Capital

​

Australia receives around 81 ships full of fuel per month and six of those have been confirmed cancelled this month, energy minister Chris Bowen has confirmed while adding that the cancellations were due to interruptions in the supply of crude oil to suppliers in South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia. “There’ll be bumps in supply,” Bowen told ABC Insiders, promising that the government “will work with the refiners and the importers to manage those and minimise impact.” The cancellations come just days after Bowen asserted that “every ship that has been expected to arrive in Australia has arrived [and] there is no need for Australians to be concerned about their access to fuel supplies coming into the country.”

Meanwhile, Australia will be exposed to the fallout from the Iran conflict, investment bank Morgan Stanley has said in a research note. This, as Ampol pushes back a scheduled two-month maintenance shutdown that would have taken its Brisbane oil refinery offline amidst escalating concerns about domestic fuel supplies. Morgan Stanley strategist Chris Nicol warned that Australia’s “absence of off-ramps” leaves it with few alternatives but to reduce its consumption of diesel, cut back on fuel-dependent activities and brace for earnings “volatility”.

Half of European executives in oil, gas, utilities and related areas believe oil demand will peak by 2035 while a similar proportion of North American executives see demand continuing to increase until at least 2050, according to Bain’s 2026 Energy & Natural Resources Survey of more than 800 executives globally. The survey, which was conducted before the Iran conflict, found utilities and power industry executives most bullish on AI and digital, energy storage, advanced nuclear, current generation nuclear, circular systems, renewables and transition materials while biofuels, carbon capture, synthetic and e-fuels, direct air capture and low-carbon hydrogen had the worst outlook overall. Consensus among survey participants suggests the world most likely won’t reach net-zero emissions until 2070.

Five electrification and gas replacement projects will share in $13 million in funding from ARENA's National Industrial Transformation (NIT) Program. Recipients include 4 Pines Brewing Co’s brewhouse electrification; the automatic laundry sorting and washing system at Alsco’s South Coast Flagship Site for Innovation and Low Carbon Demonstration; Opella Healthcare’s work to eliminate natural gas use at its Queensland manufacturing site; Capral’s electrification replacement of a gas-fired log furnace with an electric furnace that’s expected to boost efficiency from 20% to 90%; and BioCarbon’s construction of a commercial-scale facility producing biochar pellets to replace fossil coke in electric arc furnace steelmaking.

Policy

​

Energy minister Chris Bowen on Sunday said the government was not contemplating using its powers to trigger fuel rationing, but noted that the state governments do have that power. His comments came after the NSW government said it was reaching out to fuel company executives for guidance that will help inform the state’s response to the fuel distribution challenges caused by the Iran conflict. Minister for energy and climate change Penny Sharpe said the government is planning for all possible scenarios and had requested information about historical and future fuel orders that will “help us deal with emerging distribution issues and plan for future interventions”. The state government also designated NSW DCCEEW secretary Anthony Lean as the state’s fuel coordinator.

The Western Australian government will facilitate the development of over 1GW of onshore wind farms to replace its coal fired generation, it said in announcing Synergy and Water Corporation PPAs that will see them take renewable energy from the proposed 470MW Parron Maam Marang Farm, 130MW Kondinin Wind Farm, and 550MW Marri Wind Farm. The projects are expected to be producing electricity from late 2028, with the WA government noting that the committed capacity purchases “[exceed] our commitment to deliver 810MW of wind generation to replace the state’s coal fired power fleet.” The WA Government also named Camco Engineering as the recipient of $2 million in Wind Energy Manufacturing Co-Investment Program funding to help it transform into a manufacturer of wind energy projects.

Projects

​

Goulburn’s 1.4MW community cooperative owned solar farm and 4MWh battery has been officially launched, with the system completing final commissioning and its 288 community investors about to reap the benefits of a 12-year effort. The project – the first community-instigated system to go live in Australia – involved Komo Energy, Trinasolar panels, Smart Commercial Solar as primary contractor, and Divalls Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage as principal civil contractors. A portion of the Goulburn Community Solar Co-op’s annual profits will support those in energy poverty through a new Community Fund.

DCCEEW has approved a gas supply security project in Queensland’s Surat and Bowen Basins that will see Australia Pacific LNG construct, operate, decommission and rehabilitate gas field infrastructure. The approval comes with 126 separate conditions – including a cap of 1,695 coal seam gas production wells, limits on the amount of poplar box, Australian painted snipe, koala and other habitats as well as a ban on disrupting a laundry list of specific species. Greenpeace slammed the decision as “a betrayal of our climate [that] serves only one purpose: deliver superprofits to greedy corporations [that are] bleeding our country dry and burning it at the same time.”

Victoria’s Lake Mountain ski field has overhauled its energy systems to reduce its reliance on diesel generation and increase the use of renewable solar and BESS capacity across the resort, particularly during times of peak winter demand. Works by Alpine Resorts Victoria (ARV) include a new, more efficient diesel generator, power system control upgrades to improve coordination between solar, BESS and generators; and site power monitoring upgrades to boost visibility as ARV works to use 100% renewable energy during the warm months and offset as much of its winter usage as possible.

Regulation

​

Just 1,801 of an originally planned cohort of 5,600 homes participated in Endeavour Energy’s 30-month trial of smart meters across greater western Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands and Illawarra region, the AER has revealed in publishing the final report of the trial – the first project to be greenlit with a regulatory sandboxing trial waiver through the AER’s Energy Innovation Toolkit. The meter replacement rate was significantly lower than anticipated, the report notes in attributing the shortfall to a more proactive customer opt out approach, limiting replacement attempts to a single attempt and avoiding shared fuse sites. However, Endeavour Energy noted, the project nonetheless contributed to up to $3.3 million of avoided network expenditure including reducing the need for audio frequency load control systems at the five project substation sites.

NSW Fair Trading inspectors have already issued 13 penalty infringement notices during an inspection blitz on fuel retailers across the state, with over 190 inspections already carried out as the state clamps down on operators misleading consumers during times of uncertain supply. This includes the expectation that retailers notify the government when they run out of fuel so they can be hidden from the state’s FuelCheck app, which has recorded a surge in downloads – from 25,000 in February to nearly 1 million in March – as consumers hunt for reliable information on fuel supplies.

Climate

​

A “truly insane” escalation in temperatures over the south western United States – which has pushed temperatures in some locations to more than 40°C days before the end of the northern winter – has sent records tumbling and meteorologist Alan Gerard scrambling for superlatives in an analysis that noted a host of cities reported first-temperature milestones have been brought forward by up to a month. “The number and coverage of monthly record highs, and to be seeing this more than 10 days before the end of the month… is absolutely ridiculous,” Gerard noted.

A coalition of 23 US states and 17 cities, counties and state agencies have sued the US Government over its recent decision to reject the 17-year-old ‘endangerment finding’, a decision that effectively stopped the US government from doing anything at all about climate change. The lawsuit, which was filed in the US Court of Appeals, argues that overturning the finding violates the country’s Clean Air Act.