As the Financial Times reported on 12 July, Saudi Arabia’s oil-output reached record highs in June 2016. Increasing production 280,000 barrels/day to 10.6m b/d, Saudi Arabia has once again waved off OPEC’s request not to glut the market with oil.
As it turns out, economic principles explain why the Saudis began, in late 2014, to pump crude as fast as they could - or close to as fast as possible. In fact, there is a good reason why the Saudi princes are panicked and pumping.
If Malcolm Turnbull or freshly appointed Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg stood on Queensland’s coast and saw a coal-fired power station float past, they’d notice, right? If more than half a million new cars drove past, they’d surely raise an eyebrow. Or would they? Each day, more than a million tonnes of Australian coal sails up that coast, past the Great Barrier Reef, to power stations or steel mills elsewhere, quietly fuelling climate change and bleaching the reef. Once used, the coal exported daily generates about as much carbon pollution as a 500-megawatt coal-fired power station, or 570,000 cars, in a year.
Each year an estimated 6.5 million deaths are linked to air pollution with the number set to increase significantly in coming decades unless the energy sector takes greater action to curb emissions. Air pollution is a problem felt around the world, particularly the poorest in society.
Companies that fail to plan for business scenarios in a low-carbon economy risk decline or even bankruptcy, according to a submission to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures published today (PDF) (6 June 2016) by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science.
A new report by the Australian Energy Market Operator has hinted at some of the major changes facing the nation’s electricity networks – including the need to install grid-scale battery storage to alleviate grid congestion – as they evolve to incorporate more and more large-scale solar and wind generation.
Disclosures against the nine new recommendations in the 3rd edition of the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations have been examined in a new KPMG report. While there was a high level of adoption and acceptance of the new recommendations, ranging from disclosure of a board skills matrix to directors’ induction programs to the company secretary reporting line, the report shows that disclosures on board skills and sustainability risks have considerable room for improvement.
Download the full report here.
To read the full Governance Institute introduction and analysis, please click here .
