Today the Clean Energy Council released the 2025 Best Practice Charter reports from its signatories, including Spark Renewables.

This is a voluntary set of commitments that clean energy developers uphold when planning, building, and operating renewable energy projects. There are more than 50 signatories, representing nearly all major renewable energy developers in Australia.

This is the second year of reporting, and the submissions for this year show the industry continuing to raise the bar for responsible development in regional Australia.

Spark Renewables is proud to be part of an industry that engages meaningfully with local communities and First Nations groups, addresses environmental and agricultural concerns, and works to deliver lasting benefits for landholders and regional communities.

Signatories to the Charter are committed to minimising impacts on quality agricultural land and exploring opportunities for co-existence between renewable energy and farming. The reports highlight a range of locally adapted approaches that support both clean energy generation and agricultural productivity. At Bomen Solar Farm, Spark Renewables is currently supporting a three-year research project led by Charles Sturt University to identify the ideal pasture mix that thrives under solar panels, supports quality grazing land, and reduces fire risk.

The signatories’ submissions reflect a continued commitment to respectful engagement – consulting early and often, remaining sensitive to areas of high biodiversity, cultural and landscape value, and to responsible land stewardship over the lifetime of a project, including waste recycling and decommissioning. This year’s reports demonstrate a more deliberate, science-informed, and locally sensitive approach to managing environmental impacts across construction, operations and at the project end-of-life.

One of our earlier partnerships in this field – with a leading solar panel recycling and resource recovery company PV Industries – is proving successful in finding sustainable end-of-life solutions for solar panels. At their new facility launch last week, the team demonstrated how solar panels can be processed to recover materials such as silver.

Read the summary and view the published reports and over 400 examples showcasing how renewable energy projects are delivering real, often unseen benefits for local communities and the environment across Australia here.