We conduct public interest financial analysis on the most profound economic transformation since the industrial revolution: the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

This year, the Australian federal government will spend billions on a scheme that makes it cheaper for miners and other industries to use diesel and petrol. It’s known as the fuel tax credit scheme, and there are growing calls for it to be wound back. With the federal budget under pressure, Nour Haydar speaks with Adam Morton about the most costly anti-climate policy in the Australian government budget, working against efforts to cut emissions Read more

Australia, an LNG exporter, stands to benefit from regional energy diversification efforts but also faces a domestic crunch for transport fuels. Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think-tank, said that at the start of the year Australia had just 25 days’ worth of diesel reserves and 29 days of petrol. “We have essentially no buffer against what is unfolding.” Read more

Data Centres Australia also took shots at the idea that these facilities could be curtailed during grid peaks, infeasible because “cloud and AI inferencing workloads require continuous availability”. Ditto for more stringent requirements for embodied emissions and efficiency, water use restrictions (“the bottleneck sits with water utilities, not operators”), and any requirements for transparently disclosing what is happening inside the data centres (“differentiating AI from non-AI workloads is technically problematic”). Tim Buckley, the director of Climate Energy Finance (one of the signatories of the principles), fired back at DCA head Belinda Dennett: “A lobbyist for private vested interests singing for your supper and trying to get involved after the event and in doing so, undermining the much-needed community interests your members require to build social licence and government approvals.” Read more