Australia has a net-zero authority at long last. Here’s what it’ll do

Securing the jobs of workers who’ve kept our lights on for decades will be one of the top priorities of the National Net Zero Authority (NNZA), a new agency that will steer Australia’s transition away from polluting fossil fuels.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government would empower the agency, which will cost $23 million in its first year, to focus on any obstacles to green job creation and investment, while functioning as a “one-stop shop” for prospective renewable industry companies looking to move into the regions.

An interim NNZA will launch on July 1, with an independent chair supported by an advisory board that will refine the functions and powers of the authority to be legislated in Parliament within the next 12 months.

Former Gillard-era energy minister Greg Combet may be an option. The IFM Investors chair won an AusTender contract for a net-zero taskforce aimed at handling the government’s net zero aspirations which came up during Senate Estimates in February.

Here’s what you need to know.

The agenda of the NNZA will be threefold, the government said. First, it will provide re-skilling and transitional support for Australian workers in “emissions-intensive sectors” — which include iron ore, steel, aluminium, chemicals and liquefied natural gas (which the government insist form a part of our renewable future).

In a statement, ACTU president Michele O’Neil described the pathway to net zero as a “nation-building, history-making, generation-defining project”.

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said environmental groups agreed that no worker should be left behind in the transition. She pointed to the closure of the Liddell coal-fired power station — Australia’s oldest coal-fired power plant — and the Victorian government’s plan to be 95% renewable within 12 years.

“Communities in regions where fossil fuels are being phased out and those in renewable energy zones need a voice, clear plans and strong investment to guide the transformation of their local economies and industries,” McKenzie said.

Unlike Liddell, which was described as an orderly closure with redeployments to the nearby Bayswater station, the 2025 closure of Origin Energy’s Eraring power station has the 500-person workforce and unions on tenterhooks, with some — including NSW’s new energy minister, Penny Sharpe — doubting the deadline will be met.

“The key thing is we just can’t turn [Eraring] off if the replacement [capacity] is not there,” Sharpe told the Smart Energy Council conference in Sydney on Thursday. “We can’t have a situation where households and businesses and industries don’t have access to energy.”

On Friday, Bowen said he had briefed Sharpe to assure her the new federal agency would be “complementary” with NSW’s as-yet-unannounced independent net zero commission — a March election promise “to keep the NSW government honest”, as Sharpe described.

Coordinating programs and policies across government to support regions and communities will be the second agenda item on the NNZA’s remit, to ensure new and emerging clean energy industries form a foundational stronghold here.

To that end, the government says the authority will work with federal agencies and state, territory and local governments, existing regional bodies, unions, industry, investors, First Nations groups and others to provide a landing pad.

The third agenda item will be connecting investors and companies — here and abroad — with net-zero transformation opportunities. Among those opportunities are Australia’s ample EV battery ingredients: Australia is the only country home to all 11 critical minerals required to manufacture them.

Take the country’s supply of lithium, a crucial component of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. Australia is home to more than half the world’s lithium, and yet we are also the world’s largest exporter of lithium with earnings expected to reach $19 billion this year, a massive domestic manufacturing opportunity.

Last year, Bowen told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, that “the world’s climate emergency is Australia’s jobs opportunity”, not only securing jobs but ensuring those jobs are paid well and have good working conditions.

“The best way to counter the naysayers who still call for delay and denial is to demonstrate that working people stand to benefit from action,” he said.