Taylor locks in key board seats at end of busy week trying to prop up coal

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor has announced key appointments to the boards of two renewable investment bodies, capping a busy week ahead of the formal election campaign, including a last minute attempt to stop the early shut-down of coal.

Taylor announced late on Friday three appointments to the board of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the institution that the Coalition tried to abolish and which Taylor in now trying to push into fossil fuel technologies.

Two board members were re-appointed for a second term at ARENA, including Taylor’s former advisor John Hirjee, and Anna Matysek , the co-founder of BAE Economics, which produced an extraordinary and highly contested attack on Labor’s policies last election.

The principal author of that report, the other BAE Economics co-founder Brian Fisher, was last year appointed to a key governance committee for the Clean Energy Regulator, and was also hired to deliver an assessment of the government’s long term zero emissions target.

Hirjee and Matysek were first appointed to the ARENA board in 2020. Their new terms extend to 2024

Taylor also announced that Elizabeth O’Leary, a senior managing director at Macquarie Asset Management and head of MAM Agriculture & Natural Assets, one of the world’s largest private land managers, had been appointed to the board. She replaces Justin Butcher.

Taylor also announced several board changes at Clean Energy Finance Corporation, another institution the Coalition tried to abolish and have since tried to push into fossil fuel technologies.

The new board members include Matt Howell, the outgoing CEO of the Tomago aluminium smelter, and once a trenchant critic of renewable energy policies who last year announced the smelter would source all its electricity from renewables by the end of the decade.

Another new appointment is David Jones, an investment banker and private equity pioneer who is also an executive director of global funds manager VGI Partners.

The CEFC board chairman David Skala has been reappointed for another five year term.

The appointments cap a busy time for Taylor in the final weeks of government before the beginning of the “caretaker” period, which will commence when prime minister Scott Morrison announce the election date.

On Thursday, Taylor tried to force a delay to coal generator closures, proposing a rule change that would force companies to provide five years notice of a coal closure rather than 3.5 years.

It followed Taylor’s humiliation when it emerged that Origin Energy, which recently gave 3.5 years notice of the early closure of Australia’s biggest plant at Eraring, deliberately excluded Taylor from discussions, as did the NSW government and the market operator.

Taylor and Morrison have also announced grant funding for Tasmania’s “battery of the nation” project, a new transmission link into Victoria (VNI West), and grants for various gas projects.