The company HRL wants to build a power station at Morwell fuelled by coal gas and natural gas.
The EPA has taken about 4,000 submissions on the project and will make a decision on the works application by the end of the year.
Mark Wakeham from Environment Victoria was at the forum and says the EPA is not geared to deal with modern power generator proposals.
"It hasn't caught up with climate change. It doesn't properly regulate things like greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
"So this is the process that's going to be used in the place of an environmental effects statement and that is worrying when there are some issues with the process, particularly when there is not a clear benchmark for the EPA to assess this power station against."