Category Archives: Energy

‘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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Anthony Albanese rejects reports of $450m coal price cap payout for Rio Tinto and partners

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Federal and state governments have agreed to pay producers compensation for pre-existing supply contracts exceeding the cap

Anthony Albanese has rejected suggestions of a potential $450m payout to Rio Tinto and its partners for the Gladstone power plant, which could push coal price cap compensation to more than $1bn.

Albanese told Channel Seven’s Sunrise the federal government expects the cost “will be nothing like the sort of figures” reported for Gladstone although Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk later appeared to confirm the figure was possible, as a maximum.

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More than 14,000 in Washington state lose power after energy station attacked

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Christmas Day outages add to an alarming string of incidents with similar power grid vandalism in Oregon and North Carolina

More than 14,000 people suffered power outages in Washington state on Christmas Day following burglaries and a series of vandalisms at different power stations.

The Pierce county sheriff said in two statements that no suspects have yet been identified for the incidents.

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Clive Palmer’s coal company seeks to overturn ruling that Queensland mine will harm future generations

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Waratah Coal lodges application to overturn recommendation that lease and approvals be refused

A company owned by Clive Palmer is seeking to overturn a landmark ruling that found its plans to dig Australia’s largest thermal coalmine in central Queensland would infringe upon the human rights of future generations and exacerbate the climate crisis.

The coalition that first brought the case court – led by young First Nations women and environmentalists – is vowing to defend last month’s ruling, which they describe as “the most significant decision on climate change and human rights in Australia”.

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Campaign against coal royalty increases could backfire, Queensland treasurer warns mining lobby

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Exclusive: Cameron Dick urges resources council to stop risking coal’s social licence with ad campaign as royalty rise is here to stay

The Queensland treasurer, Cameron Dick, says the state will not back down on recent coal royalty increases, warning the mining lobby its multimillion-dollar advertising campaign opposing the changes may harm the industry.

Dick met with the Queensland Resources Council this week to ensure it was “under no misapprehension” the government would stay the course on the new progressive royalty tiers, which increase when prices are unusually high and companies are making windfall profits.

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Australia news live: flood peaks expected in parts of SA, private hospital nurses to strike in NSW for first time in decades

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South Australian SES revises dates for expected peak flows with Renmark and Berri expected to peak today; nurses at two major private hospitals in Sydney to walk off the job at 1pm

Private hospitals nurses to walk off the job for first time in decades

Staying in NSW, nurses at two major private Sydney hospitals will walk off the job later today.

The Australian market regulator and the cap price that people pay for electricity will make their announcement in February about what bills people will pay for next year. And we expect that the move will feed directly through to that and see downward pressure of up to $243 on electricity bills of what it was previously going to be.

How much of a philosophical jump was it for you as a Liberal, to intervene in the market in this way and cap the prices?

Well, it wasn’t a jump at all to stand by people following the illegal war in Ukraine, which is pushing up electricity bills. The government is there to protect the people – not the other way around.

And that’s exactly what we did. We looked at a range of measures to support people to deal with these high electricity prices. And this is the one that the commonwealth government asked us to do and, obviously, our No 1 priority is standing by the people of New South Wales using our balance sheet to support families and businesses. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

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Union fury over Labor decision to split aged care pay rises – as it happened

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Crossbench say Australia needs to ‘get cracking’ on Cop15 commitments

More reactions are coming in after the close of the biodiversity Cop15 – which leading scientists have called “vastly more important” than the Cop27 climate meeting, because it decides the “fate of the living world”.

We need to get cracking on implementation to deliver on commitments.

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Eight batteries to be built around Australia to increase renewable energy storage capacity

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Energy minister Chris Bowen says the batteries – shared between four states – will increase capacity tenfold to help stabilise the grid

Eight large batteries to store renewable energy will be built around Australia to support the grid and help keep energy prices down, the federal government has said.

The government-owned Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) would provide $176m to the projects, the energy minister, Chris Bowen, announced on Saturday.

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Electricity generated by burning native Australian timber no longer classified as renewable energy

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Labor revokes Abbott government move which allowed energy from burning wood waste to be counted with solar and wind

Electricity generated by burning native forest wood waste will no longer be allowed to be classified as renewable energy under a regulatory change adopted by the Albanese government.

The decision, which Labor had promised to consider after it was recommended by a Senate committee in September, reverses a 2015 Abbott government move which allowed burning native forest timber to be counted alongside solar and wind energy towards the national renewable energy target.

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Australia politics live: PM offers ‘humble thanks of a grateful nation’ as parliament pays tribute to Queensland shooting victims

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MPs and senators are back in Canberra to pass the government’s energy price cap legislation. Follow updates live

Meanwhile, Chris Bowen has been absolutely everywhere this morning, bouncing from interview to interview and Jim Chalmers has been filling in where Bowen hasn’t been.

We’ll bring you some of what they have been saying very soon.

Overwhelmingly this year, we’ve had unprecedented high prices and that’s what you and I were just talking about. Mostly that’s been driven by supply conditions. So you’ve had lots of discussion about the perfect storm, but we had lots of coal plant outages very high coal and gas prices, restrictions on the amount of water that Snowy Hydro is able to release and very high demand with an early winter but on top of all that, we don’t think all of those things explained the level of price increases we saw in the whole stock market this year. We have got some evidence that suggests maybe generators have been withholding some of their capacity to drive up prices a bit but it is early analysis and we do want to do some further work to test the outcome of that and how strong it is.

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Australia’s coal exporters made windfall gain of $45bn last year, report estimates

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Report by Australia Institute finds a windfall profits tax could collect almost all this money for public use

Coal exporters from Australia reaped as much as $45bn in windfall gain in the 2021-22 year, with a similar bonanza likely this year, offering governments a budgetary boon for those willing to grasp it, the Australia Institute has said.

In a report released on Thursday, the institute’s economists said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent disruption to energy markets alone had delivered between $13bn and $23bn of gains to coalminers. All up, those gains totalled between $39bn and $45bn.

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Gas industry attempts to block price caps on fossil fuels shrugged off by Australian government

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Crossbenchers express surprise at lack of direct lobbying from resource companies who may have been blindsided by ‘reasonable pricing’ test

Gas industry concerns that price caps on fossil fuels will damage investment and supply have been shrugged off by the majority of parliament, with lobbying efforts from fossil fuel companies unsuccessful in scuppering Labor’s plans.

Despite weeks of strong public criticism from coal and gas companies about the proposed price caps and increasingly apocalyptic claims of energy disasters if skyrocketing profits were reined in, the parliament will pass the government’s proposal on Thursday.

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Man who fired gun inside Canberra airport was on parole for attempted murder – as it happened

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Butler defends decision to cut Medicare-funded psychology sessions

The federal health minister, Mark Butler, is speaking to ABC Radio following his decision Monday to cut the number of Medicare psychologist sessions. He’s come under serious heat for the move which experts say is “appalling.”

This program has been around for a number of years, and it has for many years had a limit of 10 sessions for people to access over that long period the average person has used 4 - 5 of those sessions.

This is a good program, I’ve been familiar with it for many, many years, but its problem has always been one of equity.

The evaluation found that the lowest-income communities have more than twice the levels of mental distress as the highest-income communities, but they get the lowest level of support and, under this program, that inequality was substantially worsened by these additional 10 sessions.

People like Prof Ian Hickey said at the time that those additional sessions in a sector with a limit workforce, was going to have the effect of cutting out other people, meaning other people couldn’t get any support whatsoever.

And the evaluation I .. released on Monday showed exactly that, that it had the impact of cutting more people out of the system. Most of those people were in some of the poorest communities, where the evaluation said there is the highest need.

The recommendation of the report was we would consider additional sessions for people with complex needs, now this system was not designed to focus on people with complex needs.

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