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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. The leading investment bank expects the “trilemma” of energy security, sustainability and affordability to remain in focus in 2023. 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

A new study in Nature Energy released overnight quantifies the devastating toll of global energy price hyperinflation, with household energy costs spiking up to 113% in 2022.The report said the price crisis could push up to 141 million people into extreme poverty. Meanwhile, as Tim Buckley notes in this analysis, fossil fuel multinationals have extracted massive war superprofits, bringing to the fore again the case for proper taxation of these corporates. Read more

Our 6th and latest instalment on the Hindenburg washup: While Adani is the biggest private coal developer in the world, the Adani Group had also pledged to invest US$70bn in green industries this decade, suggesting at face value that a setback for Adani is a setback to India’s energy transition. CEF would argue otherwise. Prior to January 2023, Adani was, at best, walking both sides of the street, deploying greenwashing to raise foreign capital, and leveraging global capital markets to expand its fossil fuel interests as it leveraged crony capitalism at home. Read Tim Buckley’s latest analysis. Read more