Residual risk payments for an environmental authority

You may be required to make a residual risk payment after lodging an application to surrender an environmental authority (EA) for your resource activity.

Calculating your residual risk

Your residual risk payment covers the likely costs and expenses incurred by Queensland Government to manage and remediate your resource activity after financial assurance has been returned to you.

When surrendering your EA, you will be required to carry out a risk assessment, which will provide you with an estimate of the residual risk payment. The administering authority will use this assessment to determine your residual risk payment amount.

To carry out the risk assessment and calculate your estimated residual risk payment amount, you must use the residual risk assessment guideline (ESR/2020/5433) (PDF, 3.1MB).

Risk assessment options

The guideline sets out 4 options for assessing your residual risk. You must choose an option which is suitable for your site.

Option 1: Pre-assessed risk category

The pre-assessed risk categories represent scenarios where the calculator produces a $0 payment amount for sites that meet the criteria stated in the guideline. You may select this option if all your remaining site features align with one of the pre-assessed risk categories.

Option 2: Residual risk calculator

This option is recommended for most activities. You can select this option where all your remaining site features can be assessed by the calculator:

Option 3: Expert panel

This option is recommended where the calculator is unable to adequately assess all remaining site features, for example on large and complex sites. This option is available to all EA holders. You must use this option for geothermal and greenhouse gas storage activities.

Option 4: Combination of expert panel and residual risk calculator

This option uses the expert panel to assess certain site features and the calculator to assess risks from all other remaining site features. You may decide to choose this option if you have certain features that can be assessed by the calculator, but others requiring the expert panel process.

The Queensland Government may also require a residual risk payment as a condition of a site management plan for land that is recorded in the contaminated land register.

Supporting resources

The following resources are available to support use of the guideline and matters considered by the calculator when conducting residual risk assessments: