Prime Minister Scott Morrison has explicitly endorsed the growing need for additional lower carbon energy supply as his government prepares for what he called the “new geopolitics of energy and climate change”.
As business and investors called for a more rapid shift to renewable energy, Mr Morrison told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit that his government was responding to epoch-making changes in the way energy is produced, transported and consumed.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks at the 2021 AFR Business
Summit.
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“The world’s response to climate change is simultaneously reshaping the global economy, global politics and the global energy system.”
“We are preparing. Australia is preparing. The Australian government is preparing for this new geo-politics of energy and climate change. It’s gone into another gear.”
“We must address the threats, and we must realise the opportunities for Australia.”
The comments come ahead of a busy year on global climate change policy, where Mr Morrison will appear at a number of major summits leading up to the United Nations Glasgow meeting in November.
Coal-rich Australia has been accused of falling behind the world’s leading economies on climate action, putting pressure on Mr Morrison to lift the country’s level of ambition towards net zero emissions by 2050.
Fortescue Metals chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said later during the summit that investors were putting a “strong focus” on climate change action.
“We will need to see a much more rapid transition to renewable energy in all its forms,” Ms Gaines said.
Ms Gaines added that European investors were ahead of many others in the need for a more rapid shift to renewables.
“It’s quite interesting because we actually see a different focus here in Australia than the investors we’re talking to offshore,” she said.
“There is going to be an acceleration of a transition to renewable energy.”
“A lot of governments and whole industries have committed to net zero emissions by 2050.
“But if we want to align with the Paris Agreement, 2050 will be too late.”
David Solomon, the Goldman Sachs chief executive, indicated strong support for a carbon tax, saying it was something that the world needs to “make progress as a society“.
He rejected the idea that financial institutions such as his own were sweating on the need for a carbon price as a way to make money, saying it was about ensuring capital isn’t wasted.
“It’s centred on finding ways that we can get capital allocated to places where the technology or the investment that’s being made is medium- and long-term.”
Mr Morrison encouraged the Summit’s business leaders to read US author Daniel Yergin’s latest book, published late last year – The New Map – which maps out how climate change policy is shaking up technology, infrastructure and even relations between nations.
“[Yergin] said our response to climate change will ‘bring continuing changes in how energy is produced, transported and consumed; in strategies and investment; in technologies and infrastructure; and in relations between countries’.”
“Very true,” Mr Morrison said.
Mohamed El-Erian told attendees that the private sector is moving ahead of governments.
“Any company that doesn’t get on board risks being left behind in a serious fashion,” he said. “It will tun faster than what governments are trying to do.”
Dr El-Erian, the Allianz chief economic adviser, says governments will find themselves “pushing on an open door” when they catch up.
Striking a note of caution, former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, said the new Biden administration could fail if it veers “too far left” on issues such as climate change.
Mr Liveris agreed that a carbon pricing system was inevitable.
But he also suggests safe nuclear energy should be on the agenda in the US and Australia.
Mr Liveris added that there was a need for more large-scale batteries, not just ones that can power states for up to five hours.
Links
- (AU) PM’s Claim Australian Coal Produces Much Lower Emissions Is ‘Nonsense’
- (AU) Australian PM Faces Pressure On Climate Policy But Has To Deal With Resistance In His Ruling Coalition
- (AU) As Biden Hits The Accelerator On Climate Action, Australia Remains Stuck In Policy Paralysis
- (AU) ‘Breathtaking’: What Joe Biden’s Sweeping Climate Plan Means For Scott Morrison
- (AU) The Verdict On Australia’s Emissions Targets: Catastrophic
- (AU) Politics Of Carbon Has Ended, Scott Morrison Declares
- (AU) Bob Carr: I wrote to other countries about Australia's obstinance on climate change. Their pressure might save us
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