Our work

Public discourse on national security in Australia is evolving, while geopolitics and sovereign security are inarguably important, Australian society also cares about the economy and issues such as resilience in the face of the impacts of the climate and energy crisis. Diversifying Australia’s security strategy to encompass these concerns is an urgent matter because China is no longer the only, or major, threat to the world – or to Australia. Climate change and the energy crisis are clearly endangering Australia’s national interests now, and require more nuanced conversations to tackle. Read more

The global race to decarbonisation massively escalated overnight with new regulations designed to turbocharge and onshore cleantech in the EU, following the US’s game-changing Inflation Reduction Act, which is spearheading the energy revolution there. The challenge is now on for Australia to accelerate investment and leverage its competitive advantages as a value-adding energy transition materials and renewables superpower – or miss the boat. Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)’s assertion in its Gas Statement of Opportunity today that we need more new supply to offset purported imminent shortages is counterintuitive. There is no shortage, just a cartel with a chronic shortage of ethics extorting Australians as they export the majority of domestic production and rake in obscene war profits. It should be a major priority for AEMO to provide rule modernisations incentivising new technologies to rapidly decarbonise our grid and decouple from extortionate, polluting, volatile fossil fuels. Read our take. Read more

Consumers slugged by interest rate rises are in for more pain as the Australian Energy Regulator today flagged retail electricity price rises of ~20% from 1 July – noting that absent the Albanese government’s wholesale domestic coal and gas price cap intervention in December, this would have been more like 40-50%. The solutions: make the war-profiteering fossil fuel multinationals pulling superoprofits from our resources pay a temporary windfall tax to offset cost of living pressures for those hardest hit; and rapidly accelerate decarbonisation, delivering clean low-cost firmed renewables to Australians, permanently reducing power prices. Read more

A new partnership between the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Australia’s biggest mortgage lender, CBA, to incentivise energy efficiency and cut emissions in the $9tn residential sector is a step in the right direction, but there is scope for more ambition. CEF analyst Nishtha Aggarwal takes a look. Read more

More good news on the decarbonisation front as NSW Treasury guidelines require proponents to factor the price of Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions into their cost benefit analyses of projects greater than $10m value – a welcome development that complements the carbon pricing at the centre of the federal Safeguard Mechanism reforms. Under these guidelines, major projects such as Whitehaven’s climate-wrecking Narrabri coalmine expansion would fail to secure approval. Read more

As major investors bail and ASX-listed global fund manager GQG throws flailing Adani a US$2bn lifeline, questions are raised about Australian superfunds’ investments in the conglomerate. If the Hindenburg allegations are proven, the funds are effectively using their investors’ money to bankroll the largest corporate con in history – not to mention the biggest developer of new coal in the world. Read more

The launch of CEF’s major new report on Australia’s once-in-a-century critical minerals opportunity – “A Critical Minerals Value-Adding Superpower” – with a foreword and AFR op ed by former chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel, the latest developments on the Adani crisis, and the rocky path of the Safeguard Mechanism reforms with just 3 weeks till parliament rises ahead of the May budget. Read more

This week saw Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers make the call to back the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) recommendation to reject a Chinese-linked fund’s increased equity stake in an emerging Australian critical minerals developer, Northern Minerals, which is set to mine the rare earth dysprosium, used as an additive in neodymium magnets for electric vehicle motors. We look at the geopolitical implications of this move in the context of China’s global dominance on all things decarbonisation and responses by our trading partners. Read more

CEF’s new report is the first to comprehensively map Australia’s ‘once in a century’ opportunity to lead the world in value-added energy transition materials, including critical minerals, by processing, refining and manufacturing onhsore pre-export using our abundant renewable energy – a multi-hundred-billion dollar investment and export opportunity as the world rapidly decarbonises. Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator released an update of its Electricity Statement of Opportunities overnight. It confirms significant progress on decarbonising our grid in the last six months, coupled with the urgent need for accelerated investment in new generation, energy storage and transmission to ensure reliable supply as fossil fuels exit the grid, flagging a staggering 209 gigawatt pipeline of new firmed #renewables proposals worth over A$250 billion, and highlighting how decarbonisation is unlocking massive regional employment and investment opportunities. Read more

Our latest take on the federal government’s overhaul of a centrepiece climate policy- the Safeguard Mechanism. Yes, it is imperfect. The unlimited use of offsets particularly problematic and they should be a last resort. However, it is a massive win – and opportunity – in that it provides the critical policy architecture for a permanent, high price on carbon, incentivising decarbonisation and investment in clean tech, and it must be understood in the context of the government’s ecosystem of major policy reforms that collectively make significant headway after a devastating decade of LNP policy failure. Read more