The Developer Rating Scheme (‘DRS’) was launched in May as a voluntary exercise. On 25 August it became a condition of bidding for Commonwealth underwriting and the public register it was built to fill has yet to list a single company.
Ask anyone who has taken a renewable energy or transmission project through a regional shire what the hardest part was and the answer is rarely the engineering. It is the extensive time spent around kitchen tables, community halls and letters to the editor that decide whether a project is welcome, and the Commonwealth has now decided that this is measurable. The measurement belongs in public view, and it should sit between a developer and capital.
How the idea arrived
In July 2023 the Minister for Climate Change and Energy commissioned the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner at the time, Andrew Dyer, to review how developers engage with host communities.1 The review reported in December 2023 with nine recommendations, all of which the government accepted or accepted in principle and one of them was a voluntary rating scheme for developers, because landholders negotiating with a company for the first time had no reliable way of knowing what it was like to deal with.2
What is the developer rating scheme
The scheme is an independent assessment of the companies that develop large-scale renewable generation, energy storage and major transmission on rural and regional land, measuring their integrity, governance, financial stability and capability to engage with communities.3 Equifax Australasia Credit Ratings was appointed through open tender to design and operate it, participation is voluntary and developers pay the assessment fees.4 Assessment covers seven criteria: community, conduct, character, capability, capacity, capital and counterparty, and it rates the business on its performance, track record and capability rather than any single project.5 A business clearing a minimum pass on all seven is accredited, receives a star rating on the community criterion and may be listed on a public register that is free for anyone to search.6 The model is borrowed from iCIRT, the New South Wales building industry rating, where the government’s stated position is that those who avoid the scrutiny or fail to meet the standard simply do not appear.7
Where it stands
The establishment phase began in August 2025, a pilot launched on 15 August 2025 with sixty developers, the scheme opened to industry on 6 March 2026 and the Commonwealth government announced it as open on 5 May 2026.8 The register those sixty were meant to populate currently carries a single message: it is almost here and will be populated shortly, so four months after launch, the scheme has yet to list its first business.9
CIS Tender 11
The DRS met the Capacity Investment Scheme (‘CIS’) in the latest CIS Tender 11 round. On 25 August 2026 the Commonwealth opened CIS Tender 11, seeking around 1.8 GW of new renewable generation in Western Australia’s Wholesale Electricity Market (‘WEM’), and made it the first tender to require participation in the rating scheme: proponents must have commenced the assessment process to apply.10 The same release stated that a commenced assessment would be a prerequisite in CIS tenders going forward.11 Practitioners read it the same way: what was voluntary is now a condition of support under this round.12
The condition is drafted with care: it requires that a developer has started the assessment, not that it has passed, been rated or appeared on the register, so a company can be fully compliant with Tender 11 while remaining invisible to the landholders the scheme was designed to inform.13 The Minister’s message was blunt: Commonwealth backing now requires a developer to show it is serious about working properly with communities and landholders.14
What this means
For developers bidding into the CIS. The scheme has stopped being a reputational choice and become an entry condition. Tender 11 is expected to be the final CIS round in the WEM if generation and dispatchable capacity targets are met.15 Given that assessments take time and bids opened on 27 August, a developer that has not yet engaged Equifax is already behind those that have.
For developers outside the CIS. The direction of travel is the same: Queensland’s draft Code of Conduct for Renewable Energy Developers, first announced in April 2024, is in consultation until 31 October 2026 and a Commonwealth condition attached to underwriting tends to reappear in lender checklists and state planning pathways.16
For landholders and councils. The register remains worth watching because it is empty: the first cohort to appear will include businesses that began assessment before Tender 11 required it, which is itself information about how those businesses operate.
The Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner said at the pilot’s launch that the scheme was voluntary at that stage, that all developers were encouraged to participate and that he would question any that chose not to.17 Twelve months on, the Commonwealth has answered that question on his behalf. If your business develops or transmits energy on rural and regional land and has not begun an assessment, the question is no longer whether to participate. It is how long you are prepared to be ineligible.