Another propaganda poll asks loaded cost-free fantasy-questions to maximize fake “support” for higher emissions targets.
The Resolve Political Monitor always lets the hapless pollee know what they are supposed to say. Look at the way they frame it — the pollsters are supposed to be trying to figure out what kind of Net Zero targets Australians want, but they’re not framing it in terms of science, or what other countries are doing, or whether it worth spending $1.5 trillion to cool the world by 0.0 degrees. They frame the question by telling the voter that “both parties support a net zero target” but some in the Nationals would like to “ditch” it. Then they ask the crowd “what’s best for Australia”.
Presumably they’re hoping to fool Australians into thinking that most people support Net Zero targets (“Both major parties support it”.) Yet, despite this effort to plant the consensus opinion in people’s minds, only 28% of Australians say the current target is the right one. Some 55% of Australia reject this or don’t know what to think.
And only 17% of Australians want the Santa Claus option — the free, uncosted, “more ambitious” 2030 target. And we know when the IPA asked Australians how much they wanted to spend, only 7% were willing to even pay $10 a week or more. So the 17% figure would halve in an instant if the Resolve Political Monitor team asked an honest question about the cost.
In the most loaded push-polling question, The Resolve Political Monitor tells people that most experts think the target will be a 65 -75% reduction, and then asks people if they support or oppose this (do you, fool, know better than the experts?) Even under the weight of the “experts”, most Australians are not buying what they’re selling anymore and 56% were opposed or unsure.
Australians have their say on new climate targets as Coalition prepares for another brawl on net zero
The latest Resolve Political Monitor survey showed 44 per cent of voters supported the goal of reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by between 65 and 75 per cent by 2035…
The Sydney Morning Herald put their best spin on the story and said 44% support the new higher target, even when the other question the pollsters asked in the same survey directly contradicted this, suggesting only 17% actually wanted a higher target. What’s the mark of a junk survey — contradictory answers.
The point of most political polls is not to find out what the voters want, it’s to tell the voters what to think
This loaded poll is there to set up Australians to think the Labor Government are raising the target because voters want them to do that. But even the Labor party knows this isn’t true. If they believed Australians wanted higher targets, they would have taken it to the election.
Beyond Meat may be beyond saving — it turned $4b into “a dumpster fire”
Like a microcosm of the climate change debate, a group of investors thought they could make a profit while also saving animals, making people healthier, and changing the global climate all at the same time in a nifty 4 for 1. The UN recognised it as a Champion of the Earth for “science and innovation”. Bill Gates tossed money at it.
But it turns out it was hard to recreate a steak without having a cow or 100 million years to evolve something competitive, economical and tasty. Cows are very efficient factories, in that they come with their own chemical plants, filters, thermostats, and barriers to stop infection, they can transport themselves and they make more cows too. So the factory imitation was never going to be cheaper, at least not for years.
Like everything in the climate debate — everyone says they believe, but no one believes enough to spend $19.95 on fake burger meat. So it was a wildly ambitious product, not-yet-invented, not-safety-tested, and without much appeal to 99% of the population.
What started as Silicon Valley’s next big thing is now an absolute dumpster fire.
After raising money from Bill Gates, going public for >$4 billion, and even partnering with Kim Kardashian, Beyond Meat is now the laughing stock of the NASDAQ.
The business has lost 96% of its equity value since IPO, is burning ~$20-$30 million in cash every quarter, and has over $1 billion in debt due in 2027.
As Jason Andrew points out it was doomed from the start. Since 2009 it has never had a single year in profit, and in 2019 at the peak, it was IPO’d at a glorious 40X revenue multiple, eclipsing even Facebook which launched at 28 X.
These ratios might have worked for a silicon chip company or a tech giant, but was “ridiculous” for a food company competing on high costs and thin margins. As it happens, not only were customers not impressed with the the climate control feature on the burgers, but they weren’t too sure it was really healthier than meat. These are ultraprocessed foods, may contain seed oils, or who knows what additives? So even the super health conscious vegan climate activist might have had a dilemma.
It’s just another reminder of how a fantasy fashion swept the modern distracted world off its feet and burned up another $4 billion dollars.
It was all too easy when people could borrow up big on near 0% interest. It’s another bubble fed with a fiat currency.
There are very strong rumours Beyond Meat will have to file for bankruptcy, given that it has a billion dollars in debt. But the company seems to be trying to transition into a high protein health niche. They are even dropping the word “meat”. Perhaps it’s not a word that appeals to the core market of vegan eco-worriers?
One third of all human emissions has had no effect on the Arctic
Since 2005, humans have emitted one third of all the emissions we’ve ever put out — some 600 billion tons of CO2. Yet the Arctic sea ice is the same as it was twenty years ago. And even though the modelers cling to the excuse that this is “consistent with simulated internal variability” there was not one model that forecast this would happen.
For twenty years arctic sea ice was the Posterchild of Panic, and on the verge of disappearing forever, while Antarctic sea ice was invisible. Now the sea ice at the South Pole is at “a climate tipping point”, and the northern sea-ice is just a surprise.
Even when sea ice does nothing, it’s dramatic:
As long as the buzzwords are there in the headlines, The Guardianreaders may not even realize the scientists were completely, utterly wrong, and all the hand-wringing and tears about the polar bears was just a fundraising publicity stunt.
Remember, bad news is due to man-made climate change, but good news is a natural variation, and it’s only temporary. The Prophets of Climate say disaster is just around the corner still.
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005. …they said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years.
It’s just how rampant Blob-media bias works, and the Blob-academics are fine with that.
This is what a dramatic surprise looks like:
It’s bad when the trend creeps up on you after doing the same thing for twenty years in a row.
Internal Variability is just the multifunctional excuse
There’s no climate force called “internal variability” — it is not hiding in a submarine trench, or riding a jet stream, it’s just the band-aid excuse modelers use when they should say “we don’t know” and “we were wrong”.
From the paper — They say the trend will definitely end soon, unless it doesn’t. The Experts are so under-confident now, they are buying another five or ten years of time, just in case the arctic doesn’t start melting soon:
Analysis of ensemble members that simulate analogs of the observed pause indicates that the current slowdown could plausibly persist another five to 10 years, although the chances of a faster‐than‐average decline are increased in the near‐future.
These people don’t even know what evidence is. The think simulations are evidence:
The modeling evidence suggests that internal variability has substantially offset anthropogenically forced sea ice loss in recent decades. Overall, this observed pause in Arctic sea ice decline is consistent with simulated internal variability superimposed on the long‐term trend according to the bulk of the climate modeling evidence
What they don’t say is that if the world is warming and the ice isn’t melting, then some other mysterious force they don’t understand must be keeping the sea-ice cooler. It could be solar magnetic forces, changing UV, shifting geothermal heat, cycles in ocean currents, or algal blooms that pump out cloud seeding aerosols. But if the modelers add these in, there might not be any room left to blame CO2.
If we had climate models that knew what those forces were – they might have seen this coming in 2005 instead of being surprised in 2025.
POST NOTE: Another paper by other modelers who also have no clue…
Kenneth Richards at Notrickszone talks about different paper (Stern et al) who found a flat line in the minimum ice each year from 2007.
The fact that September Arctic SIE shows no trend during 2007–2024 may at first seem hard to explain. The Earth continues to warm, and the Arctic is warming faster than the global average (IPCC, 2021). One possibility is that the recent period of no trend is just interdecadal variability. Baxter et al. (2019) found that “observational and model evidence shows that the changes in summer sea ice since the 2000s reflect a continuous anthropogenically forced melting masked by interdecadal variability of Arctic atmospheric circulation…resulting in the appearance of a slowdown over the past 11 years.”
They spend many paragraphs reviewing all the suggestions that might explain why, but essentially no one knows. It might have something to do with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, the Arctic Dipole, freshwater flushing, positive ice albedo feedback, pre-conditioned sea-ice, old ice, triggering by the early spring snow melt, and the persistence of a cyclonic mode in the Arctic ocean. It’s a keyword mash of all the permitted variables and none of the solar, geothermal or space weather ones. (Don’t mention the sun).
Stern finish with the required liturgy:
Whatever the reason for the near‐zero trend during 2007–2024, Arctic SIE is predicted to continue declining due to increasing global average air temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Based on global climate models, there is “high confidence that the Arctic Ocean will likely become practically sea ice free in the September mean for the first time…before the year 2050” in all emissions scenarios (Fox‐Kemper et al., 2021).
Whatever is causing this, based on climate models that don’t work, the Arctic sea ice is finished, so there.
REFERENCE
England, M.R., Polvani, L. M., Screen, J., & Chan, A. C. (2025). Minimal Arctic sea ice loss in the last 20 years, consistent with internal climate variability.Geophysical Research Letters,52, e2025GL116175. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL116175
Something big is going on around Antarctica, but climate experts have no idea what’s causing it
The ABC ran another Agony-Antarctica column in the news — talking about mysterious “rapid, interacting and sometimes self-perpetuating changes” in ominous but vague terms. Blob-Scientists hinted at ambiguous, unnamed, “changes” which might wipe out the cute emperor penguins, or at least non-specifically “heighten the risk” of their extinction, sometime, maybe.
“Scientists say there is emerging evidence of abrupt and potentially unstoppable changes in the Antarctic environment.
The changes are heightening the risk of significant sea level rise and the extinction of species, including emperor penguins.” — ABC “News”
Very unscientifically, none of the scientists pointed out that in 45 years of satellite data the entire south polar region below 60° has not even warmed. Isn’t that material? One point six trillion tons of man-made CO2 hasn’t warmed the continent in the last 45 years. Doesn’t that matter?
Tell the world, Antarctica is the most stable climate on the surface of Earth:
Nothing says global warming like a trend of 0.03°C per decade.
For decades they told us that Antarctica would warm twice as fast as most of the world. What happened to that? Nothing.
But none of these awkward points help feed The Blob, so the ABC doesn’t ask, and the scientists don’t say anything. Instead they talk about sea ice and currents, because it’s the only thing they have at the moment.
Playing the “Sea Ice” and “Ocean Currents” Tarot Card
Like fortune tellers turning over a tarot card, it doesn’t matter what card they flip — you need to pay them money.
Matthew England (UNSW) and Nerilie Abram (Australian Antarctic Division) seem to be more than happy to take a scientific mystery and turn it into a political tax campaign. They craft a story of spooky changes going on with Antarctic sea ice. The changes are real, but they don’t have the honesty to admit that they have no idea why the sea ice grew and then dropped off the way it has. Their models didn’t predict it, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with CO2. In 2013 Turner et al said the increase in Antarctic sea was one of the great unsolved puzzles of climate science. Then after it vanished Silvano et al said the decline was “completely unexpected.” In other words, they have no clue. The “sea ice” card flipped!
See the graph below: for thirty years Antarctic sea ice grew far and wide and set new records (the red line). Then in 2015, something changed and it dramatically shrank. CO2 has been rising the whole time, so it’s not the cause of the sharp shift in 2015.
Possibly, a big natural change in an ocean current caused the regime change, just like it has for millions of years.
Scientists are pretending to be fortune tellers in order to get our money
Copied below the “scientists” use their own ignorance to argue Australians should spend hundreds of millions to install solar panels and windmills in order to change ocean currents and save some penguins.
[ABC] “A regime shift has reduced Antarctic sea-ice extent far below its natural variability of past centuries, and in some respects is more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than Arctic sea-ice loss,” it says. Since 2014, the report says the median contraction of the Antarctic sea-ice edge has been around 120 kilometres.
The most significant decline was in the winter of 2023, which was so far below previous satellite records and historical modelling that scientists described it as “gobsmacking”.
Professor Abram said the report’s findings highlight the need to reduce carbon emissions. “The changes that we’re seeing in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean really reinforce the importance of these international agreements that we have for how we’re going to tackle climate change,” she said.
Buy carbon-credits or the penguin gets it?
As far as we can tell, penguins are pretty happy about getting rid of the sea ice. When people tracked Adelie penguins they found out that when more sea ice melts, the penguins ate more, swam further and have more baby penguins. Happy days.
The UAH satellite trend for Antarctica for the last 45 years was just 0.03°C warming per decade. Given that Emperor Penguins survive in anything from -60°C up to 20°C the penguins today would hardly care less about a pitiful extra tenth of one degree spread over nearly 50 years.
REFERENCES
Alison F. Banwell et al, Quantifying Antarctic‐Wide Ice‐Shelf Surface Melt Volume Using Microwave and Firn Model Data: 1980 to 2021, Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2023GL102744
Mads Dømgaard et al, Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48886-x
The media and wind industry always sells the biggest, best new generators at their full imaginary capacity. The newest largest wind farms are said to be “1 GW”, even though they will almost never supply that. The real percentage they supply of the advertised “capacity” is called the “capacity factor” and it rarely gets a mention. The average reader, not paying attention, won’t notice that the $2b cost doesn’t stack up at all. It’s like buying a brand new car without knowing it only gets 7 miles per gallon (and only when the wind blows).
We need to know ‘the mileage’
The latest GenCost report uses the term “capacity factor” literally 100 times (I counted), so obviously it’s central in calculating the value of a generator, yet it is that which shall-not-be-named in public discussions. And when they do say it, it’s often worse than they say, and that bad number is also shrinking.
In 2019 the CSIRO Blob Experts bravely assumed that the modeled average capacity factor of onshore wind would be 44.4%. Years later, in the latest GenCOST report they assume, like an addict, that it would between 29% “and 48%” — still fantasizing that a miracle is about to come. So their modeled prediction of the cost of onshore wind power is ridiculously generous. Even after reality doggedly stayed around 30% for six years, a google search shows the NSW government “fact sheet” says it’s around 35% and the Google AI overview says it’s 30% “to 45%“.
How imaginary homes are powered by imaginary capacity factors
Anton Lang, also known as TonyfromOz is yet another volunteer creating the graphs that the CSIRO, AEMO, ARENA, ABC, and AER get billions of dollars to provide, but don’t want us to see. For years Tony noticed that the paperwork advertising wind “farms” didn’t mention the capacity factor. It seemed like a strange gap in the documentation. Tony noticed they usually converted their output to the fantasy fairy-thousand-homes it would supply which is a pure marketing ploy. They pretend, deceptively, that wind turbines are capable of powering any homes at all. When Tony back-converted the number of homes, he realized all the companies marketing wind turbines were assuming a capacity factor of 38% to create the imaginary homes value.
So he used his collected data to calculate the capacity factor of all Australian wind plants, and discovered, that averaged over the last seven years, it is just under 30%. It started out at about 31% in 2019 but has declined, and over the last year, the rolling 12 month weekly average capacity factor has often been close to 27%.
Thanks to Angus McFarlane for the graph where we can see the slide in wind turbine capacity:
During this time the total nameplate capacity grew from 5.3GW to 13.5GW. Despite improvements in design, and the young age of this fleet, the capacity factor is getting slightly worse, not better.
As Angus McFarlane points out GenCost uses the highest possible capacity factor on the upside, but calculates the “low option” a different way to hide how low it really is:
GenCost uses a low value for capacity factor that is “10% below the average”. This is contrary to normal engineering practice, which would be to use the 5th percentile for the low value. For example, IRENA use 5th percentiles for low values of capacity factor. Furthermore, using the 5th percentile for Australian wind would result in a low capacity factor of 19.5%, which might explain CSIRO’s aversion to using it.
If only we had a scientific institution paid by taxpayers that gave unbiased scientific advice, eh?!
Three reasons the weekly capacity factor is headed downwards
One: the best sites for wind plants are already taken. All the windiest spots near transmission towers with spare space are built on. Thus new wind installations either have less wind, or are further from population centers.
Two: no matter how many new turbines are installed, the high pressure cells still cover the whole country, and thus the extra generation comes mostly when we don’t need it. More turbines, means more curtailment. More solar means more curtailment at lunchtime.
Three: The equipment is always degrading. High wind zones are tough places to put any infrastructure. The wind, flying sand, dust, ice and salt are continuously degrading the trailing edges of the blades which increases turbulence and reduces efficiency. And the stop-start nature of wind is awful on gears and bearings. The blades are so heavy that even when the wind doesn’t blow, the rotor has to turn slowly, or the bearings will flatten.
Why the lowest of the low points matter
The figures in the graph above are weekly average values, but what also matters are the capacity factor on the worst days, and the worst half hour, because that tells us how much back up power we have to have. In those moments the capacity factor of a whole country full of wind turbines can be as low as 0.7%. On a bad day $20 billion dollars of wind power across Australia can only guarantee as much power as two diesel generators.
How much back-up do we need for a 13.5 gigawatt wind system? The awful truth is, about 13.4 gigawatts. The entire wind industry is effectively a superfluous add on to a full reliable grid. It’s main productive benefit (allegedly) is the hope of changing storms and floods in 100 years. It can not possibly be cheaper than our current system unless fuel costs were the largest share of electricity costs, which they aren’t.
Those high pressure cells just won’t go away:
Look at how big these horrible high pressure cells are which stop the wind across the whole continent. Make them stop!
As TonyfromOz says, without isobars, there is no wind…
Depressingly, Paul Miskelly did the calculations back in 2012 and the capacity factors were around 31% even then. The AEMO, CSIRO, and AER have known all along, surely, that it wasn’t 35%, 40% or 48%. They were either living off false hope or doing false advertising.
13 year megadrought during Medieval Warm Period may have finished off the Maya
A slightly spooky new paper shows annual rainfall patterns from a thousand years ago on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. It’s so detailed, they list every drought by year, including 13 unbroken years of drought from 929 to 942AD. It’s a bit like someone unearthed the Maya Bureau of Meteorology records from a thousand years ago (except it’s better, because it’s a rock with no politics).
This is one of the highest-resolution tropical stalagmite records ever published. Each year the stalagmite grew by as much as a millimeter, allowing for a year by year analysis — or indeed 12 datapoints within each year.
During this era of perfect CO2, for some reason that no climate model can explain, the poor sods in Maya suffered through extreme swings from wet to dry, stacked back to back. The climate was chaotic. Droughts were followed by floods. It’s uncannily like “climate extremes” we are told man-made emissions are going to bring.
It is sobering to think the Maya civilization lasted nearly 3,700 years. At it’s peak it was thought there were around 5 million people, but more recent estimates with lidar mapping suggest there might have been as many as 10 or even 16 million people. The Maya civilization started around 2,000BC and peaked somewhere around 700AD before declining in “the terminal collapse period” from 800AD-1000AD. Little pockets of the civilization lingered on for centuries until the Spanish conquest of 1697. Even today some 6 million people still speak Mayan languages.
The Southern lowlands (where this cave is) would never be re-urbanized after 1000AD. The megadroughts appear to be the coup de grace.
Stalagmite Tzab06-1 was obtained in 2006 from Grutas Tzabnah near Tecoh, Yucatán, Mexico (Fig. 1 and text S1). The cave is located near several large Classic Maya sites (most notably Chichén Itzá and many sites in the Puuc Region such as Uxmal) and experienced the same regional climate regime as the major Terminal Classic population centers in northwest Yucatán (29). The stalagmite exhibits visible laminations in the section that formed between ~870 and 1100 CE (see Materials and Methods and Fig. 2C). We interpret each lamina as a single year of deposition, which is supported by cyclical variations in δ18O and/or δ13C, reflecting seasonal differences in rainfall (30–32) (see Materials and Methods and figs. S1 and S2). We constructed an age model using a floating layer–counting chronology anchored to 15 U-Th disequilibrium ages (see Materials and Methods and Fig. 2).
“Even with the water management techniques that the Maya had, a drought that long would have had major impacts on society.”
[ScienceDaily] Chemical evidence from a stalagmite in Mexico has revealed that the Classic Maya civilization’s decline coincided with repeated severe wet-season droughts, including one that lasted 13 years. These prolonged droughts corresponded with halted monument construction and political disruption at key Maya sites, suggesting that climate stress played a major role in the collapse. The findings demonstrate how stalagmites offer unmatched precision for linking environmental change to historical events.
According to the information contained in the stalagmite, there were eight wet season droughts lasting for at least three years between 871 and 1021 CE. The longest drought of the period lasted for 13 years. Even with the water management techniques that the Maya had, a drought that long would have had major impacts on society.
The climate information contained in the stalagmite lines up with the dates inscribed by the Maya on their monuments. In the periods of prolonged and severe drought, date inscription at sites such as Chichén Itzá stopped entirely.
The growth hiatus mentioned in 1020AD was found in other studies and apparently so dry the stalagmites dramatically slowed down their growth. Just imagine, the whole region was in severe hydroclimate stress, even without any four wheel drives, oil rigs, or coal plants.
In other words, no matter when or where you lived, a witchdoctor somewhere could say the climate was changing.
…
As well as the stalagmite being a freakishly fast growing one, they also used multiple proxies (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C, Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca ratios, as well as the U-Th ratios to date the layers). They were able to line up the layers with other studies and also with carvings on monuments and other archeological finds. The researchers claim there is ±6-year age uncertainty on the dating.
REFERENCE
Daniel H. James, Stacy A. Carolin, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, Julie A. Hoggarth, Fernanda Lases-Hernández, Erin A. Endsley, Jason H. Curtis, Christina D. Gallup, Susan Milbrath, John Nicolson, James Rolfe, Ola Kwiecien, Christopher J. Ottley, Alexander A. Iveson, James U. L. Baldini, Mark Brenner, Gideon M. Henderson, David A. Hodell. Classic Maya response to multiyear seasonal droughts in Northwest Yucatán, Mexico. Science Advances, 2025; 11 (33) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw7661
The stalagmite in question, called Tzab06-1, was obtained in 2006 from Grutas Tzabnah near Tecoh, Yucatán, Mexico
The CEO of Bluescope Steel is a fan of renewables, but for Mark Vassella to make steel, what he wants is cheap gas, not wind and solar power — and he’s getting desperate. These are strong words from a CEO of one our Big-50. “Manufacturing is at a ‘tipping point‘” he says. “Energy costs are now 3 to 4 times higher than the US”. Furthermore, “Without immediate intervention there will be no Future Made in Australia.” — He twists the knife, talking about the PM’s pet project (the one where we somehow make solar and wind power here cheaper than the slaves do in China. )
He’s especially scathing of the idea that one of the biggest exporters of LNG in the world, now has to import it back.
“ In what world does exporting LNG in massive quantities only to re-import it to supply a shorter domestic market make any sense? It’s like importing sand into the Sahara.”
Vassella knows US and Australian energy prices all too well. Bluescope also own the North Star steel mill in Ohio and is looking to expand further in the US.
“Today, the situation is more dire than ever,” BlueScope chief executive Mark Vassella said after its annual results on Monday.
“Manufacturing is at a tipping point with energy costs that are no longer just too high, but unsustainable. What was once our competitive advantage is gone.”
“And let me be really clear about this,” Mr Vassella said. “This does not increase our sovereign risk. Restricting exporters from buying domestic gas for re-export and prioritising domestic supply over LNG imports. In what world does exporting LNG in massive quantities only to re-import it to supply a shorter domestic market make any sense? It’s like importing sand into the Sahara.”
BlueScope has sounded the alarm over Australia’s energy crisis, warning that unsustainably high gas prices are pushing domestic manufacturing to a “tipping point”.
The steelmaker has reported a full year profit of $84 million, a 90 per cent drop from the $721 million reported a year ago.
“Without immediate intervention there will be no Future Made in Australia.”
Mr Vassella said BlueScope had submitted a detailed response to the federal government’s Gas Market Review including suggested immediate and long-term changes.
At least he’s honest about why he likes unreliable generators — they buy his steel. So he repeats the impossible mantra:
“We need more energy, we need it to be renewable, we need it to be reliable, we need it to be affordable,” Mr Vassella said. “And we were supportive of the wind industry. Our products go into the wind farm industry.”
Just so everyone can appreciate the historic inanity of our situation — this graph below is the state of the top five players in the global LNG export market.
Australia is sending off ships full of LNG only to pay someone else to turn them around and send them back.
Alternately we could just dig up more brown coal, more black coal, some uranium, or we could explore for more gas, but we don’t because we dream of being a better global weather controller.
Interestingly the US has launched itself out of bottom left during the first Trump presidency, right through Covid, and it kept on growing (despite Joe and Kamala).
If the whole renewables fantasy was crumbling, it would look something like this
Despite the Labor Government throwing money at unreliable energy, renewables hopes are quietly unraveling. The largest energy retailer in the country just announced a nice 26% profit jump, based on fossil fueled gas, and they also announced they’d be keeping Australia’s largest coal plant open longer. The two year extension for Eraring, is now a four year extension. Despite reaping in gas profits and keeping the planet-destroying-plant operating, the share price promptly leapt 6% to a ten year high.
Significantly, Giles Parkinson at Reneweconomy also noticed that Origin’s annual report includes talk of batteries, but no wind or solar projects, which seems like an important oversight in a nation belting headlong towards the Green Utopia.
Meanwhile, for the first time I can recall, a fossil fuel CEO is daring to defend the industry. The shift in confidence in palpable. Mike Wirth, the Chevron CEO, is not only saying “oil is not evil” but he clearly isn’t afraid of the Australian government. He’s so unafraid he also delivered a “stinging rebuke” — saying that high costs, red tape and environmental rules have made Australia so uncompetitive, investors are leaving to spend their money in the US and the middle east instead. Indeed, Chevron had a plan to double their Australian gas production but have abandoned that now. Australia used to be the world’s largest LNG exporter but Qatar and the US outpaced us.
In a similar theme, Ampol just surprised the market by spending $1 billion dollars to double the number of petrol stations it owns, making it the largest retailer in the country. The CEO Matt Halliday said the unthinkable: “The transition [to EVs] will take decades, and combustion engines are going to still make up a large chunk of the national car fleet beyond 2050.” It was a very unfashionable and backward thing to say, but shares leapt 8% on the news yesterday.
Origin Energy, Australia’s biggest energy retailer, appears to have hit the go-slow button on the rollout of new renewable energy projects, and is still mulling options on the already extended Eraring coal generator, the country’s biggest, which is officially due to close in 2027.
Curiously, in its annual report, the company says: “With the Eraring Power Station’s closure planned for August 2027, failure to deliver our major renewable generation projects may affect Origin’s future supply capacity, financial prospects and reputation.” Yet it has made no commitment to build those projects in that timeframe.
Think of the irony of putting the nations biggest battery next to the nations biggest coal plant, as if it needed back up:
But this is made up entirely of big batteries, including the giant 700 MW, 2,800 MWh Eraring battery being next to the coal generator…
It [the annual report] includes no wind or solar projects. The technologies did not even rate a mention in the results presentation, apart from the giant 1.45 gigawatt (GW) Yanco Delta wind project in the south-west of NSW, which has gained grid access rights but is still to complete environmental approvals.
Mike Wirth has a message for the fossil fuel haters: oil is not evil.
The boss of Chevron, one of the world’s largest producers, has a front-row seat to the energy revival that’s gathered pace under the Trump administration. After a 43-year career in the oil and gas industry, he sees part of his role as helping deliver some home truths on the reality of the energy transition.
“Some criticise fuels as somehow being evil or immoral or any number of different characterisations that you can find out there … to attack our industry,” Mr Wirth tells The Australian. “When, in fact, people in the world have the highest standard of living in human history today because they are not toiling all day long to feed themselves and feed their families and create heat when it’s cold or try to stay cool when it’s warm. I strongly disagree with characterisations that our products are only bad.”
Finally, the international oil giant delivers the hard truths, without pandering. Clearly the power in the room has shifted, and with Trump in the US, doors are opening, and Australia is not so relevant:
Global energy giant Chevron has delivered a stinging rebuke directly to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles over Australia’s slump as an investment destination under Labor, warning that high costs, onerous taxes and environmental delays meant a historic plan to double its $US80bn ($123bn) Australian LNG business was off the table.
Chevron’s Texas-based chief executive, Mike Wirth, delivered the blunt message to Mr Marles on Friday afternoon in Geelong at a private meeting between the pair, saying he was concerned Australia was now uncompetitive with gas rivals such as the US and Middle East.
Mr Wirth revealed Chevron had at one point considered doubling its LNG footprint in WA to 10 processing trains from the current five units that exported gas from its Gorgon and Wheatstone plants. However, that expansion had now been shelved.
Australia’s $100bn LNG industry made it the world’s largest exporter for the past decade…
Meanwhile Ampol bets big on Australians driving petrol cars for years to come.
Ampol’s stunning $1.1bn move to almost double the footprint of its petrol stations is not only about expansion. It’s a calculated bet on the future of internal combustion engines versus electric vehicles. The retailer and refiner has snapped up a portfolio of around 500 EG-branded petrol stations, consolidating its position as the country’s biggest fuel retailer.
But, [Ampol’s CEO, Matt Halliday] is also a realist. The transition will take decades, and combustion engines are going to still make up a large chunk of the national car fleet beyond 2050. Despite also using its own debt to fund the deal, Ampol investors have firmly backed the expansion, sending shares nearly 8 per cent higher on Friday.
“I find the President to be curious. He asks questions. He asks good questions. He likes to talk to people in business. Under the prior administration, the door was not open. I only met President Biden once, and it was for a photo op,” Mr Wirth says.
“…he’s a big believer in American energy, and he believes that American energy strength can underpin economic strength and national security.”
With the American energy juggernaut taking off, Australia will be dragged by its green chains…
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Ampol’s stunning $1.1bn move to almost double the footprint of its petrol stations is not only about expansion. It’s a calculated bet on the future of internal combustion engines versus electric vehicles. The retailer and refiner has snapped up a portfolio of around 500 EG-branded petrol stations, consolidating its position as the country’s biggest fuel retailer.