring firming capacity during the transition.
• Supporting domestic reliability and industrial demand.
• Maintaining Australia’s competitive advantage in global LNG markets.

Critical Minerals and Trade

• Securing Australia’s role in U.S. Inflation Reduction Act supply chains.
• Providing certainty for Japanese and Korean strategic offtake partners.
• Supporting EU Critical Raw Materials Act agreements.
• Strengthening trade resilience and sovereign capability (Source: Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2022).

Mining

• Enabling new iron ore, rare earth, and base metal projects.
• Supporting regional jobs and supply chains.
• Maintaining export competitiveness.

National Productivity & Competitiveness

• Competing with faster-approving jurisdictions (U.S., Canada, Europe).
• Attracting investment in high-value industries.
• Reducing cost blowouts caused by approval delays.

Regulatory Modernisation

• Implementing Nature Positive reforms.
• Addressing departmental workload pressures.
• Meeting statutory timeframes consistently (Source: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, 2023).

Exploring Potential Impacts of AI-Enabled Assessment Platforms

Platform Capabilities

• Integrates environmental datasets, policy frameworks, approvals pathways, risk identification, compliance logic, precedent conditions, and structured reporting templates.
• Produces fully referenced, consistent, auditable outputs faster than traditional consulting methods.
• Improves input quality for proponents, enhances government efficiency, and creates a more streamlined approvals ecosystem.

Potential Government Benefits

• Rapid Verification and Screening: Automated cross-checking against regulatory requirements, early identification of gaps.
• Standardised Assessment Baselines: Consistent analysis across projects and sectors.
• Reduced Internal Workload: Less manual document review, lower administrative burden.
• Stronger Ministerial Decision Support: Clear, structured, referenced briefings, improved risk identification, more defensible decisions.
• Reinforcing Environmental Integrity: Strengthens, rather than weakens, environmental protection.

Illustrative National Benefits

• Productivity and GDP: Earlier project commencement accelerates GDP growth (Source: Infrastructure Australia, 2024).
• Fiscal and Budget: Earlier tax and royalty inflows, improved budget flexibility.
• Employment and Regional Development: Construction workforce activation, Indigenous employment, regional supply chain engagement.
• Energy Security: Faster deployment of renewables, BESS, firming capacity, and critical transmission.
• Trade and Strategic Outcomes: Enhanced credibility with allies, faster critical minerals delivery.
• Exports: Earlier production and revenue, improved trade balance, faster investor capital returns.

All figures and outcomes are illustrative, intended to demonstrate the potential scale of impact if assessment workflows were optimised using AI and expert systems.

The Potential of Smarter Environmental Approvals

Australia’s national priorities: energy transition, critical minerals leadership, traditional energy stability, mining competitiveness, regulatory modernisation, and regional development all depend on faster, higher-quality environmental approvals.

Platforms like EngAige illustrate a scalable, practical way to meaningfully reduce delays, and unlock potential economic, social, and environmental value—particularly in the context of the recent EPBC reforms and Nature Positive Plan.