Welcome to our special post-election newsletter edition. See previous issues here.

05 MAY 2025

What Labor's landslide victory means for Australia's climate & energy future 

At the May 3 Federal election, the people gave the Albanese government a crystal-clear mandate. The electorate has roundly rejected the division, climate denialism and policy incompetence of the Coalition under Peter Dutton’s leadership. The LNP’s nuclear furphy is dead, buried and cremated. Now is the time for conviction and courage to double down and move at the speed the climate science dictates, seizing the magnitude of opportunities ahead for Australia on energy transition, domestic and export. 

There are plenty of challenges, but the risks of too-slow action are clear. This is an intergenerational game-changer moment, and it is time-critical. The opportunity cost of any failure to act will fall heavily on future generations.

The Albanese government must step up into global leadership ahead of the COP31 international climate talks in 2026, as we vie to hold them here. Critically, we need to see a commitment from the ALP to no more greenfield fossil fuel project approvals if it is to honour its climate pledges, and a definitive policy and investment pivot to the zero-emissions future. This is where our national prosperity and energy security lie. 

The government has already made significant strides – its Future Made in Australia program, its firmed renewables policy agenda, the Safeguard Mechanism to reduce industrial emissions and its substantial strategic public-interest investment into the transformation – and it now has the green light to build on this impressive foundation.

Domestically we need to accelerate to 82% renewables by 2030 and 95% by 2035, even as we progressively electrify everything. We need to reassess and rein-in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Rewiring the Nation program and pumped hydro plans in light of the capex blowouts and delays now evidenced in this large-scale infrastructure, and instead leverage and optimise the existing grid and upscale our battery rollout. 

This starts with reaffirming and implementing the $2.3bn consumer battery policy announced in April, then picking up the pace to Renew Australia for All, making distributed energy work for everyone, including disadvantaged communities and First Nations peoples. 

We need to aim for 100GW of rooftop solar by 2040, now possible given the massively improved economics of firmed solar, as prices for both batteries and solar modules have fallen dramatically in the last two years. While Australia has led the world in rooftop solar, the challenge is on. South Africa installed a staggering 6.2GW in 2024, double Australia’s run-rate. Pakistan did a staggering 15GW last year, predominantly residential and commercial rooftop solar. 

We need to leverage our New Vehicles Emissions standards and complement this with a national rollout of charging infrastructure at scale this decade – in every station car park and every Bunnings Warehouse – to ensure we embrace the huge $60bn annual saving of cutting our addiction to oil imports. We should be leveraging EVs’ vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capacities to export energy back to the grid, further building grid resilience as we electrify everything. 

Complementing this, the government must fast-track committed spending, for example from the National Reconstruction Fund, for large-scale renewable energy and innovation projects, and  coordinate support nationally.

We look forward to Energy Minister Bowen implementing his 2024 decision to upscale the next round of the Capacity Investment Scheme – designed to support accelerated investment into large scale renewables and batteries – from 6GW to 10GW, responding to the clear market momentum in the 6.6 times oversubscribed round 1 tender. This investment must be front-loaded in the years to 2030, building on the 51GW of new renewable and storage projects in the advanced stage, as reported by AEMO.

Let’s acknowledge and embrace the system transformation in progress, and allocate our scarce human capital to those projects that transform and prepare our country for the decades ahead. 

Let’s grasp this moment of policy certainty from a government committed to remaking Australia as a clean, green industrial superpower to further build investor confidence, crowding-in domestic and foreign financial capital at scale to underpin our transition – including from our Asian neighbours and the global decarbonisation leader, China, with whom we have a generational opportunity for partnership. 

As our export partners decarbonise, we need to pivot with them. This involves refocusing away from exporting green hydrogen towards using hydrogen in industrial applications for decarbonisation of our world-leading mining sector.

It means extending our competitive advantage in renewables, so we can process our abundant resources onshore using clean energy. This will enable us to export value-added green iron, green aluminium, lithium and polysilicon – a more than $100 billion per annum value-added uplift for our economy, as we “embody decarbonisation” in our leading commodities and energy transition resources. 

The opportunities are huge; it is time for the returned Albanese government, with its historical mandate, to lift ambition and hit the accelerator on the race to the top in collaboration with our key trade partners.

Australian voters have spoken, loudly, for a positive, solutions-focused government at this time of great global uncertainty. Thankfully this includes an emphatic endorsement of strong policies to build on the work of Labor, Community Independents and the Greens, and forge ahead in positioning our nation as a zero-emissions trade and investment leader in a global economy moving towards net zero.

>>> Tim in election stories with CEF's key asks for the Albanese government's transition acceleration mandate: The Energy, Renew Economy, with an op ed in Canberra Times and ABC interview forthcoming.

>>> Tim in a 7 min segment on ABC TV's Close of Business last Friday on Trump's first 100 days and what his presidency means for US, global and regional and Australian transition (from 10:14).

Tim & AJ for CEF, with our partner Blair Palese of Climate Capital Forum.

___

OUR MEDIA |

See all of our media here, including our extensive work to refute the nuclear scam ahead of the election.

OUR WORK |

See more of our latest work, including presentations on global decarbonisation and capital shifts.

PREVIOUS NEWS UPDATES |

Our previous newsletters covering major energy news can be accessed here. 

__

If you wish to be removed from this email list, please just let Annemarie know any time or unsubscribe at the link below. 

This newsletter is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, investment or accounting advice, nor is it an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any security, company, or fund. CEF is not responsible for any investment decision made by you. Unless attributed to others, any opinions expressed are our current opinions only. Certain information presented may have been provided by third parties. CEF believes that such third- party information is reliable, and has checked public records to verify it wherever possible, but does not guarantee its accuracy, timeliness or completeness; and it is subject to change without notice.