Are banks walking the climate talk? | And social mandate for windfall tax grows

Are our banks’ climate commitments matched by action? We’re taking a close look at this question in our newly launched series of climate finance analyses of Australia’s Big 5 – ANZ, CBA, Westpac, NAB and Macquarie Group. In the first, CEF energy finance analyst Nishtha Aggarwal reviews ANZ’s efforts against four criteria key to assessing progress on decarbonisation. By systematically scrutinising these banks on their climate performance – work that, to our knowledge, is not currently being done by other groups – we hope to add value, give credit where it's due and encourage greater ambition this critical decade.

CEF’s Matt Pollard continues to build our work on EV supply chain, with the sixth in our series on value-adding critical minerals mining and refining, showcasing Australia’s once in a century opportunity to become a Critical Minerals Export Superpower. Matt digs deep on strategic investments by our federal and state governments in key minerals projects, with case studies of how public finance is turbocharging the domestic sector and catalysing private capital engagement. Our paper ran in Renew Economy, with an expanded version for US and international markets in Climate & Capital Media.

This week, we also featured our first guest contribution, from Nicolette Boele, Smart Energy Council’s Expert Advisor on Electrification of Everything and shadow representative for the federal seat of Bradfield. Nic shared her excellent A2EP conference insights on the key factors needed to drive the energy transition. Watch this space – we plan to build and publish a select group of expert contributors.  

And we celebrated the news that Environmental Justice Australia’s landmark legal action on behalf of the Environment Council of Central Queensland will, for the first time, see the climate impacts of some of Australia's major coal and gas projects assessed, meaning they could be blocked on the grounds of climate harm.

Elsewhere we were active in the media on a range of topics including COP27, the energy crisis, and fossil fuel companies’ commitments to decarbonisation.

Finally, the last week has seen a dramatic shift in the social mandate narrative around taxing the windfall superprofits enjoyed by energy multinationals war-profiteering from our sovereign resources as bill shock smashes 20 million+ Australians – hitting those who can least afford it hardest. Even The Australian and The AFR came on board, as Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged that “in the community there is an appetite for us to get a better return from our resources”.

There is now momentum for a win on this front, with the potential of an east coast export-only tariff on LNG multinationals, and the Treasury reviews of the failed Petroleum Resource Rent Tax and multinational corporate tax likely to tighten loopholes. That’s three of the five recommendations in CEF’s August Windfall Profits report, which saw us making the case for Australians to get their fair share in SMH, Canberra Times, on Sky, ABC TV’s The Business and elsewhere. 

Happy Sunday!

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