Aidan Morrison

This is the story of how a fund chaired by former Labor PM Julia Gillard acquired a wind farm project just six days before Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen underwrote its future revenues with taxpayer money. Today we've learned Julia's fund is trying to flip it. For a profit. HMC Capital's 'Energy Transition Fund' rushed to acquire the Neoen Victoria portfolio. They hadn't even raised any money in their fund. They closed with almost a billion dollars worth of borrowed money and IOU's. Less than a week later, Chris Bowen announced Kentbruck Wind Farm to be successful in the first round of the Capacity Investment Scheme. My rough calculations suggest they will receive something like a billion dollars from taxpayers (and maybe much more) over 15 years. Sweet deal. A billion dollars of fancy financial monopoly money one week. A billion dollars of promised taxpayer dollars the next. I want to emphasise that I have no evidence of anything illegal or improper taking place. Rather, I want to point out how odious and repugnant the official, proper, legal business of renewable energy has become. Yesterday Chris Bowen announced he wanted to supersize the CIS subsidy scheme, yet again. Today Ross Garnaut seemed to cheer this on, whilst pointing out "There are now virtually no new investment commitments for solar and wind generation that do not have CIS or other Government underwriting," What happened to a sense of propriety? Since when do we celebrate people rushing to put their snouts in the trough? Or rushing to fill the trough even higher? Unlike the UK who publish a 'going rate' for technology subsidies, our renewables are subsidised through a secret tender process. Every project gets to ask for whatever revenue they want to proceed. @AEMO_Energy facilitates a secret beauty pageant, where they award points for things like indigenous participation or community engagement, alongside financial value. And Chris Bowen makes the final call. The bids remain secret. There's no cap to the pay-outs. Since AEMO is a private company, there is no scope for an FOI request, and AEMO aren't not subject to parliamentary oversight through Senate Estimates. So no-one can ever prove an allegation that Bowen has bestowed special favour on a friend's project if that was what he did. But equally, he can never prove that he selected strictly according to merit. We are just expected to trust the black-box of Bowen's subsidies. So I'm going to say out loud, with full voice, that I hope everyone can agree on: If this is what the future of 'clean energy' looks like in Australia, it looks absolutely FILTHY. Any firm that talks about ESG seriously should start taking the "G" a bit more seriously and steer clear of projects that thrust their snouts into Bowen's hopelessly opaque, bottomless trough of government funds. Or at the very least, purge their boards and senior leadership of all the former Labor staffers, donors, and industry lobbyists who have had a hand in designing the trough, and filling it up. The reality is that there are no natural profits to be made in generating renewable electricity in Australia. Every dollar of profit in this industry is really a cheque signed by a politician, with Chris Bowen signing all the biggest cheques, worth untold billions, in the next three years. It's all legal. It's all official. And it's absolutely obscene. Mega-thread below. (It'll come in stages) 1/

The New England REZ is going to be disastrous in every sense. Economically, environmentally, and socially. Glad to be able to contribute to this important story.

Breaking news update to the below... AEMC has stuck to their draft decision here. No rule change. They've officially rejected our request for a baseline that would expose the cost of policies. aemc.gov.au/rule-changes/c…

Sometime after the Royal Commission reveals the true scope of the damage done to our economy by this rush towards renewables, and all the transmission required, people will look back at breadcrumbs like this, and sigh, and rest their foreheads in their hands.

Seems important.

That CBA exercise done by the ‘consumer trustee’ is forbidden from considering any scenarios that don’t meet government objectives in the act. There’s small chance they could test other REZ’s taking the capacity instead. But the target for renewable capacity must be met. Unlikely to provide much resistance.

@FootnotesGuy Thanks Aidan. I assume the CBA mentioned in the letter will be a State exercise? Is there any chance this will lead to a cessation based on it not being in the best long term interest of consumers?

This is the most damning and outrageous draft-final change in the latest ISP. In the draft, just Stage 1, ie one 500KV line, modelled to New England. Ongoing analysis and stakeholder engagement needed "to ascertain whether the second stage will optimise benefits to consumers..." Crystal clear that AEMO knows full well that there are no projects likely to close in the REZ, and this will be a white-elephant, with terrible costs imposed on consumers with no chance of proportional benefit. So what happened with the analysis and stakeholder engagement? Well, one stakeholder trumped all others. The NSW government wrote and declared that they're doing both lines, in a single project, and asked for it to be treated as 'anticipated' which makes it a sunk-cost in the ISP, so AEMO would not do any further analysis on whether it makes economic sense for consumers. The sheer bloody-mindedness of this move is just breathtaking. There can be no pretense now that the ISP does anything at all to coordinate investment or protect consumers. A supremely arrogant government can just over-rule the community, and consumer interests, and the ISP just nods along, puts it all in the path called 'optimal'. 1/

@andrew_thaler To do that they’d have to put two 500kv lines up into Queensland. But in fact, that link has been downgraded to 330kv. And just one line. So it’s not happening.

I think you will find that the New-South-Welshistan govt wants the two 500kV lines to exploit the Spring-summer-autumn solarPV surplus energy and negative price electricity from Queenslandistan. Same-same from Victoriastan

And why? That's what's most baffling. For some reason Penny Sharpe seems infinitely committed to polishing Matt Kean's turd when he announced this REZ bigger than the CWO REZ, and mis-sized the transmission. This just absurd. A total disgrace. 8/8

If you want to hear my long-form address to the Walcha community about renewables in general, and this proposal in particular, it's in a reply here. These guys pack out bowlos, and parliamentary galleries alike. A community united. 7/ x.com/FootnotesGuy/s…

Actually this petition does come from the same region. Walcha is in New England. But it’s intended to be a rallying cry for any and all regional communities affected. I’d highly recommend considering this!

No one could sit through what I just saw and argue that farming communities want renewables.

I’m in watching the debate on a screen downstairs because the gallery is full. These people from New England have got 20,000 signatures to force this to be debated. And they’ve flooded the parliament. The ISP has shafted them today. Will explain.

@orstraya They’re mostly single circuits. So just 3 lines per tower. There are exceptions I think.

@FootnotesGuy How do they compare to the 500kV lines in Victoria?

Been out in the field today. Looking at HumeLink under construction. Comparing the existing single circuit 330kv line with the 500kv double circuit is a true Crocodile Dundee moment. That’s not a tower. This, is a tower. 😳

Working on a major paper. Gonna take longer than I’d hoped. I just keep discovering things. The picture gets clearer. But bigger. And then there’s more that needs filling in. Late night reflections.