There is the old saying that you should never waste a crisis. And the fossil fuel industry knows this as well as any. It is, after all, at the centre or the cause of most.
As George Monbiot writes in The Guardian this week, the causes of this Iran war can be traced back to the government of Winston Churchill, and its attempts to engineer a coup against a democratically elected government, just so it could get control of the Iranian oil company.
US president Donald Trump had oil in mind when he captured Venezuala leader Nicolás Maduro, and then when he allowed Israel to decapitate the current Iranian regime. Now, everyone is paying the environmental and the fuel cost.
The fossil fuel industry is wasting no time to profit from this. Prices are surging, particularly for Australia’s lightly taxed LNG industry. The retailers of petrol are profiteering at the pump.
The competition regulator says it is investigating, but most drivers will have already made up their mind. They are already being screwed by an industry that has no filters, and a greed for profit that can be made however foul the means.
It didn’t get much attention, given that panic buying and fossil fuel supplies have dominated the media headlines, but climate and energy minister Chris Bowen has made a few salient points in his speeches and media comments in the past few weeks.
“The one form of energy which Vladimir Putin or a Middle Eastern crisis cannot interrupt is the flow of sun and the flow of wind – that cannot be interrupted,” Bowen said at the start of National Climate Week earlier this month.
He reprised the theme a few days later.
“Australia is rich in sun and wind,” Bowen said at the opening of the Powering Our Suburbs forum in Sydney.
“Renewable energy is the cheapest form of new generation in this country. The sun does not send a bill. Geopolitics can’t stop the sun shining in Australia. No war can stop the flow of wind to our country. It makes sense to use what we have in abundance.”
It makes sense. It would have made sense to make Australia a lot less dependent on imported fuels. EV drivers are feeling a bit smug at the moment because it’s the turn of ICE car owners to have range and recharging (re-fuelling) anxiety.
One of the levers that Bowen has been forced to pull has been diluting the standards on 100 million litres of fuel to make it easier to produce.
As Ray Wills and Peter Newman pointed out on our sister site The Driven earlier this week, if the Morrison-led Coalition had not been so idiotic and deceitful about EVs in their “it will ruin your weekend campaign”, Australians would likely be using around 100 million litres less each month because there would be more EVs on the road.
The green energy revolution is still being pitched as the obsession of inner-city elites, including by what remains of the Coalition and the surging One Nation.
As Ed Coper from Populares told EN26 – the energy networks conference held in Adelaide this week – that messaging, relentlessly promoted by the Murdoch Media and social media algorithms, is having an impact, with support for even rooftop solar and home batteries falling in recent months.
“Green ideology has overtaken common sense,” you can read in the Murdoch media, “climate zealotry has exposed us to the fossil fuel crisis,” And on and on.
It is this “outrage machine”, as Coper describes it, that gets so much public attention, and impact.
“There is an abundance of technical, engineering, policy, economic arguments for why and how we should transition,” Coper said.
“None of these will be possible in the face of this outrage machine which destroys that kind of nuance and destroys evidence based policy arguments. So we are going to see a lot more of that.
“I think a lot of these movements want to be in opposition. It’s not about them forming government. It is about getting a tonne of attention by opposing things with this sort of hysteria, noise and outrage.”
As Bowen points out, Australia’s green energy policies are delivering some results. The use of gas, for instance, is vastly reduced on Australia’s electricity grid because of the roll out of wind and solar.
In his Powering the Suburbs Forum speech last week, Bowen had this to say – which also went under the radar of a media focused on panic and politics.
“There are more solar panels in Blacktown than Bondi,” Bowen said. “There are more EVs in Penrith than Paddington.”
“Take up of cheaper home batteries in my electorate is more than four times greater than in Australia’s wealthiest electorate, Wentworth.
“It’s a similar story when it comes to EVs.  In NSW the highest take up of our EV discount is in the suburbs of Kellyville and Rouse Hill. Suburbs it would take just a percent or two of your battery capacity to reach from here.
“To drive the streets of Blacktown, Parramatta and Fairfield these days is to cruise around Polestar Parade and BYD Boulevard.”
So, let’s not give too many points to the minister for alliteration. A headcount of Polestars in Sydney’s West may not achieve the number he’s suggesting, but there are plenty of other EVs out there.
Bowen and the federal government are going to be obliged to come up with some drastic measures, even subsidies, to navigate through the global fossil fuel crisis if the Iran war continues much longer, which seems inevitable given the utter cluelessness of the Trump administration.
But then it should stop. Australia – the Greens, the independents, and environment groups suggest – should impose a 25 per cent tax on the super profits pocketed by the gas industry in the middle of this mess.
Then it should hit the accelerator, not the brake, on policies that encourage renewables and EVs, not dilute as it seems to be suggesting in briefings to the Canberra press gallery over recent weeks.
Let’s remember, Australia spends $31,020 per minute on fossil fuel subsidies – according to The Australia Institute – which is handed to some of the biggest, most profitable companies in Australia. According to the IMF, fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $10 trillion, or 5.8 per cent of global GDP, in 2024.
They are a massive distortion.
As Bowen says, the growth of rooftop solar, the boom in home batteries, the rollout of large scale renewables and storage is already delivering – improved reliability, lower wholesale prices – and a welcome reversal in bill hikes.
Australians understand this. Rooftop solar systems and home batteries are getting bigger, the NRMA reports a major increase in enquiries about EV insurances, the car makers also report increased interest.
But for all the good rhetoric from state and federal governments, there is still the sense that they are not putting the pedal to the floor on this transition.
“We need more urgency,” says Tim Nelson, the author of the key markets review commissioned by the federal government.
Bowen knows where we should be heading.
“Innovation isn’t just happening in laboratories,” he said. “It’s happening in garages and living rooms. It’s happening with batteries on wheels in our driveways.
“Treasury modelling shows a fully electrified household with solar, and a battery can save around $4,300 a year – even after upfront and financing costs.
“Electric vehicles can power homes. Batteries and home energy management systems allow real-time energy management. Smart air conditioners can cool homes when it’s cheapest for the grid.
“This is the consumer energy resources revolution. We used to be passengers. Recipients of energy. Now we are prosumers. Producers and consumers of energy.
“We have power stations on our roofs and storage facilities in our garages and driveways. We are now building a two-way, decentralised grid.”
More than that, it means that our dependence on fossil fuels, if not eliminated, can be vastly reduced. As the government’s own study shows, it will deliver billions in economic benefits, not counting the environmental and health outcomes.
“This is a new world,” Bowen says. The federal government just needs to have the conviction, and the courage, to get us there. With the Coalition in disarray, and potentially wiped from the map in South Australia, there is simply no excuse not to.
