Can a tech billionaire squash Australia’s coal trade by shopping for it?

Pissed off with the Australian authorities’s inaction on local weather change, software program king Mike Cannon-Brookes is making an attempt to purchase a number of large coal vegetation so he can shut them down in favour of renewables

Coal mine

Open lower coal mining in Hunter Valley, Australia

PETER HARRISON/Getty Photographs

Mike Cannon-Brookes, the third richest particular person in Australia, has launched an audacious bid to purchase the nation’s largest electrical energy firm – and shut down its coal-fired energy vegetation. It’s a daring strategy to decarbonisation, however can he pull it off?

Australia presently produces the highest carbon emissions per capita on this planet from burning coal. The Australian authorities is very connected to fossil fuels, with prime minister Scott Morrison as soon as bringing a lump of coal to parliament and saying, “That is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it received’t damage you.”

Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of software program big Atlassian, has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s local weather inaction. Now, he's utilizing his internet price of A$20 billion to attempt to take issues into his personal palms.

On 19 February, he made a A$8 billion bid in partnership with Canadian asset administration agency Brookfield to purchase electrical energy firm AGL, which owns three of Australia’s 16 coal vegetation. If profitable, they'll spend one other A$20 billion changing these coal vegetation with renewable belongings like photo voltaic, wind and battery infrastructure by 2030.

AGL knocked again the bid, saying it was too low. However Cannon-Brookes informed the ABC on 21 February that negotiations are ongoing.

If the takeover goes forward, it would mark the start of the most important decarbonisation mission on this planet. AGL is presently Australia’s largest single greenhouse emitter and produces extra emissions every year than Sweden’s annual whole.

However is a software program maker as much as the duty of operating an electrical energy firm? Tim Buckley at Local weather Vitality Finance, an advisory agency in Sydney, believes that Cannon-Brookes’ tech background may really turn out to be useful, since sensible software program is more and more getting used to ship renewable vitality extra effectively.

“Mike Cannon-Brookes is the neatest billionaire in Australia and Brookfield is among the most profitable buyers in renewable vitality on this planet so it’s excellent synergy,” he says.

Cannon-Brookes already has some expertise within the renewable vitality sector. In 2019, he teamed up with Australia’s second richest particular person – mining mogul Andrew Forrest – to fund a mission known as Solar Cable that can ship electrical energy from an enormous photo voltaic farm in northern Australia to Singapore by way of a submarine cable.

In 2017, he additionally satisfied Elon Musk to construct an enormous battery for storing wind vitality in South Australia after betting with him on Twitter.

With out these mega-rich people stepping in, Australia would proceed to pull its ft on transitioning to scrub vitality, says Marija Petkovic at Vitality Synapse, an advisory agency in Sydney. “It’s an actual disgrace that we’ve needed to depend on billionaires to return in and fill the management hole left by the Australian authorities,” she says.

In response to Cannon-Brooke’s AGL bid, Morrison informed media that coal vegetation ought to function for so long as doable in order that electrical energy costs don’t rise. “Our authorities could be very dedicated to make sure we sweat these belongings for his or her life,” he mentioned.

Nonetheless, Cannon-Brookes informed the ABC that electrical energy costs would really fall underneath his plan as a result of renewable vitality has turn out to be cheaper than coal energy.

If his AGL seize comes off, it might encourage comparable takeovers of coal vegetation in different components of the world. The Asian Growth Financial institution, for instance, not too long ago introduced a plan to purchase and shut 5 to 7 coal vegetation in southeast Asia and change them with renewable vitality.

“The economics stacks up, the science stacks up, what we require is simply the gumption to go for it and truly make it occur,” Cannon-Brookes informed the ABC.

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