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Hey Reader, in today's edition:
- Utilities pledge grid investment
- Whyalla 'misstep'
- Green funding up
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Electrification day at COP30
A group of the world’s leading utilities has pledged to increase energy transition investment commitments by more than 25% to nearly US$150 billion annually.
With over 3,000GW of renewable projects awaiting grid connections, the investment commitments by Utilities for Net Zero Alliance (UNEZA) members at a high-level ministerial meeting in Belém included a significant shift towards power grids and networks. For every US dollar spent on renewable generation, the utilities will spend US$1.24 on grids and storage.
UNEZA also announced various delivery mechanisms to fix system bottlenecks that have limited the pace of energy transition:
- Pooled Procurement: Aggregating demand across utilities to achieve economies of scale, lower equipment costs, and strengthen supply chains, starting with small island developing states (SIDS)
- Unlocking Stranded Gigawatts: Implementing data-driven planning, flexible grid access agreements, and new regulatory frameworks to reduce congestion and connect renewable capacity currently stalled by infrastructure gaps
- Investment Trust Fund: Launching consultations on a global fund to mobilise long-term capital for grid and renewable-energy infrastructure, leveraging UNEZA’s robust project pipeline to lower the cost of capital and attract institutional investors.
COP30 CEO Ana Toni, Brazil’s former National Secretary for Climate Change, said delivering on global goals for tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 would only be possible if grids kept pace.
“Through the Principles and the UNEZA partnership, we [COP30] are turning global commitments into practical delivery, linking finance, policy, and implementation to build the resilient power systems that will enable a clean-energy future.”
Governments and multilateral development banks at the meeting also backed new grid financing principles endorsed by the COP30 Presidency. Meanwhile a new partnership with the Global Clean Power Alliance (GCPA) led by the UK government and endorsed by Australia will specifically address supply chain challenges affecting the world’s power sector.
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Expert view
“Grids are now the biggest roadblock to the energy transition, especially in emerging and developing countries where resilient infrastructure underpins climate action, sustainable growth, and energy security. To make COP30 in Belém a turning point, we must go beyond just building more wires. We need a systemic rethink, creating secure, affordable, and reliable power systems fit for the future. Through the Global Coalition for Energy Planning and UNEZA, IRENA supports building ecosystems where regulators, utilities, planners, and ministries work together to deliver the speed, certainty, and bankability investors need.”
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Francesco La Camera
Director General, IRENA
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'Significant misstep' over Whyalla
Locking in a gas-fired future at the Whyalla Steelworks would undermine Australia’s emerging green iron industry, according to a report by think tank Climate Energy Finance.
“Government support for a gas option at this point would be a significant misstep. It would be extremely expensive for both the SA and Commonwealth governments and have no longevity. Australia will always be at a disadvantage in gas-based production of iron and steel. Government support for a green pathway will secure a long-term future, taking advantage of Whyalla's advantages in green energy, its workforce and infrastructure.”
Superpower Institute CEO Baethan Mullen
BlueScope Steel (ASX: BSL) is heading up an international consortium with Nippon Steel Corporation, India’s JSW Steel and South Korea’s POSCO, with the steelmakers eyeing Whyalla as a prospective location for future production of “lower-emissions iron” in Australia for both domestic and export markets. But it is Santos (ASX: STO), as gas supplier to Whyalla, that would be the principal beneficiary of government subsidies, the report found.
“Billions in public capital towards a methane gas ‘transition’ of the Steelworks is a taxpayer subsidy to Santos that Australia can ill-afford. Australia does not have a gas shortage problem; more supply is not the solution. It has a gas export and price distortion problem, driven by Santos’ large-scale siphoning of domestic supply into export markets.”
A Strategy for Whyalla: Enabling the Transformation and Decarbonisation of the Steelworks
Instead, Climate Energy Finance is urging the SA Government to adopt a Long-term Energy Service Agreement/Scheme Finance Vehicle-style government underwriting mechanism to unbundle project-on-project risk (the stacking of risk from mutually dependent projects), which is critical to lowering the cost of capital for firmed renewables required to establish a green DRI facility and improving the bankability of a green transformation for Whyalla.
Partnerships with key offtakers could bridge the commercial gap between fossil fuel- and renewables-powered production, and catalyse green iron and steel trade corridors between Australia, Japan, South Korea and China, although a carbon price would also be handy.
Clean commodity market-forming mechanisms to complement supply-side production-based credits and capital grants could include a Clean Commodities Trading Initiative (CCTI), the report recommended, providing a long-term price guarantee for Whyalla’s new owners to commit to the major capital investments required to transition to a DRI facility and enable decarbonisation of the process.
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Capital
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Green, sustainable and social investments have risen from $20 billion to $157 billion in the past five years, according to new research from Impact Investing Australia and the Centre for Social Impact. That $157 billion included $25 billion in the first half of 2025, putting the year on track to surpass 2024’s record. The head of private markets at Australian Ethical Adam Roberts said investors who once doubted renewables were now chasing them down as projects proved they could pay off. (The Guardian)
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has just had its biggest funding year ever with US$3.3 billion approved in 2025, even as other sources of global climate finance slowed. Small island developing states (SIDS) received US$420 million across 14 projects this year alone, and GCF now has US$2.3 billion invested in SIDS since 2015, two-thirds of it as grants — a stark contrast to broader public financing, which increasingly arrives as debt, the fund told The Energy. With the Pacific on the front lines of climate impacts, GCF said it was scaling both adaptation finance (now 59% of its portfolio) and long-term resilience, including early warning systems, water security, food systems, and ecosystem protection.
 Projects
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Australia’s largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, proposed for near Darwin, is being used to greenwash a massive expansion of gas production in the NT, The Guardian reported. The Bonaparte project, which is one component of larger plans to convert Darwin’s Middle Arm Peninsula into a hub for CCS, is a joint venture between Japan’s Inpex (TYO:1605), French oil giant TotalEnergies (EPA: TTE) and Woodside Energy (ASX: WDS). Plans lodged in the EPBC portal show the project is open for comment until November 27.
Policy
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In a survey of the major energy companies, the Australian Energy Council found many believed the transition was inevitable, but that electricity prices were unlikely to fall for at least a decade. The cost of transmission would continue to put upward pressure on prices, but renewable energy — backed by batteries, gas plants and pumped hydro — was still the "least-cost" way of replacing coal. (ABC)
The Brazilian COP30 Presidency presented on Saturday the rationale and objectives of a new Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade (IFCCT). Trade is critical to the goals of the Paris Agreement — altering patterns of production, driving technology development and transfer, and unlocking investment in climate and energy technology — and climate change, in turn, reshaping the context for trade policy. The IFCCT was pitched as the new institutional architecture required to support countries to build an international trade system that advances climate targets alongside sustainable development goals.
For the first time in UNFCCC negotiations, transition minerals formally entered the COP30 draft text to emphasise the transition off fossil fuels should not simply replace them with dirty materials linked to environmental harm and forced labour. In response, over 100 civil society organisations from the Asia Pacific and beyond issued a joint statement during an International Energy Agency (IEA) panel, urging negotiators to ensure transition minerals and human rights are explicitly reflected in the final COP30 text.
China will include hydrogen as one of the country's key strategic objectives in its next Five Year Plan. The 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development is expected to be announced in early 2026 but so far, the draft does not include details about how the Chinese government will support the development of the hydrogen energy industry. (S&P Global)
Regulation
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Victoria's Essential Services Commission kicked off consultation on its approach to setting Victoria’s default electricity price for 2026-27. It's also seeking input on a potential regulated free power period for residential electricity customers in the middle of the day, similar to the Solar Sharer scheme under consultation by the Commonwealth Government. The deadline for feedback is December 12.
Technology
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One of the first large-scale aquifer thermal energy systems in the US is being built near the original test site drilled 45 years ago. The idea of the so-called seasonal thermal energy storage, storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer several hundred feet below ground, was to tuck away excess heat produced in summer, then use it during the winter to warm buildings. (Inside Climate News)
Climate
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C40 Cities, an organisation of almost 100 global mayors co-chaired by London’s Sadiq Khan, urged governments to kick-start progress on a credible global plan to phase out fossil fuels. C40 is working on halving fossil fuel use by 2030, by cutting demand, scaling renewable energy production, and protecting residents from volatile energy prices. “Across the network, cities are standing up to powerful fossil fuel interests, actively countering harmful disinformation, and using legal tools to hold major polluters accountable for the climate damage they have caused,” the group said.
Heading to COP30 for the pointy end of talks and a compromise on hosting rights for COP31, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Pacific nations were particularly vulnerable and bringing the world to the Pacific for COP for the first time would show how to fight this existential threat together. “I would anticipate there will be a resolution by the end of the week,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC’s Insiders. (AFR) (AAP)
People
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Anna Freeman has joined the Energy Efficiency Council as Head of Electrification.
The University of Newcastle appointed Paul Ebert as Executive Director of the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources. Ebert joins from Worley in the UK, where he was Group Director Sustainability and Energy Transition Leadership.
Research
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With Australia’s 11.8 million homes accounting for a quarter of national electricity use and 10% of emissions, CSIRO’s energy systems research is being used to shape new homes. But some quirks remain embedded in the models themselves, according to Energy Performance Group Leader Anthony Wright. One long-standing assumption of a significant heat load between 4-6pm, when “children are home and a meal is being prepared”, implies for two hours every day someone is “frying, grilling, roasting or baking”. “You can see how social norms and biases from the 1940s found their way into the software assumptions and must be constantly revisited and questioned to ensure the modelling reflects modern life.”
Random
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Economists told AAP FactCheck there's no evidence “investment has fallen off a cliff under Labor”. Liberal MP and former energy minister Angus Taylor made the false claim in a Sky News interview, citing “endless” environmental approvals. (AAP)
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What's On
November 18
National Press Club
FutureCoal (formerly known as the World Coal Association) CEO Michelle Manook will address the National Press Club on “the myths and future of coal” at this Canberra event.
November 20
2026 ACCU Review
Climate Change Authority Deputy CEO Eliza Murray, General Manager Mia Swainson, and Manager Gavin Mongan will speak at a webinar on the authority’s upcoming review of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme.
November 25
The NEM Review and Firming up the Transition
NEM Review Chair Tim Nelson, CEFC CEO Ian Learmonth, Transgrid CFO Nadine Lennie, and AEMO Executive GM Violette Mouchaileh will speak at this CEDA event in Sydney.
November 26
National Press Club
Deputy Opposition Leader and former energy spokesman Ted O’Brien will address the National Press Club at this event in Canberra.
November 26
Efficient Electric Homes: Market Acceleration Summit
Architect Adrian Joyce, Secretary General of EuroACE - Energy Efficient Buildings, and the Director of the Renovate Europe Campaign, Clare McLaughlin, Head of Division, Energy Performance, at the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Grace Tam, Head of Consumer Finance at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and Energy Efficiency CEO Luke Menzel will speak at this Sydney event.
December 9, Sydney and December 11, Melbourne
Energy Tetris
The Energy’s first live event will feature Quinbrook CEO Brian Restall, Energy Security Corporation CEO Paul Peters, Southerly Ten Chief Development Officer Erin Coldham, CS Energy Head of Policy & Regulation Alison Demaria, Atmos Renewables GM of Development Allison Hawke, ASL GM System Planning & Financial Markets, Melanie Koerner, UNSW Senior Research Associate Dylan McConnell and Energy Edge MD Josh Stabler, with more speakers to be confirmed soon.
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