The mess the LNP helped create and blamed others for.
What happens from here is unclear, but the company’s turmoil can’t be divorced from the Coalition’s policy failures
Tag: AGL
Morrison handballed the problem of Carbon Emissions to the “free market and new technology”. Now he hates what that market is actually doing. It’s ignoring him for having done nothing and moving in the opposite direction.
Will Scott Morrison’s government block the radical AGL takeover bid by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield? It’s a deal which accelerates Australia’s decarbonisation, creates jobs, cuts energy prices, and saves AGL shareholders from a slow death, but Morrison has two regulators who can still nix it. Michael West reports.
What their boards pledge and what they actually do needs examination,and transparency because past behavior has shown just how corrupt they are. It seems the LNP put on some Royal Comissions for show then do the Morrison nothing.
Despite pledging support for climate action, it’s possible one of Australia’s big four banks is coming to the financial rescue of pollution giant AGL, writes David Ritter. A REAL-TIME “whodunnit?” is playing out across the Australian banking industry. At least one of Australia’s big four banks is considering loaning $800 million to the nation’s worst domestic climate polluter, AGL. The question is, who is involved? And why?
ENERGY GIANT AGL has launched legal action against environmental advocacy organisation Greenpeace Australia Pacific, following the launch of a Greenpeace campaign alleging AGL is Australia’s biggest corporate climate polluter.
AGL IS ONE OF Australia’s largest energy companies with a marketing budget to match, so that money can be chucked at everything from sports teams to community festivals. But all of the spin and sponsorship hides a grim truth. In the villainous league of Australia’s worst coal-burning polluters, AGL is the number one offender — literally, the worst of the worst.
AGL is leading the way in harmful coal pollution
In March 2018, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) sent Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg their assessment of whether AGL’s plan would meet our future energy needs.
AEMO’s analysis shows that an additional 850 MWs of resource capability are required to ensure reliability in NSW following the closure of Liddell. If all three stages of the AGL plan are completed, the resource gap will be eliminated.
In its current state, Liddell is more likely to be the cause of a power emergency because of what AEMO describes as the potential for ageing coal generators to fail in the heat – during the 2016-17 summer heatwave, Liddell was missing 1,000MW of its capacity due to problems with boiler tube leaks.
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The Government and the ACCC
the confident assertions on the Liddell Power Station by the ACCC Chairman Rod Sims remind me of the surgeon having completed a brilliant operation to save the sight of an elderly patient — he removes his mask, smiles and acknowledges the admiration of his team when a junior nurse puts up her hand and says rather apologetically, “But Sir, the patient has died”.
There are economists on the ACCC Board who would have been expected to review the full life-cycle costs of coal before Mr Sims made his statement. Did they ignore or were they unaware of the work of eminent Yale economist William Nordhaus? Nordhaus demonstrated, using full cost accounting of all externalities, that coal now has no value to the community — work confirmed by other groups of economists.
Indeed coal is the most expensive energy modality apart from nuclear energy. It requires exceedingly good discipline by the government to do a “John Cleese” and not “mention the war” – the war being the word “health” – for to do so would undermine the ideology that coal is “good for humanity“.
The energy giant AGL is continuing to push back against Federal Government pressure to keep its Liddell power station open beyond 2022.
olddogthoughts 