As a regulator, the agency is committed to continuing our risk-based, intelligence-led approach to compliance, incorporating improved data analytics and intelligence insights to ensure a deeper understanding of the schemes, participants, and the market in which each scheme operates.

Responsibility for complying with scheme obligations always rests with the participants concerned. The agency’s approach includes helping scheme participants to understand how to comply, educating those who want to do the right thing, and a commitment to deter, detect and respond to non-compliance and misconduct to ensure ongoing scheme integrity. Where appropriate, the agency may take formal compliance action in the form of accepting enforceable undertakings, suspending scheme participants from the scheme, commencing civil proceedings, or pursuing the prosecution of persons by prosecutorial agencies. In taking these compliance actions, the agency takes a proportionate, risk-based response to regulatory burden in order to protect the public interest.

Our compliance priorities will support the agency’s wider objectives, priorities and initiatives. An adaptive approach will be reflected in the agency’s annual compliance and enforcement priorities, which identify specific areas of focus for compliance and enforcement. The priorities complement the data driven and risk-based approach to managing compliance in each scheme. We will use the full suite of the agency’s compliance and enforcement powers to protect the integrity, and improve outcomes, of the schemes as reflected in our Compliance policy for education, monitoring and enforcement activities.

In addition to the annual priorities, we will continue to detect and disrupt enduring forms of non-compliance, including:

• false or misleading information being provided to the agency in relation to:
  • claims for ACCUs
  • the creation of renewable energy certificates
• inaccurate, incomplete, or late reports:
  • by NGER reporters who have a history of non-compliance, particularly where data underpins Safeguard Mechanism obligations,
  • by ERF project proponents in claims for ACCUs.

In addition to the enduring priorities, the agency will focus on other strategic compliance priorities, such as:

• scheme entry, ensuring that only fit and proper persons will be allowed to participate in our schemes,
• relationships with other Commonwealth, state and territory regulators to promote the sharing of information,
• the use of scheme audits, ensuring that we obtain scheme assurance without over-burdening participants, and
• informing participants, and the public in general, of our compliance action, priorities and expectations by publishing regular compliance updates.