Thread by @docbaty

Good morning, and welcome to today’s reading of @SatPaper . With the IPCC report landing last Monday, let’s begin today with @MikeSeccombe’s feature on Angus Taylor - thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/…

"Revealed: Energy companies turn on Angus Taylor”

#SatPaper

"Following revelations the Morrison government pressured AGL to sack its last chief executive, energy companies have increasingly isolated Angus Taylor.”

"This is a story about trust. More specifically, it is a story about just how little trust the major energy companies have for Angus Taylor and the rest of the Morrison government."

[Trust is critical in government and governing, but we’ve seen this government willing to completely destroy trust in numerous areas, including on the international stage.]

"“When Frank Calabria came to me I said, ‘Let’s work together to see to make sure we do this [close Eraring] in a responsible way that will ensure that we continue to deliver reliable and affordable electricity,’ ” Kean says. “And that’s what we did.”"

"“For the six months while we were working through the process, nothing leaked,” says Kean. “I think they trusted us to deal with them in good faith, and that we weren’t going to play politics with the issue. We got a good result because of that trust.””

#SatPaper

"Kean says the company wanted it kept confidential. He refers again to the “trust relationship” he and his office had with Calabria. When asked why Taylor ... was kept out of the loop, he says: “Perhaps because they didn’t have that same trust relationship.””

#SatPaper

"Tim Buckley, a leading energy analyst, puts it more bluntly: “Angus Taylor is irrelevant. Neither the state minister nor the CEO of Origin bothered to talk to him, even while they were negotiating for all those months.””

#SatPaper

[Two key ingredients to call out here: a) a willingness to negotiate in good faith; and b) a desire and ability to maintain confidentiality. We’ve seen both ignored time and again.]

#SatPaper

"“You’ve got the states competing with each other, now. They’re developing their own renewable energy zones, and it’s all about leveraging the renewable generation and then having the right grid infrastructure and putting the renewables near it”

#SatPaper

[Note: @griffithSaul has been pointing out that this model of renewables is still rooted in old ways of thinking, and that we can do better. BUT: it *is* very good for heavy industry.]

#SatPaper

"Back in 2017, when AGL gave five years’ notice of its intention to close its Liddell power plant in 2022, then minister for the Environment and Energy Josh Frydenberg worked vigorously and personally to lobby the company’s board to remove chief executive Andy Vesey.”

#satpaper

[I still find this story incredible, both for its content and for the lack of scrutiny of Frydenburg it has raised. These are the actions we see from bullies. It worked, by the way - Vesey was replaced as CEO and AGL wound back it’s emissions reduction ambitions]

@SatPaper

"Frydenberg began calling directors. He pressured them to sack Vesey over the proposed Liddell closure. As one executive described the...campaign against Vesey […]: “Frydenberg was calling individual directors, suggesting [Vesey] be sacked over Liddell.””

@SatPaper

"In a media release, Taylor claimed the early closures would “leave a considerable gap” in the NEM. He said the exit of such a considerable amount of “reliable” generation capacity was “a concern for the continued reliability and affordability of the system”.

#SatPaper

[Taylor cites Hazelwood as part of a ‘lights and low prices’ scare campaign…Hazelwood was closed on 3 months notice]

"AGL was flagging its intention to close Bayswater some time between 2030 and 2033 and close Loy Yang from 2040 to 2045.”

#SatPaper

[This is part of what I mean by not acting in good faith, but it is also part of a broader pattern of intellectual dishonesty we see across the Morrison government - a willingness to twist the truth that is almost a reflex.]

#SatPaper

[Taylor puts together two statements that are each true, even banal, but taken together - as they will be - they amount to something else all together. It creates, knowingly, a distortion of the truth without uttering a falsehood.]

#SatPaper

[And so if you look at Taylor’s statement, and look at the sentences in isolation, taking each literally, they’re unremarkable. But together they raise the spectre of a looming spike in energy prices directly resulting from these closures. Which is incorrect.]

#SatPaper

"The proposal was entirely compatible with the blueprint of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for the future electricity grid, laid out in its draft integrated system plan.

Yet Taylor felt the need to warn of potential blackouts and price hikes.”

#SatPaper

"“I was told about it last night,” Taylor said. “To find out last night with no warning, I have got to tell you, it’s very disappointing.”

Taylor said he was also “incredibly disappointed” on behalf of Eraring workers and electricity consumers.”

#SatPaper

"He rubbished the plan hammered out between Origin and Kean to install a big battery as part of the deal, misrepresenting its purpose in much the same way as the government misrepresented the purpose of the original 100Mw “big battery” installed in SA in 2017.”

#SatPaper

"In short, Taylor played politics with the issue. This is just as Origin executives feared he would. He was promptly called out on it by Australia’s second-wealthiest individual, the iron ore magnate and renewable energy advocate Andrew Forrest.”

#SatPaper

"“The reality is the economics of coal-fired power stations are being put under increasing, unsustainable pressure by cleaner and lower-cost generation... When the coal sector itself says that, you know the end has well and truly come.””

#SatPaper

[Forrest is not invested in coal, but he is investing in green hydrogen, and has plans for those generation sites and the transmission infrastructure they provide.]

#SatPaper

"Forrest said Taylor was “standing in the road of both the market – never a wise decision – and the concluded science of climate change”.”

[As evidenced by Taylor’s response to the recent buyout offer made to AGL.]

#SatPaper

[Taylor has previously said he wants market-based interventions rather than government ones, but he appears unhappy with the market choosing to shut down it’s coal assets.]

#SatPaper

"“Let me be really clear about something,” he said after the takeover bid was announced. “We need to ensure that our coal-fired generation of electricity runs to its life because if it doesn’t, electricity prices go up. They don’t go down…”

[This is a lie.]

#SatPaper

"Electricity generation remains by far the dirtiest sector of the Australian economy. Despite the growth of renewables over recent years – mostly wind and solar – power generation is responsible for about 40 per cent of Australia’s emissions of planet-heating CO2.”

#SatPaper

[It would be so, so easy for Australia to cut our emissions by 40% - a real cut, not the pretend cuts from not clearing land - by accelerating our transition away from coal-fired energy.]

#SatPaper

"Were the Cannon-Brookes–Brookfield takeover to succeed, and were Bayswater and Loy Yang closed by 2030… the cumulative total of avoided emissions would be 290m tonnes of CO2, according to calculations provided for @satpaper by Tim Buckley, of Climate Energy Finance.”
#SatPaper

"That avoided pollution has a dollar value, Buckley says. Applying the current carbon price operating in the European Union, he says “that is $A40.94 billion of value being created in avoided emissions”.”

#SatPaper

[I want to look at those numbers for a moment. The bid was $8bn. The shut-down plan includes a further $20bn investment in additional generation capacity. $28bn. To create $41bn in value.

THAT’S the value the green economy can deliver.]

#SatPaper

"In Feb 2015, Andy Vesey was hired as AGL’s new chief executive and managing director… He commissioned a detailed internal report into how AGL might adapt to a “carbon constrained future” and in Feb 2016 said: “We need to be out of the CO2 emissions business.””

#SatPaper

"That same month, AGL announced its intention to close Liddell.

The timing of the Liddell announcement was embarrassing for the federal Coalition, a few months out from an election and running hard with an anti-renewables, pro-coal narrative it saw as politically advantageous."

"In the protracted political fight that ensued, the government impugned Vesey’s motives, suggesting his plan was to remove generating capacity from the grid to push up power prices. Subjected to constant political pressure ... he left AGL in Aug 2018.”

#SatPaper

[When Vesey stepped down from AGL the company’s share price was hovering around $21/share. Today it is $7.43/share. That’s a loss in value of around $9bn thanks to Frydenburg’s interference.]

#SatPaper

"The government has warned darkly that it could block the current bid under foreign investment controls. Liberal Party insiders tell @SatPaper that such a move is being seriously considered. Frydenberg, the man who sought Vesey’s ousting, is now the treasurer.”

#SatPaper

"Says Matt Kean: “We are being inundated. There’s no shortage of actors that want to build renewables; there’s no shortage of actors that want to build storage.””

[I believe Kean was speaking *before* NSW began flooding.]

#SatPaper

"“Our Central Coast, Hunter renewable energy zone closed their expressions of interest last week, and we had 40 gigawatts of interest. That is the private market saying, ‘We want to build 40 GW of capacity. And that was worth about $100bn – all private-sector capital.” #SatPaper

"“If he [Mike Cannon-Brookes] wants to spend about $10 billion worth of his and Brookfield’s capital to build wind, solar, batteries and replacement capacity so that he can bring forward the closure dates of those big power stations, fine.””

#SatPaper

[This brings me back to the fairly stunning response from Taylor, which stands in stark contrast to Kean. The Morrison government should have been cheering on MCB-Brookfield. The full pom-pom & champagne response. Instead - obstruction.]

#SatPaper

"The trouble is, that is where the politics still are, at the federal level. The Morrison government has campaigned against stronger climate action at every election since it won office. Last time it ran on disinformation about electric cars.”

#SatPaper

"And now, a scare campaign about electricity prices. Sooner or later, it’s got to stop working.”

[We’ve squandered 9 years of action on climate change, and it needs to end. And that shift starts with a change in government.]

#SatPaper

Here’s a link to the unlocked article - thesaturdaypaper.com.au/share/13446/VY…

I want you all to read this one in full.