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22 SEPTEMBER 2026
Welcome to our news round-up. See previous issues here.
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WITH THE WHYALLA BLAST FURNACE CLOSURE, TIME'S UP FOR FUTZING AROUND
Last week’s announcement that the Whyalla Steelworks coal-fired blast furnace would permanently close, with the loss of over 500 jobs, was a dark day for the town and the entire region.
But putting bandaids on an antiquated, beyond end-of-life facility degraded for almost a decade under the watch of global fraudster Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance was never going to work. It has proven to be simply a waste of taxpayer funds, a delusion that kicked the can down the road and deferred making hard and timely decisions in the best interests of the workforce, the community and taxpayers.
There is no more room for delay, mismanagement or ill-conceived, backward-looking decision making. Now is the time to accelerate solutions to establish a sustainable, low-pollution green steel supply chain based in South Australia.
The future for Whyalla lies in a new electric arc furnace (EAF) using electricity powered by renewables to produce steel at a fraction of the emissions of coal-fired blast furnaces, and developing the state’s valuable magnetite iron ore resources. This leverages the competitive advantage of South Australia’s world leading electricity grid now reliably powered almost entirely by firmed renewable energy.
Taxpayer monies are absolutely finite. It is a misuse of public money to prop up end of life technology without concurrently accelerating investments in permanent clean-energy based solutions. South Australia could be well underway on planning for this, and progressing to a final investment decision and into construction on an EAF as a no-regrets first step.
Expediting the development of a new EAF could and should have been the top priority since the politically brave decision to put the steelworks into administration more than 18 months back, not wasting money to give the community and workforce false hope.
The state and federal governments must now select a private partner or consortium that will drive forward a public-private solution to give certainty to the future of Whyalla and South Australia and invest in modern clean-tech solutions, ideally leveraging, partnering and collaborating with our key Asian steel trade partners.
This would position Whyalla in emerging green steel supply chains in a rapidly decarbonising world, delivering the resulting permanent jobs and economic benefits of this critical industrial sector.
>>> See our op ed in The Energy and our commentary on ABC’s PM program, in The Guardian, Renew Economy and Michael West Media.
On a related note…
Anyone reading even a couple of chapters of veteran journalist Paul Barry's insightful book “The Big Steal" would see the massive ongoing global fraud being perpetrated by international master scammer Sanjeev Gupta, who literally bled Whyalla Steelworks dry.
Gupta hopefully is fleeing Sydney for NYC, but the damage he is doing to Australia is ongoing. He has already fleeced Australian, South Australian, Tasmanian and NSW taxpayers of a collective couple of billion dollars, even as he fleeced the Scottish and English governments.
At GFG’s steel company InfraBuild, 4,500 staff are in the firing line as the directors are in all likelihood trading while insolvent, and have been for a decade in a global Ponzi scheme with the collapsed Greensill and other financiers – embarrassing incompetence or outright fraudulent corruption? Former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and British ex-PM David Cameron should donate every cent they took in exchange for the address book of government contacts they shamelessly leveraged for personal gain as fraud enabling advisors to Greensill.
Is anyone awake at ASIC?! Seriously, even one lawyer there willing to lance InfraBuild, the biggest remaining boil of the GFG Alliance contagion. Why are ASIC Chair Sarah Court and ASIC CEO Scott Gregson asleep at the wheel? Treasurer Jim Chalmers – can you please remind them to do their jobs!
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SAFEGUARD MECHANISM: A SOUND FRAMEWORK RIPE FOR ENHANCEMENT
Last week CEF welcomed the opportunity to provide a submission to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s (DCCEEW) consultation on the 2026-27 Safeguard Mechanism Review — an urgent review required to strengthen the Federal Government’s flagship policy for driving emissions reduction and fossil fuel abatement across industry.
CEF’s submission to the review is grounded in enhancing the existing policy framework and improving the effectiveness of the integrated structure of the Safeguard Mechanism, the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme, and the Nature Repair Market. This is key to building investor confidence in deploying capital into on-site abatement for industrial facilities under the Safeguard, and patient capital into nature-based solutions that deliver critical co-benefits in nature repair.
CEF sees it as imperative that industry, regulators, investors, landholders and the academic community focus on enhancing the standard and integrity of this structure, and not on abandoning this model. Markets work best with a price signal, and ‘polluter pays’ is a longstanding core market principle Australia needs to enhance, not discard.
Australia has an incredible opportunity to harness the scalability of compliance carbon markets to build a world-scale structure to sustainably generate significant positive outcomes that restore, conserve, and protect Australia’s natural capital, and simultaneously create the critical investment signal of a rising price on carbon, supported by fundamentals that will drive such market conditions, catalysing large-scale capital deployment into on-site abatement in industry.
Australia’s opportunity, and challenge, is in forming market conditions, improving investor confidence and market participation, and ensuring system integrity and stakeholder buy-in. This is key to ensuring the integration of the ACCU Scheme with the Safeguard Mechanism to incentivise high-quality abatement and investment into nature-based solutions while simultaneously not limiting or hindering onsite emissions reductions at industrial facilities. CEF’s submission was focussed upon broadening and deepening the policy settings of the Safeguard Mechanism, recommending:
Establishing a progressively rising real price floor in the Safeguard Mechanism through purchasing option or reverse auction structures in the ACCU market to increase demand when secondary market prices fall below a rising floor.
The Federal Government introduce a significantly greater carbon price liability for entities that exceed their Safeguard baselines by >30% through the purchasing of credits from the Government at a significant market premium over the purchase price paid through price floor auctions.
The Federal Government introduce an Australian CBAM for product variables currently most associated with trade-exposed, baseline adjustment (TEBA) concessions to level the playing field for trade-exposed commodities without hindering the decarbonisation of industry and limiting new, low-emissions manufacturing and value-adding capacity to compete in the domestic market with emissions-intensive counterparts.
The Safeguard Mechanism be expanded more effectively to the electricity sector to accelerate the phase out of fossil fuel-based generation and support the deployment of critical renewable energy generation, ideally aligned to ensure coal plant closure timetable certainty.
The Safeguard Mechanism floor be lowered to 75,000tpa as an efficient next step extension.
The Federal Government investigate the potential introduction of Carbon Contracts-for-Difference (CCfD) to accelerate investment into decarbonisation capital expenditure and operational expenditure for captured facilities — where the current cost of compliance for Safeguard is met from ACCUs and SMCs as the lowest-cost abatement method.
Our recommendations are centred upon absorbing lessons from international best practice and the development of carbon pricing mechanisms across the world, and in particular, our key trading partners in Northeast Asia.
>>> Read CEF’s Matt Pollard’s submission to the Safeguard Mechanism review here.
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AS INFORMATION & ENERGY CONVERGE IN DATA CENTRE PUSH, NATIONAL INTEREST MUST PREVAIL
An excellent new analysis from Ember, The Age of Power, finds the two foundations that define our era are converging: energy and information.
The technologies transforming the world’s energy systems and those driving the digital economy are converging into a new industrial revolution built on the electron. Ember explores how energy and information, long treated as separate systems, are increasingly built on the same technologies, supply chains and economics.
Five shared technologies – chips, batteries, power electronics, motors and sensors – underpin both systems. Since 1990, the combined cost of these technologies has fallen by 99%. As electrotech and information technology scale together, the report finds they have the potential to significantly reduce costs across the economy. Household energy running costs could fall by 80%, transport costs by up to 70%, and manufacturing costs by 40-70%.
As the two revolutions converge, they are reshaping industrial competitiveness, global markets and geopolitics. The report argues that countries that combine both revolutions stand to gain an advantage, with a prime example being China.
For Australia, the opportunities from these converging mega-trends are huge, but only if we get the right policies in place. At the frontier of this confluence of trends is the explosion in data centres globally, including in Australia. With over 220 new data centres planned in Australia the government must ensure that proponents – foreign tech companies – BYO new firmed renewable energy and water/cooling solutions, as well build social licence to operate by delivering to local communities a clear net benefit.
The federal government has repeatedly explicitly committed that data centre development approvals will be contingent on the above conditions. We urge Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Industry Minister Tim Ayres to stay on target and prioritise legislating these requirements as the nonnegotiable threshold for entry of the global tech giants.
The signs are promising – as Kate Burgess in The Energy reports, a consultation paper released last week by the federal government confirmed that the Clean Energy Regulator would use the nascent Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) scheme to ensure that data centres contract for renewable energy that is genuinely additional to existing sources - aligning with BYONCE, as Minister Bowen says!
A case in point of the need for these mandated requirements is the Western Downs hyperscale data centre in QLD, proposed by Singapore based Zerra DC. US AI behemoth Anthropic has signed a long term lease on the facility to run its Claude AI platform. The ABC reported that this data centre alone could use a quarter of the state’s energy demand.
As Tim commented, "The beauty of the land grab in the data centre gold rush that's underway right now is that capital is pouring in”, but the “increase in power demand would need to be matched by investments into new energy generation, which could transform the regional and rural areas.”
This means renewables. While a Zerra DC spokesperson said the project would be “well positioned among existing energy infrastructure, including three gas-fired power stations”, Zerra didn't invest in the existing infrastructure, Australian ratepayers did.
Moreover, fossil fueled data centres should not be a thing. In alignment with the ever-increasing urgency of the climate science, it is critical that Zerra DC be required as a condition of approval to develop new firmed renewable energy infrastructure and new water solutions so it adds sustainably to economic growth and delivers a win for the region, for Australia and for the environment.
Fossil fuel vested interests are pushing back. Premier David Crisafulli’s captured QLD government is advocating for the data centre regulatory regime to be “energy agnostic”, that is, for them to be permitted to run on coal and gas, fobbing the massive cost of carbon pollution onto everyone else.
Not only would this be a betrayal of Australia’s energy transition and climate commitments, it would also be a totally unsustainable business proposition that will undermine data centres’ social licence and cause massive delays to approvals, adding costs to the developer.
>>> Read Tim’s full commentary in the ABC story Australia's largest proposed data centre could draw a quarter of Queensland's energy use.
CEF welcomes AirTrunk’s proposed $3.7bn Kurri data centre, given its 350 ongoing jobs and community benefits, including a $37m infrastructure fund (including a $12m sporting and multipurpose community facility), and a potential $200 annual electricity bill reduction for ~5,000 local households for up to 20 years. CEF stresses that these commitments should be legally binding as part of the project’s approval. Tim acknowledges AirTrunk’s proposed 90-100% renewable energy target by 2030, dry-air cooling with no direct water use, and potential grid strengthening benefits. Data centres must deliver genuine, measurable benefits to local communities. CEF’s ABC Newcastle Drive radio interview.
>>> See our op ed in Pearls & Irritations Australia has one chance to get data centre policy right
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ARENA’S NEW $30m LAUNCHPAD BOOSTS EARLY STAGE CLIMATETECH INNOVATORS
Climate Capital Forum (CCF) last week welcomed the Australian Government’s new Launchpad funding program for early-stage climate and renewable energy startups, announced by ARENA alongside the ‘Australian Built 2026’ climate tech showcase in Canberra.
Launchpad has two funding rounds:
The Startup Funding Round – backing promising founders and early-stage startups aligned to ARENA’s mandate as they develop their technology, accelerate their business plans and build momentum towards further investment and commercial deployment. This is a $15m round.
The Ecosystem Funding Round – funding ecosystem partners that help businesses aligned to ARENA’s strategic priorities to develop and grow, including accelerators, incubators and other support providers, with up to $15m funding available.
The commitment aligns directly with long-standing advocacy by the Climate Capital Forum to accelerate the deployment of public capital into domestic clean energy innovation. The funding allows critical innovations – spanning energy storage, hydrogen, green metals, grid technologies, and clean digital platforms – to move rapidly out of the lab and into the market while retaining intellectual property and capability within Australia.
>>> See our media release with commentary from Blair Palese, founder of Climate Capital Forum, and Tim welcoming the initiative, and coverage in Renew Economy
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BHP: EMISSIONS CUTS IMPOSSIBLE SAYS BIG WELCHING AUSTRALIAN AS IT GUZZLES MORE DIESEL
We remind BHP again that UP is not DOWN, as its epic decarbonisation walk-back continues.
In May, Angus Grigg at ABC 4Corners and The Guardian's Christopher Knaus and Adam Morton gave us the big reveal – BHP was locking in diesel fossil fuel use in its Pilbara operations and effectively reversing its commitments on emissions reduction while telling the public it was going green.
Our op ed in Renew Economy at the time highlighted the shameful climate science denialism of the BHP board under Chair Ross McEwan and CEO Brandon Craig.
Four months later, we get the big middle finger with confirmation that BHP's emissions in 2035 will be a reported 33% higher than previously expected. The board had listened to its shareholders and the climate scientists and decided to totally ignore them.
As the AFR reported, “BHP’s emissions rose by 8% in the year to June this year and look set to continue rising in the next two years… The most significant change to BHP’s plans is that diesel consumption will persist at high levels for longer because the company has delayed a $US4 billion spend on battery-powered haul trucks and trains.”
Andrew Larder, BHP’s head of decarbonisation and Graham Winkelman, VP of climate, continue to whine and spread misinformation about how hard it is for BHP to act on cleaning up its carbon pollution. Boohoo. We'd have to invest money we could otherwise pay ourselves in bigger near-term bonuses and larger dividend cheques. Far easier to externalise the costs of our climate-destroying pollution onto everyone else as we pull down the big bucks. It's simply that we don't care. We would rather use our climate science denialist lobbyists at Australian Energy Producers and the Minerals Council of Australia to threaten PM Albanese with a $25m advertising campaign to undermine his leadership – far more effective than actually doing anything.
Meanwhile, Fortescue CEO Dino Otranto is spending US$1bn annually on capex to electrify and decarbonise its truck fleet, showing it can be done. Better still, with Trump's ongoing war on Iran costing everyone in the world an ever increasing amount, the payback is now starkly obvious: “Our work shows that electrification can unlock unit cost savings of US$2-4/t and reduce our exposure to volatile diesel prices. All you have to do is look at today’s oil price,” as Otranto says.
The implications of diesel dependency go beyond the mining sector. Australia is the largest importer of diesel in the world. Our energy security is being massively undermined by our continued addiction to a foreign fossil fuel in the midst of ongoing geopolitical instability and rolling global energy crises.
A key example is the crippling dependence of hundreds of top end communities, primarily Indigenous, on imported diesel-powered generators for electricity. These diesel systems consume around 25 million litres of diesel each year in the Northern Territory alone. Electrification and decarbonisation – rooftop solar and batteries and virtual power plant technology solutions – should be a priority to cut this dependence and provide these communities with the permanent energy security they need.
As for the mining sector, we ask Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher to act without further delay to align Australia's fiscal policies with our national interests to ensure laggards like BHP and Rio Tinto – with the latter also dragging its feet on decarbonisation – are incentivised to invest and act sustainably, and no longer rewarded for their
climate-harming, self-interested complacency.
We call again for the $3bn annual diesel fuel subsidy to the mining sector to be pivoted into a Transition Tax Incentive. Under this proposal, Fuel Tax Credits received over $50m pa would need to be reinvested in decarbonisation, e.g., electric trucks, or foregone. At present, BHP alone siphons up some $620m of taxpayers’ money in the form of diesel tax credits annually.
The WA government is not impressed by BHP’s backsliding: WA Energy and Decarbonisation Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said she hoped miners embraced the opportunity to create jobs through the energy transition: “We know it will take time, but we don’t want to see major operators walking back their decarbonisation commitments and the jobs and investment they can help unlock. If West Australian households, mums and dads, can put solar panels and batteries on their houses and engage in the energy transition and decarbonise, so can the big miners.”
>>> See our other commentary on BHP’s epic fail here and here.
>>> See our op ed in Renew Economy with Alistair Kitchen of Indigenous Energy Australia, Outback Australia has desperate need for rooftop PV and batteries to cut crippling dependence on imported diesel
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ELECTRIFY AUSTRALIA CALLS FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO ACCELERATE ELECTRIFICATION NOW
Climate Energy Finance is proud to support Electrify Australia and its open letter, signed by ~40 other organisations – ranging from ACOSS, to Clean Energy Investor Group, to the Australia Institute of Architects – calling on the Albanese Government to accelerate electrification across every sector of the economy. Australia has an opportunity to harness our abundant renewable energy resources to deliver affordable, reliable, and renewable energy while reducing dependence on expensive, imported fuels.
>>> Read and support the open letter.
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CHINA: CLEAN-ENERGY SUPPLY CONTINUES TO OUTPACE DEMAND GROWTH, AS COAL POWER FALLS AND NATIONAL EMISSIONS CONTINUE TO PLATEAU, SIX YEARS AHEAD OF 2030
China’s total power generation growth slowed to 0.9% yoy in August 2026, while zero-emissions generation grew 8.8% yoy, more than offsetting demand growth and driving a second consecutive monthly decline in fossil fuel generation. Coal generation fell by 4.3% yoy and total thermal generation was down 4.1% yoy. Solar remained the #2 generation source at 13.1% YTD, ahead of wind at 10.8%, while zero-emissions sources supplied 42.3% of total generation. Clean energy supply outpaces demand growth, however stronger and sustained gains are needed to lock in a structural decline in coal generation.
>>> For further details, see CEF’s forthcoming September China Monthly Energy Update, which will be published here.
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OUR MEDIA |
See all of our media here.
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.
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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.
