Securing the jobs of workers who’ve kept our lights on for decades will be one of the top priorities of the National Net Zero Authority (NNZA), a new agency that will steer Australia’s transition away from polluting fossil fuels.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government would empower the agency, which will cost $23 million in its first year, to focus on any obstacles to green job creation and investment, while functioning as a “one-stop shop” for prospective renewable industry companies looking to move into the regions.
An interim NNZA will launch on July 1, with an independent chair supported by an advisory board that will refine the functions and powers of the authority to be legislated in Parliament within the next 12 months.
Former Gillard-era energy minister Greg Combet may be an option. The IFM Investors chair won an AusTender contract for a net-zero taskforce aimed at handling the government’s net zero aspirations which came up during Senate Estimates in February.
Here’s what you need to know.
The agenda of the NNZA will be threefold, the government said. First, it will provide re-skilling and transitional support for Australian workers in “emissions-intensive sectors” — which include iron ore, steel, aluminium, chemicals and liquefied natural gas (which the government insist form a part of our renewable future).
In a statement, ACTU president Michele O’Neil described the pathway to net zero as a “nation-building, history-making, generation-defining project”.
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said environmental groups agreed that no worker should be left behind in the transition. She pointed to the closure of the Liddell coal-fired power station — Australia’s oldest coal-fired power plant — and the Victorian government’s plan to be 95% renewable within 12 years.
“Communities in regions where fossil fuels are being phased out and those in renewable energy zones need a voice, clear plans and strong investment to guide the transformation of their local economies and industries,” McKenzie said.
Unlike Liddell, which was described as an orderly closure with redeployments to the nearby Bayswater station, the 2025 closure of Origin Energy’s Eraring power station has the 500-person workforce and unions on tenterhooks, with some — including NSW’s new energy minister, Penny Sharpe — doubting the deadline will be met.
“The key thing is we just can’t turn [Eraring] off if the replacement [capacity] is not there,” Sharpe told the Smart Energy Council conference in Sydney on Thursday. “We can’t have a situation where households and businesses and industries don’t have access to energy.”
On Friday, Bowen said he had briefed Sharpe to assure her the new federal agency would be “complementary” with NSW’s as-yet-unannounced independent net zero commission — a March election promise “to keep the NSW government honest”, as Sharpe described.
Coordinating programs and policies across government to support regions and communities will be the second agenda item on the NNZA’s remit, to ensure new and emerging clean energy industries form a foundational stronghold here.
To that end, the government says the authority will work with federal agencies and state, territory and local governments, existing regional bodies, unions, industry, investors, First Nations groups and others to provide a landing pad.
The third agenda item will be connecting investors and companies — here and abroad — with net-zero transformation opportunities. Among those opportunities are Australia’s ample EV battery ingredients: Australia is the only country home to all 11 critical minerals required to manufacture them.
Take the country’s supply of lithium, a crucial component of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. Australia is home to more than half the world’s lithium, and yet we are also the world’s largest exporter of lithium with earnings expected to reach $19 billion this year, a massive domestic manufacturing opportunity.
Last year, Bowen told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, that “the world’s climate emergency is Australia’s jobs opportunity”, not only securing jobs but ensuring those jobs are paid well and have good working conditions.
“The best way to counter the naysayers who still call for delay and denial is to demonstrate that working people stand to benefit from action,” he said.
the world’s climate emergency is ‘Australia’s jobs opportunity’ – well, duh – the climate emergency has always been a great opportunity to create more and better jobs for everyone – the problem has always been that business don’t give a rat’s about jobs, they’re only interested in profits … specifically, profits that don’t require them to do anything new
This so true- so Governments, Labor Governments must regulate them to do what is in the national NOT corporate interest. It is pretty simple really! There will still be profits; perhaps just not the obscene profits of late!
Dont go nuclear. Too many problems. Just another way to kick the can down the road for future generations to sort out. They have enough to sort out already. Get the renewables act together.
If you imagine that there are insurmountable problems with nuclear, check the facts before giving up on it. If there are problems, let’s fix them. Renewables have had more than 50 years to get cracking on the problem of intermittency, but instead they have preferred to parasitise a gas-fired grid. More renewables means more gas. Even if we are today surrounded by moral cripples making excuses for gas, there is a whole generation of kiddies coming up to vote and demanding that the oldies make real action on fossil emissions. They might hang the lot of us.
Actually Roger, it is my contention that more renewables means slowly declining gas.
Just for power alone, gas is pricing itself out of the market. Businesses understand when renewables + storage percentages of the market get high enough, demand for gas slowly declines. Don’t believe me? Take the ACT (100% net renewables) and their retail prices – set to fall 1.25%. SA has got to about 70% RE and their wholesale prices have fallen by 3%. The “base-load” gas plants on Torrens Island are scheduled for closure there soon.
Where power companies are allowed to build without political interference, they are starting to choose (instead of peaking gas plants) gigapack battery farms (for example Moss Landing, California).
Domestic users and small businesses are starting to understand gas is a bad idea. Polluting and expensive is a bad combination when electric alternatives are superior. Sure for some business there are cases where there is no easy alternative, but they need to start looking hard at what they can do. Especially when Coal and Gas miners look like stealing any cheap quarter-way plausible CCS resources.
Cej , thank you for using facts in your argument (implying that renewables can completely replace fossil fuels). However the examples you use, South Australia and ACT, are both interchangeably connected to the main Australian grid, so analysis is prone to dodgy accounting.
A more respectable example is the West Australian grid, bigger than South Australian demand and not connected to the main Australian grid. WA is heavily into rooftop solar and wind, inevitably backed by gas. They have been able to achieve about 40% renewables supply, but to keep the grid stable are now having to refuse connection to the growing solar generation. The operator has warned that “we don’t have enough gas” to level the intermittent supply. Although they are able to shut down all remaining (~20%) coal generation, it can only be replaced with renewables-backed-by-gas. As renewables grow, so also must gas.
“The world’s biggest battery” could never backup SA wind generation for any significant time, because its capacity is only about six minutes of SA demand. The Moss Landing battery ((that Cej quoted) was twice as big, but even more insignificant for California’s demand – and that’s before it burst into flames. Neither can Australia create energy storage by damming wild rivers, because we just don’t have any left to dam.
“Renewables-backed-by-storage” is an illusion. We must go nuclear.
Sure both the SA and ACT grids are connected to the NEM, but what part of “it’s a transition” don’t you get? AEMO considers gas will decline as RE + storage continues it’s rollout.
In the last couple of years the SA grid has been isolated at least once for over a week (this happened to include the Aluminum smelters in SW Vic). Whyalla wasn’t wiped out, and the lights stayed on.
The NEM has other advantages. With the build in progress for the Project EnergyConnect between SA and NSW, many more RE assets will be built. On top of that, at least one pumped hydro is still on the cards, and NSW may get some as well (ignoring Snowy-II). A number of batteries are proposed on the NSW side as well. So the transition progresses.
WA is a rather poor example. Firstly there is a gas reservation policy there which takes the edge off the prices. Secondly, besides that policy, governments there have tended to be very ‘tight’ with the FF industry. This has led to some ‘unfortunate’ issues (such as the coal supply from the broke Collie open-cut mine). It also has meant they have not kept their focus on transitioning as well as they might have.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve was of course never designed to power SA for any length of time. It still isn’t even after it was upgraded. It’s bread and butter is grid stability and other grid services (and has performed wonderfully well at). Sure it provides power at times, but that’s just equivalent to a small gas peaker.
No wild rivers left in Australia, sure. There are though hundreds of sites available for pumped hydro (including some from coastal ranges to Ocean). Will they be deemed to be able to turn a profit? Probably, in some cases. Anyway, there are other forms of storage being looked at.
As for Moss Landing, accidents will happen. You don’t expect new big tech will work perfectly all the time do you? Besides, Vistra can’t be too concerned. They are building phase 3 to start working in June. That will take it up to 750 MW/3,000 MWh.
“Renewables-backed-by-storage” is the way to go.
Nuclear (if we decided tomorrow to build it) would take far too long to construct and be far too expensive to be used for anything but peaking plants, with slowly declining use just like the gas plants. What sane investor would put their money in that?
But, but SMRs you say. New generation SMRs are still to prove themselves, and the one actually under construction has greatly blown out in cost and build time. Come back in 15 years when we have standardized ones rolling off the production line.
Roger seems fixated on nuclear – why????
Not sure why, but he is a ‘nuke-bro’ from way back.
Actually, I was into climate change before that. Fifty years ago, aware of runaway damage to the greenhouse by fossil emissions, a friend and I prepared to write a textbook on the conversion of national grids to renewables. Both wind and solar technology were good and improving fast, with mass production promising to bring prices down. However the concomitant necessity for energy storage was not being addressed sincerely. Reassuring each other that fusion energy was only thirty years away and that fission would fill in, we postponed the book until energy storage gets solved. In the meantime, I have continued to pound the drum for action on climate change.
Only the most wilfully stupid could believe that increasing renewables-backed-by-gas can totally replace gas in time for the zero-fossils year of 2050.
For the NNZA to prepare workers for a fossil-free future, they should be training them to reduce iron ore with electricity, make fondu cement in electric furnaces, make synthetic fuel, petrochemicals and plastics from captured CO2 and yes, how to operate nuclear power stations. We must include nuclear in the mix if we are ever to free ourselves from gas.
Nuclear? Really? The most expensive form of energy and the one which takes decades to build. In any case rising temperature will restrict capacity as cooling water temperatures rise, in much the same way as coal fired plants are dependent on adequate low temperature colling water. Mt Piper might be a good example of that problem.
The artificial Lake Wallerawang outside Lithgow, nestled in the frigid vales of the saddle between the BMs proper and Bathurst ranges, became an area of great biological interest over the five decades (56yrs) it was used to cool the power station because the temperature beame so much higher than natural.
All sorts of new life abounded, from plants, amphibia and fish to insects but they are now endangered since the generator closed 10yrs ago.
We could spread radionuclids all over the country and waters, who knows what marvellous mutations may result. Concrete eating plants, five legged frogs, two headed fish, lethal ants …