Category Archives: Energy

Record levels of renewable energy push demand for electricity to all-time low for December quarter

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Increased output from renewables, with a near-zero fuel cost, also nudged more coal and gas out of the generation market

Milder temperatures and record levels of renewable energy drove electricity demand to its lowest levels for any December quarter, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Wholesale power prices also retreated during the period, particularly after the Albanese government imposed price caps on black coal and gas that are used to generate power, AEMO said in its quarterly report released on Wednesday.

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‘No chance’ of global heating below 1.5C but nuclear tech ‘promising’ in climate crisis, Bill Gates says

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Billionaire and founder of Microsoft tells Sydney audience it is ‘great to have Australia on board on climate’

The world will be lucky to avoid 2.5C of heating, but emerging technology may help avert even worse, Bill Gates has told a Sydney audience.

The US billionaire and philanthropist told the Lowy Institute on Monday that while malaria still killed more children – 400,000 a year – the climate crisis was “worth investing in massively because it will get worse and worse over time”.

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Labour’s Rachel Reeves aiming to be ‘Britain’s first green chancellor’

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Frontbencher to call for more help with energy bills for householders and to promise massive green power programme

Rachel Reeves has said she wants to be “Britain’s first green chancellor” ahead of a speech in which she will call on ministers to extend relief on energy bills and promise that Labour will reduce these in the longer term with a massive green power programme.

Addressing the Fabian Society conference on Saturday, the shadow chancellor is to argue that investment in renewable energies, plus a huge programme to retrofit insulation to homes – part of Labour’s flagship £28bn-a-year investment in climate measures – could save households up to £1,400 off annual bills each year.

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Wood banks emerge as vital source of heat while US gas bills still on the rise

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Wood banks distribute firewood to people in need as the average US gas bill goes up by 28% this winter

Inflation may be going down in the US, dropping to 6.5% from last month’s 7.1%, but the cost of keeping a home warm this winter is still on the rise. The average gas bill will increase by 28% this winter compared to last, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration.

In some places across the country, people are returning to a surprising source of heat to keep costs down: wood. In areas where wood is more widely available and used for heating – such as forested parts of New England – wood banks are emerging as a vital way to stay warm this winter.

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News live updates: Australian leaders react to Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation; Queensland braces for severe storms

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Student debt cut for teachers who go rural; WA to ban display and possession of Nazi symbols. Follow the day’s news live

Growing impact of climate disasters on mental health revealed

In case you missed it, a new poll commissioned by the Climate Council shows that four in five Australians have experienced some form of natural disaster at least once since 2019.

This coal cap scheme will see NSW doing our part at the request of the Albanese government to contribute to the national solution of this national problem.

I know those currently providing coal for the local market will appreciate that companies enjoying super profits on the back of the war in Ukraine will now do their part for the domestic market.

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NSW to intervene in coal market to ‘even playing field’ among producers

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Miners to be required to set aside up to 10% of production for domestic users, state energy minister Matt Kean says

New South Wales will require thermal coalminers reserve as much as 10% of their output for domestic coal-fired power stations and other users in a bid to share the burden more fairly among producers.

The move, announced on Thursday, is the latest government intervention in energy markets in a bid to limit price increases and avoid a repeat of last June’s supply shortages that helped trigger a suspension of the national electricity market.

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Fukushima: court upholds acquittals of three Tepco executives over disaster

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High court in Japan agreed defendants could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and triggered a nuclear meltdown

Three former executives from the company that operates the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have had their not-guilty verdicts upheld by a court in Japan, dealing a blow to campaigners demanding the firm take legal responsibility for the disaster in March 2011.

The Tokyo high court on Wednesday cleared Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), along with former vice-presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto, of professional negligence resulting in death.

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Australian energy users call gas industry ‘a bunch of bullies’ amid claims of supply shortages

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Producers argue Albanese government’s price cap intervention has ‘paralysed the market’

Strains in the gas market have not been eased by the Albanese government’s price caps imposed late last year, with an industry group claiming supply shortages remain while the peak gas lobby is warning the sector has become “virtually paralysed”.

One month on from the government’s rare intervention to limit domestic gas prices to $12 a gigajoule and black coal to $125 a tonne, big commercial gas users are hoping new compliance guidelines to be released soon by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will force suppliers to provide an adequate supply.

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Climate activists vow to take to streets to stop fossil fuel extraction

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‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest

Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit.

In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”.

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Higher UK energy bills here to stay, warns oil company boss

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Equinor chief says bills won’t return to levels seen before Ukraine invasion given windfall taxes and move to greener energy

The boss of one of Europe’s biggest energy companies has warned that higher gas and electricity prices are here to stay and consumers should not expect them to return to levels seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Anders Opedal, the chief executive of Norway’s state oil company Equinor, said factors including windfall taxes and the large sums energy firms must invest to move from fossil fuels to greener alternatives mean bills are likely to remain elevated.

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Household solar boom back on track after severe weather and supply disruptions lead to 14% drop in capacity

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December 2022 was third-busiest month on record for solar panel installation partly driven by spiking electricity prices

When record rainfall caused flooding in south-east Queensland last February, Steve McLean’s solar installers were kept off roofs, blowing a $60,000 hole in his firm’s budget and setting back what might have been another record year for his business.

“If we didn’t do a system for five weeks, you can imagine that no one else did … We got absolutely smashed in February and March,” McLean, the owner of Gold Coast Solar Systems, said. “If you take that number out of the marketplace, well, that was disastrous.”

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UK private renters could save billions if energy efficiency minimum is raised

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Bill payers stand to collectively save billions if minimum standard raised to a C rating, research suggests

Raising the minimum standard of energy efficiency to a C rating for privately rented homes would save bill payers about £570 a year, research has found.

This would amount to annual savings totalling £1.75bn across the UK, according to the thinktank E3G in a report called Cutting Energy Bills and Raising Standards for Private Renters.

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‘Billionaire biffo’ shines light on hugely ambitious $30bn Sun Cable solar project

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The row between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest reveals the technical, economic and even geopolitical hurdles to completion

Behind the “billionaire biffo” between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest over the future of Sun Cable is a project that has analysts dubbing “visionary” but also “extremely ambitious”.

In Australia’s first big business story of the year, Sun Cable was placed into voluntary administration on Wednesday. That signalled the company won’t be able to meet debt payments without another injection of funds said to be $60m, with Forrest the one not “aligned” with other investors in a willingness to dig deep again.

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UK coal-burning power plant to stay open two years longer than planned

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Ratcliffe-on-Soar to be kept viable until late 2024 after ministers make request prompted by energy crisis

A Nottinghamshire coal-burning power plant will stay open for two years beyond its planned closure date after a call from ministers prompted by the UK’s energy crisis.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar had initially been pencilled in to shut in 2022, but last year said it would have an initial extension until 31 March 2023.

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Giant solar farm project in doubt after disagreement between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest

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Australian billionaires had backed $30bn Sun Cable venture designed to help power Darwin, Indonesia and Singapore but the company has gone into voluntary administration

Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest have fallen out over plans to build a giant solar farm in the Northern Territory to supply Darwin, Indonesia and Singapore with power, with the venture entering voluntary administration.

Grok, the family investment arm of Cannon-Brookes, and the appointed administrators said in separate statements the company driving the project, Sun Cable, would continue to operate and seek new financial support.

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MPs to hear plan to get rural households to run heating on vegetable oil

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George Eustice says adapted kerosene boilers can run on ‘hydro-treated vegetable oil’ and cut emissions by 88%

A proposal to incentivise households in rural areas to run their heating systems on vegetable oil is to be put to parliament.

The former environment secretary George Eustice will introduce a bill proposing the removal of duties on renewable liquid heating fuels and incentives to replace kerosene in existing boilers.

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Energy efficiency ‘war effort’ needed to cut bills and emissions, say MPs

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Ministers missed crucial opportunities but should use energy windfall tax to speed up insulation efforts, committee says

A national “war effort” on energy efficiency is required to cut energy bills, reduce climate-heating emissions and ensure energy security, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.

Boosting efficiency in homes and businesses is the fastest way to cut energy use but the government missed a “crucial window of opportunity” last summer, the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC) said. The energy bills crisis was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while political turmoil in the UK resulted in three prime ministers in office between July and October.

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Australian coal industry says China market matters less than before, even if import ban ends

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Queensland Resources Council says industry would welcome restrictions easing but new long-term customers since found elsewhere in Asia

Australia would benefit from a lifting of China’s ban on its coal but any gains would likely be modest as miners have largely redirected supplies elsewhere, analysts said.

Shares of ASX-listed coalminers shot up on Wednesday after reports China was considering lifting its restrictions on coal imports from Australia from April. The ban was imposed in mid-2020 amid deteriorating bilateral relations that have since begun to improve.

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The Albanese government has had a solid start. Now comes the hard part

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Labor has grown in popularity since its election in May, and ticked off a number of campaign promises. But harder decisions await in 2023

The year ended on a high for the Anthony Albanese, with opinion polls showing the Labor government and its leader are only growing in popularity, across all states.

The new government spent its first seven months ticking off election promises and recalibrating Australia’s standing on the world stage. Albanese aimed to keep politics off the front page as much as possible. In that, it has been somewhat successful, with the biggest headlines featuring his predecessor, Scott Morrison. But every honeymoon must come to an end and as we head into 2023, the domestic political challenges for the Albanese government will soon loom large.

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European gas prices fall to pre-Ukraine war level

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Milder winter, alternative imports and energy reduction cuts demand after Russian invasion pushed up prices

European gas prices have dipped to a level last seen before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, after warmer weather across the continent eased concerns over shortages.

The month-ahead European gas future contract dropped as low as €76.78 per megawatt hour on Wednesday, the lowest level in 10 months, before closing higher at €83.70, according to Refinitiv, a data company.

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