Name
Elizabeth Stark
Job title
Managing Director
Organisation
Sybmolix
Speaker biography
Elizabeth is a co-founder of Symbolix and a consultant focussing on data-driven decision making. She has over a decade's experience supporting environmental practice through data and analytics. She is a fellow of the Environment Institute of Australia & NZ (the professional body for environmental professionals). Elizabeth has delivered a number of projects for environmental management and renewables and specialises in combining data sets and in developing on-ground indicators to enable adaptive management. When not on the keyboard, you'll find her advocating and communicating about science, maths, and technology (or sneaking pats from the office kelpie).
Speaking At
AWIF Presentation title
Australian Collision Risk Framework: Accelerating wind farm planning while protecting wildlife
AWIF Presentation summary
Australia's ambitious renewable energy targets depend on the successful and timely navigation of complex environmental approvals. A persistent source of delay, cost, and uncertainty in the planning phase is the accurate assessment of collision risk between turbines and bird and bat species listed under the EPBC Act. Without clear guidelines, proponents are often faced with a patchwork of suggested methodologies, leading to inconsistency, protracted assessments, and delayed decisions. In order to support faster, better decisions under the EPBC Act, the Australian Government has funded a series of projects under the Renewables Environmental Research Initiative. This presentation outlines the successful completion and key components of the new Australian Collision Risk Framework (ACRF); a key project of this initiative. The ACRF integrates best-practice international approaches to provide a consistent methodology and detailed guidance for estimating collision likelihood for bird and bat species. It offers proponents the tools to undertake early-stage self-assessments using standardised language, clearly defining the pathway for when a more detailed, custom analysis is required. The ACRF aims to support the industry to: - De-risk projects early in the planning phase by assessing collision risk with transparency. - Accelerate decision-making by providing regulators with consistent, comparable, and reliable assessment data. - Standardise language in approval requirements to make pathways clear to proponents
