Latest Energy & Environment Stories

The National Parks Association of NSW and ex-Energy Australia chair Ted Woodley are considering a legal challenge to the $10 billion Snowy 2.0, which they say will push back the transition to renewable energy and destroy thousands of hectares of national park, in light of the fact that the whole project hinges on a 30-year-old report. which is being kept secret writes Callum Foote.

While the UK’s Met Office is out there educating the public, BoM is remarkably coy about any public discussion of climate change. Questions have also been asked whether its senior leadership is too close to the gas industry. Sandi Keane investigates.

The independent hearings into one of the most controversial projects in NSW history, Santos’ coal seam gas dream for Narrabri, are wrapping up. Meanwhile, new NSW guidelines to fast-track developments look set to turn into a nightmare for community groups, writes Callum Foote.

The state’s 52nd coal mine, and the first since Covid, has been approved by the Minister for the Environment in NSW amid plunging coal prices and huge local opposition. The fate of Whitehaven’s Vickery mine, and its impact on farmers around Narrabri, now lies in the hands of the NSW’s independent planning commissioners

Carbon capture and storage, the prohibitively expensive climate mitigation strategy, is back on the Coalition’s agenda. Yet the facts speak for themselves. Of Shell’s total emissions of 656 million tonnes a year, its two CCS plants remove just 5 million tonnes a year from the atmosphere; the few plants in the world only exist because of huge government subsidies; while European oil companies use CCS primarily as a “feel-good” marketing message. Tim Buckley reports.

Multinational corporations have captured the national polity and continue to push last-century energy solutions on Australia, in defiance of sound policy and due process. The US fracking industry has collapsed. Yet the Covid Commission forges ahead with coal seam gas plans for Santos at Narrabri. Callum Foote reports.

The Climate Solutions Fund is a fillip for the Government’s fossil fuel backers and offers little in the way of energy policy reform to reduce either Australia’s emissions or power prices. Tim Buckley reports.

Australia’s utter failure on carbon emissions was glossed over, and corporate machinations were ignored, in this week’s Four Corners climate wars program on ABC. Instead, it was a rehash which dwelt on the Canberra Bubble perspective, giving politicians from both sides of the aisle a platform to make excuses. Adam Lucas reports.

The Government is quietly blowing away years of environmental protections under cover of Covid. Its Covid Commission (NCCC) is stacked with executives from the gas and mining lobbies in what is turning out to be a bonanza for multinationals and yet another destructive blow to Australia’s efforts to curb global warming. Sandi Keane investigates.

With the release of his book, Oil Under Troubled Water, to coincide with Witness K’s closed court plea hearing this month, ACT lawyer, Bernard Collaery, has raised the stakes on who the real wrong-doers are in this unedifying story of how the Howard Government defied international law to spy on it’s cash-strapped neighbour to profit from oil in the Timor Sea. Callum Foote reports.

Should the Narrabri project get the green light, high levels of CO2 will be vented straight into the atmosphere, hardly the credentials for a “low carbon” transition fuel claimed by Santos in its 2020 Climate Change Report. Chemical engineer and energy industry veteran, Dr Andrew Grogan reports.

The “Battle for Narrabri” continues to rage under cover of Covid darkness. A new report on well data in the Pilliga Forest challenges claims by Santos that gas from its Narrabri Gas Project will be low on emissions. Anna Christie reports.

Having dithered on real action to tackle global warming, some in the Coalition are now taking a keen interest in solving it — by going nuclear. Noel Wauchope investigates what's behind the sudden push to overturn legislation prohibiting the exploration and mining of...

Plans by Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor to deliver power plants across the nation are in disarray; the $1 billion Grid Reliability Fund has not materialised, green bank investment has shuddered to a halt and the $300 million fund at the heart of the National Hydrogen Strategy has vanished

BlackRock, the world’s biggest fund, is quitting thermal coal. The move by the $10 trillion fund has stunned financial markets. While the people protest in the streets, progressive analysts such as IEEFA’s Buckley, who had lobbied hard for the BlackRock decision, protest about climate change to global finance bosses.