2025Q4 An interesting policy development for the Australian electricity industry this quarter was a press release announcing the federal government’s Solar Sharer concept.  Solar Sharer is a proposal, which has been referred to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), that would require the Default Market Offer (DMO) include a tariff arrangement where households were able to receive three hours of free electricity – during peak solar hours – each day.  The beauty of this propos

2025Q4 Australia is pushing hard toward an 82% renewable energy target by 2030, recently expanding the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) from 32 GW to 40 GW. The new target includes 26 GW of renewable generation and 14 GW of clean dispatchable storage. On paper, the scale of government support appears positive.    However, there is a widening gap emerging between ambition and delivery. Of the roughly 20 GW of CIS Agreements (CISAs) awarded, progression is severely limited. On

2025Q4 Airports are an attractive sector for infrastructure debt investors with their monopoly characteristics and because their customers, the airlines, act as a buffer sheltering airport revenues from the impact of economic shocks.  Air travel is a fundamentally cyclical industry.   Shocks can vary from the usual fluctuations in demand as a result of the economic cycle to more substantial events such as September 11 and COVID. History has proven that, over time, passenger n

2025Q3 Public reporting of sentiment in the renewables sector and the progress of the energy transition often seems schizophrenic, swinging from unbridled optimism to dire pessimism from one week to the next. Investors in the sector are best minded to think long-term and to recognise that in a sector with 20-50-year asset lives change happens slowly.   Thus, while the headlines surrounding the CER reporting in August that no wind farms and only 615MW of solar farms reached fi

2025Q3 The battery revenue stack consists of energy arbitrage and frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) revenue. Unlike wind and solar projects, which largely generate depending on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, batteries are fully dispatchable. Batteries actively decide when to charge and discharge to capture arbitrage opportunities and participate in the eight FCAS markets. Given the dynamic nature of the electricity market – with supply and demand

2025Q3 We don’t claim to have cracked the code on the finances of the AI boom but let’s play a little game. Imagine I tell you I’ve got something to sell. You say, “Sorry, I don’t have the money, and I can’t buy your product.” Normally, I’d just walk away and try my luck elsewhere. But instead, I say, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you the money so you can buy my product.” At that point, you’d probably laugh and call me a snake eating its own tail. And yet, when it’s OpenAI and NVID

2025Q2 Last quarter I promised myself I wasn’t going to a write another article about Trump.  However, given events, that has proven difficult to avoid.  Much of the focus in financial markets over the last quarter has been on “Liberation Day” and Trump’s efforts to shake up the world trade order.  I won't get into the rights and wrongs of that.   However, one of the consequences of the Trump tariff shock is a standoff between Trump and the Fed on the future path of interest

2025Q2 One interesting news report this quarter was media reports that AGL has decided to divest its 20% stake in Tilt Renewables.  Tilt Renewables is a developer and owner of renewable energy projects in Australia.   It was formed out of the combination of the Powering Australia Renewables Fund (PARF - a captive renewable energy asset owner created by AGL and funded by QIC/Future Fund) and Tilt Renewables.  Tilt Renewables was the specialist wind and solar developer and asse

2025Q2 The original headline for this article was prepare for the explosion of household battery uptake  – but on reflection I thought this might not conjure the image I was looking for. Household batteries have had a relatively slow uptake. As at end 2024, there were around 320,000 home battery systems in Australia (Sunwiz).  To put that in perspective, there are over 4.1 million home solar systems, so under 1 in 10 household solar systems include a battery. Why has historic

2025Q1 This is a reasonably long article, but work with us as we give context and background explaining why we are at a profound juncture in the energy transition in our local market. It feels like yesterday, but it has been almost eight years since the 100 MW Hornsdale Power Reserve, the first large utility scale battery in Australia, was commissioned in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Since then, we have seen rapid increase in utility scale batteries across the NEM.

2025Q1 The last quarter has seen an intense focus on Trump and tariffs and their implications for markets.   What is the mix between bluff and long-term strategy for Trump and tariffs is unclear.  However, it seems likely that Trump intends to increase tariffs on China and to coerce US trading partners to also apply tariffs on Chinese imports.  Clearly the economic and geopolitical implications of this are large – both for the world in general, given China’s size and role as

2025Q1 Over the past few years, I have often been asked for my opinion on a fixed income or credit strategy offering double digit returns. Caveat emptor and do your own research is always my advice - but I thought it might be useful to share a mental model from my asset consulting days for assessing a range of credit/fixed income strategies. My approach, before getting bogged down in the specifics of the manager/product, was always to: try and figure out what their investment

It might be peak economic complacency, but the world seems to be settling into a period of “medium high” inflation.  To be clear, I am...

LGC prices have (finally) fallen below $30 per unit for the first time since the COVID era. At one point, prices actually dipped below...

Much ink has already been spilled on the US election result and the implications for renewables and climate action. Much of this is...

We generally try to be apolitical in the articles and insights we share in our newsletter.  However, given our focus on renewable energy...

There have been two reports from AEMO this year that highlight the dissonance between what is actually happening on the ground in the...

Historically, renewable energy projects have been developed by ‘developers’ who progress projects to a shovel ready state and then sell...

Immigration has long been a key driver of Australia’s population growth and economic prosperity. Over the past several decades, the...

Over the past decade, the surge in renewable energy has steadily driven down wholesale electricity prices across Australia. However, this...