Latest Energy & Environment Stories

Thanks Woodside. Taxpayers are on the hook for the $200 million-plus clean-up of an ageing oil production platform moored in the Timor Sea. Is Exxon next to shirk its oil rig clean up in the Bass Strait? Callum Foote reports.

Investor State Dispute Settlement processes in trade agreements hit the headlines when US multinational Philip Morris tried to sue Australia over its tobacco plain packaging laws. Australian mining companies are increasingly using ISDS processes and are being awarded billions based on dubious calculations of potential lost profits by unaccountable international tribunals. Patricia Ranald reports.

Australia’s carbon-belching future is surely being sealed by the Coalition with the acquiescence of Labor. As the world turns from coal, gas is almost as toxic for the climate. Callum Foote reports on Labor’s capture by the gas lobby capture while Angus Taylor appoints Macquarie’s Shemara Wikramanayake and former Origin chief Grant King to advise on his Energy Roadmap even though they are smack-bang in the middle of a billion-dollar gas deal.

In public, Qantas professes an absolute commitment to reducing carbon emissions. In private, it lobbies the government to weaken the global scheme for airlines to commit to offsetting their emissions. Elizabeth Minter reports.

Rio Tinto is not the only mining giant disregarding public interest. BHP is putting cultural heritage and potentially the lives of workers at risk, and exposing the environment to devastation. All aided by the law and the Coalition government, writes David Noonan and Dr Jim Green.

Lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry have enjoyed a meteoric rise in influence both locally and globally over the past few decades, writes Ian Dunlop. 

The fossil fuel giants got a big leg-up today as News Corp, Nine Entertainment, ABC News and Guardian Australia faithfully splashed the latest government gas plans on their front pages.

The destruction of the sacred Juukan Gorge caves highlighted the folly of Rio Tinto’s decision-making in moving its headquarters to the UK, a world away from local knowledge and in breach of the original merger conditions. It’s time Rio ended the remote-control management and returned its team to the country that provides the bulk of its profits, writes Shane West.

The giant coal port Dalrymple Bay is up for sale. The financial engineering wizards from Brookfield want out. Brookfield’s debt is humungous, and green hydrogen is looming as a mortal threat to coking coal. They can’t offload it to professional investors, so they are now targeting the mums and dads for a float on the ASX,

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 Government and its Covid Commission are pushing a $6 billion gas pipeline while new energy regulator, Clare Savage, calls into question the future of the gas networks. Meanwhile Australians still pay more for gas than customers overseas pay for Australian gas. Michael West reports on the momentous upheaval in energy.

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.