July
- Opinion
- Energy transition
It’s an energy race between the implausible and the impossible
Peter Dutton has come up with a nuclear-powered cost of living wedge to expose Labor’s overreach on renewables and sustainability.
May
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Keeping Eraring open is about engineering not morality
The imminent decision around when to close Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station is a watershed moment between an ideological approach to climate change and the laws of physics.
April
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Woodside and the new climate activists
Energy companies work in a twilight industry where demand still endures. They don’t know the answers to the questions investor activists are asking.
March
- Opinion
- Nuclear energy
Nuclear vs Renewables shouldn’t be Ford vs Holden
Reducing the complexities of national energy policy to a clean energy brawl is the last thing Australia needs in the middle of the biggest industrial rebuild in the nation’s history.
February
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Victorian blackouts cast misinformation over grid reliability
Electricity is so political that a technical fault was spun in erroneous directions by all sides of the renewables debate.
January
- Opinion
- Renewables
Wetland or ocean wind farm? The choice is easy this time
There’s little chance of Victoria ever building its offshore turbines. But this week’s veto of the state’s plans contained an important precedent on the use of net zero in the environment legislation.
December 2023
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Capacity scheme sounds grand, but it’s a political Band-Aid
Labor’s “two birds” political strategy had been to promise that a rapid build of massed renewables would deliver both cheaper energy and environmental salvation. But not any more.
November 2023
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Rooftop solar overload has blown up energy markets
Probably the only way to build massed renewable generation will be as regulated assets, meaning governments underwriting the whole nine yards.
September 2023
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Face reality about transfer of power from coal
Governments should accept that they may well be managing end-of-life coal-fired generators for decades and that each will be more critical than the last.
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Energy needs a contest of ideas, not a rigid central plan
A single-minded path and the dogmatic pursuit of impossible targets lacks the flexibility this vast transformation will demand.
June 2023
- Opinion
- Energy transition
Australia’s energy grid is in trouble
There is serious and widespread disquiet across the operational end of the electricity industry about how long before something goes bang.
May 2023
- Opinion
- Carbon challenge
Australia powers the new green cold war
Renewable energy is now on the front line of superpower rivalry. That is both an opportunity and a challenge for Australia.
April 2023
- Opinion
- Nuclear energy
If nuclear power is OK for AUKUS, why not for climate change?
If we can be rational about using eight floating nuclear reactors to defend us, then maybe it’s time to consider how nuclear could support our transition to clean energy too.
March 2023
- Opinion
- Climate policy
No new coal or gas a line in the sand between Labor and Greens
Despite appearances, the passage of the safeguard mechanism reforms is no longer about reducing greenhouse emissions. It’s about the difference between governing and activism.
February 2023
- Opinion
- Energy
Minns’ plan for energy security leaves Andrews’ stunt in the shade
Re-establishing a bloated, inefficient 20th-century electricity utility is a political and economic nightmare. But government can play an important role in the 21st-century grid.
January 2023
- Opinion
- Renewables
Sun Cable was a colossus that collapsed under its own weight
It wasn’t just the giant egos in the power project. It was economics, engineering and physics too gigantic to stack up.
December 2022
- Opinion
- Energy
Rolling blackouts the hollow victory of climate piety over energy reality
Our domestic energy shortage isn’t just about Ukraine. We have developed an abusive relationship with the fossil fuels that we rely upon.
October 2022
- Opinion
- Energy
The political divide on energy is just evolving. It’s not dead
Energy ministers and regulators are brimming with new ambition. The CEOs at the coal face are more concerned with the staggering size of the task.
September 2022
- Opinion
- Carbon challenge
Getting the renewables play right is easier said than done
Despite the hype, renewables cannot work miracles. There is so much risk in getting it right while integrating them into the energy mix.
August 2022
- Opinion
- Carbon challenge
Australia is well-placed to be world’s renewables pioneer
Look past politicised and arbitrary targets, and this country has a better chance than the northern hemisphere of making renewables work.