Reaching for future goals

Energy companies are big and powerful enough to do what’s right for the industries and community they service. There’s nothing wrong with making profits but profiteering during an emergency is a bad look. While setting off to write this column, I wanted to write about something other than gas prices. But the continued predictable behaviour from fossil fuel companies, complaining about having their stellar profits clipped in order that society and businesses can continue to function, hastened me to just start writing. Now, history shows that fossil fuel companies are used to getting their way. The backlash worked in 2010 against Kevin Rudd, and in 2013 their lobby supported the Abbott-led Coalition’s dumping of Labor’s carbon-pricing mechanism, allowing emissions to shoot up once again. I mention this because I don’t want manufacturers to forget it. Now that Labor is back in again, the gas price caps are the only measure available to save the economy. There will still be price rises, and the opposition and lobbyists will crow about them. Watching long term trends has been a mainstay of economists and sociologists but few have seen a tougher challenge. “A windfalls profits tax would potentially be a much more long-lasting solution to this problem,” says Alia Armistead in The Saturday Paper in December 2022. She’s a researcher for the climate and energy program at The Australia Institute. “It would be a preferable way to capture this excess profit, to ease pressure on households from being stuck with high energy prices. It could go towards fast-tracking the transition towards renewables and building out the huge amount of new generation and transmission that will be required to achieve Labor’s renewable energy target by 2030.” The Ai Group says 2023 looks like it is still going to be ‘messy’ on the energy front, no matter what happens. There are some valid criticisms about the government’s policies. But at least these decisions are not ones made by the gas industry. Gas companies can still make profits and they’ll still be able to make their investments, but the Government needs to be allowed to protect households, businesses and jobs. The rapid adoption of digital and data technologies in recent times has meant that many sectors and organisations have experienced years’ worth of digital transformation in the space of months. This is evident in the growth in online retail, remote working, telehealth, virtual education, digital currencies and data-driven organisations. While this progress has been significant, experts predict that this is just what we can see from the surface, with the next wave of digitisation in industries and the opportunities enabled by digital and data technologies yet to appear. WASTE Australia generates more waste per day per capita (1.5kg) than the East Asia and Pacific region (0.6kg) and the world average (0.7kg). Almost 85% of plastics in Australia were sent to landfill in 2019, and if nothing changes, RMIT estimates that Australia’s landfill space will reach capacity by 2025. Six years ago, Xi Jinping announced bans on solid waste imports, prompting many countries including Australia to reassess their waste management strategies. The Australian Government has banned exports of waste plastics, paper, glass and tyres and set a target to reduce waste to landfill by 30% by 2030. Global energy demand declined by 5.3% in 2020, but this is expected to rebound to pre-COVID levels this year. Renewable energy sources are expected to account for 80% of the growth in global electricity demand by 2030, surpassing coal as the primary source by 2025. Australians absolutely must pull an electric rabbit out of our hats in order to get through the next couple of years. The International Energy Agency forecasts that global electricity demand will grow at twice the rate of primary energy demand out to the year 2040. Most of that demand will come from China and India. The Australian Energy Market Operator is preparing Australia’s grids to manage 100% renewable energy by 2025. The global energy transition opens up new industry and job creation opportunities. It is estimated Australia’s abundant access to raw commodities and renewable energy, advanced agile manufacturing capabilities and concentration of relevant skilled workers yield a strong competitive advantage in emerging clean energy industries, such as green metal manufacturing. I mentioned earlier, of the multinational gas suppliers pulling massive profits out of the country and blooming gas prices, even though Australia’s local supply is abundant. By passing legislation to enable temporary gas price caps the Parliament has taken badly needed action that will help local energy users and soften the blow to Australia from events in Europe. While the uptake of agile manufacturing approaches, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other technologies, could also enable Australian manufacturers to dynamically respond to market changes in a cost-effective manner.