evidence: The renewable energy industry has been expressing frustration at the lengthy lead times in gaining state and federal environmental and planning approvals for renewable energy projects. Although lead times for projects overall may be lengthy, unpacking where the bottlenecks are and how they relate to environmental approvals is a difficult task. Often these approvals take place alongside parallel processes such as financing and grid connection approvals. So how do we ‘fast-track’ without weakening environmental approvals? The latest Budget provides some potential for positive change. $134.2M was announced for improving approval processes.