Gore climate graduate and ‘agent of change’ now AGL’s point man

AGL’s head of government relations is a graduate of Al Gore’s climate change leadership program.

‘An orderly transition’: Tony Chappel.

The head of government relations with energy giant AGL is a graduate of Al Gore’s climate-change leadership program whose move to the corporate world last year follows a quest to “change the system from within”.

Tony Chappel is part of AGL’s executive team responsible for engaging with federal and state governments and local communities as the nation’s largest coal-fired power producer.

He is helping AGL managing director Andy Vesey’s policy for an “orderly transition” out of coal to renewable energy as the company encounters protests that its plans to shut down the Liddell power station in the NSW Hunter Valley could threaten power supplies.

Mr Chappel, who joined AGL as head of government and community relations in February last year, has been a chief of staff to NSW Liberal minister Rob Stokes, and linked to his party’s moderate faction. He is a former president of the Young Liberals in NSW and was once touted as a candidate in the Sydney state seats of Davidson or Ku-ring-gai.

Mr Chappel told The Australian in 2011 that he had “started to feel quite disconnected” from some policy positions taken by the federal Liberal Party almost a decade earlier, especially on climate change. “I got quite uncomfortable, especially since their position ignored the science,” he said.

He joined former US vice-president Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and graduated from its leadership program. Climate leaders work to educate communities about “the reality of climate change and promote both local and global solutions”.

The Gore project’s mission is “to educate the public about the harmful effects of climate change and to work toward solutions at a grassroots level worldwide”.

Mr Chappel scored a British Council Chevening scholarship to Imperial College London in 2009, where he studied for a masters degree in energy policy.

While in Britain, he worked as a researcher at the University of Oxford, on projects mapping sustainable development pathways for Rwanda and on applied ­research with French development agency AFD about the use of economic tools to address environmental issues.

Critics of Mr Chappel within the NSW Liberal right faction say he is in the “vanguard” of climate-change activists who believe they can influence corporate policies by working in executive positions for change.

The Australian reported yesterday that former GetUp! campaigns director and Labor staffer Skye Laris, known for her views on climate change, is now senior manager, public advocacy, at AGL. A spokesman for AGL said Ms Laris was “employed to work on public engagement and does not have a direct role in policy development”.

While Mr Chappel said in a 2011 Weekend Australian Magazine profile that he wanted to “change the system from within”, those close to him dismiss any suggestion he is an activist and point to his years as a lawyer for coal interests, notably Whitehaven Coal.

After leaving Whitehaven in November 2012, Mr Chappel re-entered the political fray, working for more than three years as chief of staff for Mr Stokes. In March this year, while with AGL, he was a keynote speaker at a global warming forum in Sydney called “Conservatives for Conservation”.

The Australian asked Mr Chappel how he came to AGL, and whether the past description of wanting to “change the system from within” on climate change was a fair one.

He said: “I developed my insights on energy from prior roles in finance and the mining sector. My advocacy at AGL is for the policy architecture to deliver an orderly transition — as opposed to the disorderly transition we are currently living through.”