Aidan Morrison

This is the story of how a fund chaired by former Labor PM Julia Gillard acquired a wind farm project just six days before Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen underwrote its future revenues with taxpayer money. Today we've learned Julia's fund is trying to flip it. For a profit. HMC Capital's 'Energy Transition Fund' rushed to acquire the Neoen Victoria portfolio. They hadn't even raised any money in their fund. They closed with almost a billion dollars worth of borrowed money and IOU's. Less than a week later, Chris Bowen announced Kentbruck Wind Farm to be successful in the first round of the Capacity Investment Scheme. My rough calculations suggest they will receive something like a billion dollars from taxpayers (and maybe much more) over 15 years. Sweet deal. A billion dollars of fancy financial monopoly money one week. A billion dollars of promised taxpayer dollars the next. I want to emphasise that I have no evidence of anything illegal or improper taking place. Rather, I want to point out how odious and repugnant the official, proper, legal business of renewable energy has become. Yesterday Chris Bowen announced he wanted to supersize the CIS subsidy scheme, yet again. Today Ross Garnaut seemed to cheer this on, whilst pointing out "There are now virtually no new investment commitments for solar and wind generation that do not have CIS or other Government underwriting," What happened to a sense of propriety? Since when do we celebrate people rushing to put their snouts in the trough? Or rushing to fill the trough even higher? Unlike the UK who publish a 'going rate' for technology subsidies, our renewables are subsidised through a secret tender process. Every project gets to ask for whatever revenue they want to proceed. @AEMO_Energy facilitates a secret beauty pageant, where they award points for things like indigenous participation or community engagement, alongside financial value. And Chris Bowen makes the final call. The bids remain secret. There's no cap to the pay-outs. Since AEMO is a private company, there is no scope for an FOI request, and AEMO aren't not subject to parliamentary oversight through Senate Estimates. So no-one can ever prove an allegation that Bowen has bestowed special favour on a friend's project if that was what he did. But equally, he can never prove that he selected strictly according to merit. We are just expected to trust the black-box of Bowen's subsidies. So I'm going to say out loud, with full voice, that I hope everyone can agree on: If this is what the future of 'clean energy' looks like in Australia, it looks absolutely FILTHY. Any firm that talks about ESG seriously should start taking the "G" a bit more seriously and steer clear of projects that thrust their snouts into Bowen's hopelessly opaque, bottomless trough of government funds. Or at the very least, purge their boards and senior leadership of all the former Labor staffers, donors, and industry lobbyists who have had a hand in designing the trough, and filling it up. The reality is that there are no natural profits to be made in generating renewable electricity in Australia. Every dollar of profit in this industry is really a cheque signed by a politician, with Chris Bowen signing all the biggest cheques, worth untold billions, in the next three years. It's all legal. It's all official. And it's absolutely obscene. Mega-thread below. (It'll come in stages) 1/

Had a chat with Zoe in the car on today’s headlines about predictions that wholesale prices will double.

In the car with Steven Nowakowski for Energy on Tour! Quick explainer on how it’s the most important natural environment, the un-touched areas of the great dividing range, that are being targeted by wind development. Book tickets for Townsville and Cairns tomorrow!

Just sighted Twiggy Forrest’s green hydrogen debacle on the ground. Massive monument to technical and economic naivety, enabled by gullible politicians. Gullible is the generous interpretation.

Hey Queenslanders! Energy on Tour is coming to a town near you this week! Amazing double-header on energy, with Steven Nowakowski covering the environmental impact, and me on the economics! Book your tickets today! trybooking.com/au/event/even…

This story is kinda staggering in so many ways… Yet another government hand-out to media?! What could go wrong? And RenewEconomy wailing that their application was rejected. Too niche… Oh but the misinformation on energy? Annika, we thought we were on your side!!

This is such an easy dunk… Minns, how’s the $6 billion Central West Orana REZ going? Is that the final figure, or has it blown out further? What’s the price of the New England REZ, which is three times the size? $10 billion? $20 billion? Hunter Transmission Project? When will NSW reign in its spending on these boondoggles, that don’t even have any generators willing to connect to them?

In NSW our government has excluded batteries from participating in the next 1.5GW of firming. In Germany batteries don’t win in the tender… Batteries can’t replace dispatchable fuels. They’re an ‘and also’. xitter.twitterapi.xyz/footnotesguy/status/21…

My ramble on the relationship between culture and outcomes for the nation. Why going woke means going broke. And why hard times make hard men make good times make soft men make hard times.

This thread on the coal-pit-vs-wind-turbine visual comparison created a bit of buzz. Inspired by @TheAdamWaite who put the idea to the test with google street view, I prompted Grok to extend a bit further and build a page with some more examples. cypress-feta-dqvvp.ship.plac…

Can't wait to see QLD on the road next week! This will be a brilliant double-header energy special. Steven Nowakowski is just brilliant in his work tracking the on-ground environmental impacts. I'll cover the economics. Thanks @AusLobby for supporting this crucial discussion.