The federal government had ignored industry advice and intends to introduce a compulsory full-cost recovery regime for environmental impact assessments and strategic assessments under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, according to the Australian Coal Association.

It has written to the government to oppose its plan to levy fees on individual companies to cover the cost of administering environmental approvals, its chief executive Dr Nikki Williams said.

“The government estimates that cost recovery will raise in excess of $10 million per annum. The coal industry will bear a disproportionate share of this cost burden, owing to the large scale and long duration of its infrastructure projects,” she said.

“The coal industry already carries significant compliance costs and it is not appropriate to require companies to cover the cost of administering unavoidable environment regulations that offer no distinctive benefit to business.”

The coal industry is being told it must pay for its compliance with a monopoly provider that has little or no transparency, Williams said.

The environmental regulator will set fee levels unilaterally, provide no guarantee of service quality or timeliness, offer no mechanism for external appeals and have absolutely no independent oversight.

“We have been warning that there is a pain threshold when it comes to costs and we are now seeing hard evidence that some companies are curtailing expansion plans and expressing a preference to invest in other mineral commodities over coal,” Williams said.

“Taken together with the carbon tax and a slew of other rising cost pressures, the cost recovery scheme will increase the marginal cost of producing coal in Australia at the very time that international competition is intensifying and the industry is struggling to contain rising input costs and maintain its international competitiveness.”

Dr Williams noted that cost recovery will fund the same duplicative Federal environment regulations that COAG recently agreed to abolish.

“These new regulatory fees are unwarranted and will discourage additional investment in the coal industry. The proposals are opposed by the industry and we ask the government to stop, think and engage in further consultation.”