Power prices are expected to fall from 1 July – but the savings, touted by Chris Bowen, won’t be passed on to many households and businesses

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As energy companies prepare to update their electricity offers from July, some are choosing to hit households with higher fixed costs in the form of supply charges, according to reports in the ABC and Australian Financial Review.

For some, the shift could mean higher prices overall, especially for those who don’t consume much energy.

Climate minister Chris Bowen says country must prepare for changing world and can play bigger role in reducing emissions

Australia will find exporting fossil fuels increasingly difficult but can switch to exporting clean energy products, the president of the next UN climate negotiations has declared.

Speaking at a climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy, argued his country had led the global push to “transition away from fossil fuels” – based on the rapid growth of renewable energy and batteries in its domestic power grids – and that its economy could manage the switch.

Assistant minister agrees concerns over resource usage are legitimate but argues Australia cannot ignore ‘consequential’ economic wave

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Australia should learn from the mistakes of the resources boom and set the terms for the AI and datacentres boom, the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton says.

Growth in datacentres has exploded in the past two years, Charlton told the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night, with 44 projects in the pipeline in New South Wales alone seeking 11GW of capacity on the electricity grid.

Australia leads world in residential solar per capita with 22GW installed but commercial and industrial sector has deployed only a quarter of that

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Australia’s revolution in rooftop solar has left behind commercial and industrial buildings, where installations have lagged far behind homes, according to new analysis.

Australia leads the world in residential solar on per capita terms, with 22GW installed as of last December. But businesses have only installed about a quarter of that – 5.6GW – despite consuming more electricity than households, a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found.

We cannot afford to make the same mistake as we did with gas. If tech companies are going to use our land, energy and water for AI, they must pay their fair share of tax

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Over the past few months, tens of thousands of Australians have emailed their local MP calling for a 25% tax on gas exports. More than 2,200 people have even chipped in their own money to fund billboards promoting the idea.

Why?

Nothing does more for your ego than realising you can make a better decision than a bot with all of human knowledge at its digital fingertips

I am not, by nature, an early adopter. There comes a point in our lives where change becomes more irritating than exciting and, I suspect, I reached it sooner than most. But when a workplace recently tasked me with exploring practical applications for AI, I spotted an opportunity to cast off my luddite inclinations.

It turned out AI was very good at mimicking most of the things I could already do. Irrespective of quality, it could churn out articles, reports, presentations, fiction, even podcasts with stammering hosts. That was no use to me. What I wanted help with was all the stuff I was useless at. There was an obvious target: DIY.

Government rejects offshore rubbish being shipped to Fiji and burned after opposition from traditional landowners and tourism operators

The Fijian government has rejected a plan by an Australian billionaire to burn rubbish for energy in Fiji after backlash from traditional landowners and tourism operators.

The plan to ship non-recyclable rubbish from across the region to Fiji, popular with tourists for its pristine beaches, and build an incinerator to consume 900,000 tonnes of waste a year had been labelled “waste colonialism” by villagers.

How to change the energy market from within. Plus: Is Iran Trump’s Vietnam?

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Last week, as the war in Iran continued to choke global oil supplies, the UK government announced a 13% increase in the cap on energy prices. But it was another related story on the other side of the world that caught my eye.

In Australia, the energy minister announced a fall of up to 10% in the benchmark electricity price in parts of the country, driven by record levels of renewables and batteries in the power grid.

Nour Haydar speaks with Christopher Knaus about the BHP files – the cache of internal documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners – which show that the world’s biggest miner has war-gamed ways to massively delay decarbonisation

Additional audio in this episode was sourced by Financial Times Live

Read more:

Exclusive: Mining giant says technology is not yet advanced enough to run a fully electrified fleet but experts say it is hooked on federal fuel tax credits

• Revealed: the internal BHP memo that slammed the brakes on world’s biggest miner’s climate push

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

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BHP has continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying diesel trucks in the Pilbara despite internal documents suggesting it would increase emissions and be “misaligned” with its decarbonisation goals.

The mining giant is Australia’s biggest consumer of diesel and trucks are its biggest single source of diesel emissions. Replacing the fleet with battery-electric trucks is considered a critical step in the multinational’s efforts to decarbonise.

Grattan Institute calls on Labor to set policies that will further reduce the use of gas in order to meet net zero targets

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After more than a half a century of growth, the use of gas in Australia has peaked in all sectors and entered a “structural decline”. But use will need to fall fast to meet climate targets, according to new research from an influential thinktank.

The Grattan Institute warned the government had failed to acknowledge the decline and instead needed policies to further reduce gas use and avoid the need for expensive carbon capture technologies to meet net zero targets.

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Australia is pioneering a revolution in home renewables and battery use, proving what is possible with the right policies

The timing was rich with symbolism. As intense heatwaves pummelled Europe and Asia, and oil markets around the world leapt and sputtered, the two big chimneys of one of Australia’s largest power stations were being demolished. Meanwhile, the Australian energy minister was holding a media conference to hail a fall of up to 10% in the benchmark electricity price in parts of the country.

Quietly, and with surprisingly little fanfare from the rest of the world, Australia is pioneering a revolution in home renewables and battery use, proving what is possible with the right policies. The country was already one of the global leaders in domestic solar power, with panels on one in three homes. It also remains, however, a major contributor to the climate crisis through its vast fossil fuel exports. But it is batteries that are giving Australia a new burst of speed.

Property owners’ lack of motivation due to ‘split incentive’ is main reason rental properties are missing out on energy upgrades, research finds

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Renters make up nearly a third of Australian households yet many are missing out on energy upgrades – such as insulation, appliances and rooftop solar – that could slash their power bills and improve home comfort.

The problem, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), is landlords’ lack of motivation.

Outrage as leaked documents reveal mining giant’s backsliding on commitments to slash emissions

• Adam Morton: Big Mining gets a $4bn tax break to use fossil fuel. It’s a strange way to tackle emissions

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

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The independent senator David Pocock says leaked BHP documents show that the mining giant is “laughing” at Australia’s key climate policy while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a generous diesel tax break.

An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to by the Guardian and the ABC show BHP has scrapped a project to significantly reduce global emissions, delayed vast renewables projects in the Pilbara and war-gamed options to push the electrification of its polluting diesel truck and train fleets into the next two decades.

Exclusive: Cache of internal documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners show multinational has war-gamed ways to massively delay decarbonisation

• Revealed: the internal BHP memo that slammed the brakes on world’s biggest miner’s climate push

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

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The world’s biggest miner has halted or delayed projects to cut vast amounts of emissions and has quietly war-gamed options to push major climate investments in its Western Australian iron ore operations into the next two decades, internal documents show.

An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners can reveal that BHP, one of Australia’s biggest historic emitters, has dumped plans for a facility that could have significantly reduced emissions and has put on ice renewable projects designed to power its iron ore operations in the vast, resource-rich Pilbara region.

Exclusive: BHP once dubbed climate change an ‘existential’ threat. But leaked documents show it has backtracked on decarbonisation at a vast network of mines

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

In the middle of 2019, London was sweltering through a heatwave.

Temperature records tumbled. Frail, ill and elderly people died in their hundreds.