28 March 2024

CLIMATE POLITICS

Government introduces financial market supervision, climate reporting reforms (Banking Day): Treasurer Jim Chalmers introduced a bill into Parliament yesterday that includes tougher regulation of financial market licensees and requirements for climate-related financial reporting. Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Markets Infrastructure and Other Measures) Bill 2024 implements recommendations from the Council of Financial Regulators for reform to strengthen Australia’s financial market infrastructure.

Anthony Albanese announces Solar SunShot manufacturing program to boost Australian production (ABC News): The prime minister has travelled to coal mining heartland in the New South Wales Hunter Valley to announce a $1 billion program that aims to boost the number of solar panels made in Australia. One in three Australian households have solar panels, the highest rate in the world, but only 1 per cent of them are manufactured locally.

Ex-Labor leaders among group call on Tanya Plibersek to protect Aboriginal rock art from gas emissions (ABC News): Dozens of leaders, including former Labor politicians, are calling on the federal environment minister to stop the proposed extension of a major gas project amid claims it is damaging Aboriginal rock art in northern Western Australia. Kim Beazley is one of several ex-Labor leaders who signed an open letter calling on Tanya Plibersek to protect rock art on the Burrup Peninsula from industrial emissions.

Labor pulls gas bill after Greens threaten car emission reforms (Australian Financial Review): The Albanese government has halted an offshore gas regulation bill the Coalition said it would support after the Greens threatened to retaliate by scuttling Labor’s signature vehicle emissions reduction policy. Amid fresh warnings from the gas industry about an urgent need for regulatory certainty, Labor unexpectedly withdrew a bill from the Senate that would grant Resources Minister Madeleine King authority to make some environmental and regulatory decisions without going through separate environmental protection laws.

‘Get on with it’: Car makers accept Labor fuel policy – over to Greens (Australian Financial Review): Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has challenged the Greens to back a revised vehicle efficiency scheme that would give car makers including Toyota, Ford and Isuzu more flexibility on popular models of heavy SUVs and 4x4s. Standing alongside executives from Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla and motor dealer groups, Mr Bowen and Transport Minister Catherine King announced a series of tweaks to their planned New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.

Better climate science, greater First Nations participation flagged in national water policy overhaul (ABC News): The federal government has released details of a plan that will readjust Australia's outdated overarching water policy, to better prepare for climate change and boost participation of First Nations peoples in water management. Now 20 years old, the National Water Initiative (NWI) aligns state, territory and federal water policies by setting objectives for how water is shared and managed, and ensuring they are in harmony with other areas of policy, international treaties and commitments.

Tuvalu accepts security and climate pact, says Australia’s Pacific minister (The Guardian): Australia and Tuvalu will go ahead with a security and climate migration pact, after the latter’s new government agreed not to change the deal, Australia’s Pacific minister, Pat Conroy, has told parliament. The two countries had announced the deal in November, but it was thrown into doubt during an election campaign in the remote Pacific atoll of 11,000 people that is threatened by rising sea levels.

CARBON MARKETS

Eni to review plans for carbon-intensive Verus gas field to minimise 'environmental footprint' (ABC News): Italian resource giant Eni is reviewing multi-billion-dollar development plans for an extremely carbon-intensive new gas field in the Timor Sea. Last year the company said it was aiming to reach a final investment decision on its Verus gas field — formerly known as Evans Shoal — 330 kilometres north-west of Darwin.

Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds (The Guardian): Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study. Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration” and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

ASIC wins first greenwashing civil penalty action against Vanguard (ASIC): The Federal Court has found Vanguard Investments Australia contravened the law by making misleading claims about certain environmental, social and governance (ESG) exclusionary screens applied to investments in a Vanguard index fund. At a hearing before Justice O’Bryan on 8 March 2024, Vanguard admitted to engaging in conduct that was liable to mislead the public and that it had made representations that were false or misleading.

Glencore abandons coal production cap as another climate pledge fails (Australian Financial Review): Australia’s biggest thermal coal producer, Glencore, has withdrawn a promise to keep annual coal production below 150 million tonnes, backpedalling from a climate pledge it made five years ago. Glencore declared a coal production cap in February 2019 as part of a strategy to “run down” its mines into retirement rather than sell them under then chief executive Ivan Glasenberg.

Making the case for nature’s role in business (Business News): The state government’s 10-year plan to expand Western Australia’s native forests came into effect in January, aiming to increase forest cover by more than 400,000 hectares by 2033. The Forest Management Plan 2024- 2033 manages more than 2.5 million hectares of native forest throughout the South West.

GREEN PROJECTS AND INITIATIVES

Horizon looks beyond lithum to beat WA heat (Business News): Zinc bromine and sodium sulphur batteries will be tested at microgrids in regional Western Australia, as Horizon Power looks to beat the impacts of heat on its remote storage solutions. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency will allocate $2.85 million to a $5.7 million project to test two novel long duration energy storage technologies at Nullagine and Carnarvon.

‘It’s a lot cheaper than buying a Tesla’: low-carbon milk has arrived (Australian Financial Review): A Tasmanian start-up has joined forces with a premium dairy producer to engineer the world’s first low-emissions milk by feeding digestive seaweed in micro-doses to cows. The eco-milk, made by Ashgrove, boasts up to 25 per cent less methane emissions than other full cream varieties. The secret lies in a native Australian seaweed called asparagopsis.

How Sun Cable could be a loser, yet a winner (Australian Financial Review): Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Sun Cable will be pipped to the post in the race to lay a 4000-kilometre cable to send solar energy out of the desert and under the oceans. But the British company set to finish first says its project could kickstart the industry worldwide. Xlinks has a ￡20 billion-plus ($39 billion) plan to lay its own 4000-kilometre cable that will hook up an 11.5-gigawatt Moroccan solar and onshore wind farm to the south-west coast of England, supplying 3.6 gigawatts into the British electricity grid by the early 2030s.

Bunbury port buoys offshore windfarm prospects (Business News): Western Australia’s government-owned ports and offshore project expertise place it in the box seat to build a substantial offshore wind industry, but consultation will have to improve to get communities on side. That is the view of Oceanex Energy chief executive Andy Evans, whose company’s proposed two-gigawatt windfarm 20km off Bunbury’s coast is among several major firms casting an eye over the area.

Government-backed hydrogen plant rejected (Business News): A state government-supported green hydrogen plant mooted for the outskirts of Northam has been knocked back over concerns it would not produce green hydrogen. Infinite Green Energy, Doral Energy Group, and South Korea’s Samsung C&T had hoped to be producing four tonnes of hydrogen a day by the end of 2024 from the $120 million plant.

AGL and Cannon-Brookes want to build solar panels at former coal site (The Sydney Morning Herald): Energy giant AGL will partner with a technology company backed by its biggest shareholder, billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, to assess building a first-of-its-kind solar panel manufacturing plant on the site of the decommissioned Liddell coal-fired power station. The agreement between AGL and Sydney-based SunDrive to begin feasibility work on an advanced manufacturing facility comes nearly a year after AGL shuttered the Liddell generator in the NSW Upper Hunter region, which had reached the end of its technical life.

OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST

These are the biggest fears for renewables investors (Australian Financial Review): A dearth of green energy opportunities offering the right blend of returns and risk has topped a survey about the biggest roadblocks to greater climate change investment for a second year, highlighting the challenge of securely allocating capital to the cause. While overall uncertainty about climate policy as a barrier to investment has fallen sharply – to 40 per cent from 70 per cent two years ago – investors highlighted the need for an appropriate risk return.

Rooftop solar cap removed in Pilbara towns (Business News): Constraints which blocked Karratha residents and businesses from connecting residential solar to the North West Interconnect System grid have been removed, Horizon Power has revealed. A technology upgrade delivered as part of the utility’s Smart Connect Solar rollout has removed capacity limits in the Pilbara town, abolishing a constraint which limited the amount of solar available residents on the main power network.

Keeping the lights on at Eraring could cost taxpayers $150 million a year (WA Today): NSW taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $150 million a year for every year the Eraring coal-fired power plant remains open, energy analysts predict, with the Minns government refusing to detail the terms of its negotiations with owner Origin Energy ahead of a likely extension beyond 2025. More than six months after the government confirmed it would begin negotiations with Origin on a proposal to extend Australia’s largest coal-fired power station beyond its scheduled closure date of 2025, there remains little detail about the terms of an extension.

The energy sector is having its Uber moment (WA Today): Octopus Energy founder Greg Jackson made a big splash at COP 28 – the United Nations Climate Change Conference hosted in Dubai last December. The Octopus logo was everywhere and Jackson regaled audiences of dignitaries, politicians and the business elite with stories about how the energy retailer, and its digital retail platform Kraken, was transforming the UK energy market.