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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

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

CEF’s comprehensive summation of the critical minerals opportunity for Australia including a response to the federal consultation’s Terms of Reference and key policy recommendations. Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released its fourth quarter of 2022 Quarterly Energy Dynamics report today. It is a welcome reminder that the energy transition is well established and accelerating beyond expectations. While rampant fossil fuel price hyperinflation caused mass disruption in 2022, the underlying trends are clear – and the burgeoning of renewables and decline of coal and gas in the grid ultimately spell permanent price relief. After the historic Q4 federal government intervention to cap wholesale prices of gas and coal, prices on the electricity futures market more than halved in the final three months of 2022, as renewables set new records. Read more

The foundational premise of CEF is that financial markets are phenomenally powerful, but they need an explicit, high, permanent price on carbon to drive the rapid decarbonisation pathway required to ensure alignment with 1.5°C, which was made politically toxic by the previous government. In our view, the SGM reforms by the Albanese government could be strengthened, but create a credible framework to re-establish a price on carbon emissions in Australia. Read more

CEF’s submission to the NSW government on the proposed Winterbourne Wind Farm in the New England region. The project is expected to generate approximately 2,100,000 megawatt hours (MWh) per year of clean, renewable energy — enough to power more than 375,000 average NSW homes for a year. Read more

Energy Minister Chris Bowen this month reported on the Federal Government’s review of the Safeguard Mechanism, the central policy driver of scope 1 industrial emissions reductions by Australia’s 215 biggest emitting facilities. Also this month, the outcomes of the Chubb Review of Australian Carbon Credit Units were handed down. The reforms of these key pieces of climate and energy policy architecture were urgent and necessary. Our key takeout: the proposed changes now provide the framework for a credible carbon price in Australia. Read our full analysis. Read more