The Age of Energy Anxiety

Climate ambition is colliding with the physical demands of industry, transport and national survival.

It was another rhetorical flourish full of the passionate intensity only a mind untroubled by doubt can muster.

At a press conference in Parliament House on April 13, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was asked whether the global fuel shock from the Third Gulf War might reshape talks at this year’s United Nations climate jamboree, where he has been gifted a newly minted role as head of negotiations.

“In all my discussions with my international colleagues, energy and climate, there isn’t one country in the world that said, ‘You know what this fuel crisis reminds us, is we need more fossil fuels’, “ Bowen declared. “That conversation is not being had anywhere around the world. In fact, countries around the world are saying this underpins and underlines the need to keep going with things like electrification and ensuring renewable energy is an important part of the mix going forward.”

Here let’s cede this space for a moment to include some thoughts from Katherina Reiche, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, published on April 7 in her country’s newspaper of record, Frankfurter Allgemeine.

“We are experiencing one of the most severe energy crises in history,” Reiche writes. “Since the start of the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, prices for oil, liquefied gas and diesel have surged to painful levels. This is placing a burden on consumers and businesses alike and is costing us economic growth that Germany urgently needs. Many are therefore calling for an immediate exit from oil and gas. The argument is that we simply need to expand wind and solar energy more quickly — and the problem would be solved.

“Well, it is not that simple.

“Let us look at the facts: Germany has a total energy demand of 2,900 terawatt hours for electricity, heating, transport and industrial processes. Just under one sixth of this is electricity, and more than half of that comes from renewable energy. However, the share of renewables in total energy consumption in 2025 was only just under one fifth. For years, we have comforted ourselves with ambitious targets. Eighty per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030, climate neutrality by 2045 — fine figures that soothe our conscience. But while we clung to these targets, electricity prices exploded. German households pay up to 37 cents per kilowatt hour — more than nine cents above the EU average. Our industry is bleeding. Deindustrialisation is accelerating.

“Yes, wind and sun do not send a bill. But the overall system certainly does: [environmental levies], capacity reserves, grid reserves, redispatch costs, grid subsidies, subsidies to lower energy prices — all of this adds up to system costs of more than €36 billion per year. That is €430 for every German citizen.

“We pay almost €3 billion alone for curtailing wind turbines and solar plants because the grid cannot absorb their electricity. There is no other industry that receives guaranteed financing for more than 20 years and is even compensated when its product is not needed. This cannot continue.

“One fact has been suppressed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.”

Well, amen to all that.

Recall that Germany has long been the energy transition poster child, going hard and early on wind and solar. Bowen must have missed the memo, but Berlin began searching for more fossil fuel before the third Gulf war flared and the current crisis has quickened that quest. Reiche has reopened debate on domestic gas exploration, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz concedes coal‑fired power stations may have to stay on the grid for longer than planned.

Cast your eye beyond Germany and it quickly becomes clear Berlin is no outlier. Once you bother to look past governments’ words to their deeds, you see that energy security elbowed its way ahead of emissions cuts in many countries’ hierarchy of needs after the Ukraine war caused a global spike in gas prices.

The hunt is on for more hydrocarbons.

The International Energy Agency says global coal demand rose to a new record high in 2025, with China leading the charge. The agency likes to headline that Beijing is building more wind and solar than any country in history, which is true, but China is also pouring concrete for more new coal plants than the rest of the world combined.

Detailed plant‑by‑plant tracking by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the Global Energy Monitor database shows that China commissioned over 50 new coal‑fired power stations in 2025, the largest wave of completions in a decade. Those researchers expect a similar number of new plants to be completed this year and next as a surge of approvals works its way through construction.

China now burns about 56 per cent of the world’s coal but power is only part of the story. Nearly 400 million tonnes a year goes as feedstock for coal‑to‑liquids and coal‑chemicals plants that make synthetic diesel, gasoline and petrochemicals. China is also stepping up conventional oil and gas exploration at home and abroad. Chinese capital is powering a coal boom in Indonesia, with more than 40 off‑grid coal plants running nickel mining and smelting operations that feed its electric‑vehicle and battery supply chains.

Vietnam has just commissioned the Vung Ang II ultra‑supercritical coal plant, one of six being built under the country’s official power plan. India is opening new coal mines and targeting more than a billion tonnes of annual production by the end of the decade, to feed new blast furnaces and power plants. The Philippines, Japan and South Korea have all added new coal capacity since 2020, even as their governments talk up phase‑down goals.

Oil is central to every nation’s energy security and the scramble for new fields and more production is on worldwide. In the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, Donald Trump is urging companies to boost supply in response to the fuel crisis he spawned, and his Department of the Interior is rolling out an expansive new schedule of auctions for the right to drill for oil and gas in federal waters, which is badged as essential “to promote U.S. energy security and affordability”.

No one better embodies the art of walking both sides of the street than Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who talks up climate leadership while ramping up oil and gas exports. In November Carney signed a memorandum of understanding with Alberta’s premier to build a pipeline to the Pacific Coast, aiming to expand the nation’s oil exports beyond the U.S. market. He has also fast‑tracked the Ksi Lisims LNG export terminal, with an eye on Asian gas markets.

After his recent visit to Australia Carney went to Japan where he pledged that:

“Canada is in a position where we can double our LNG exports by the end of this decade, and double again by the end of the following decade.”

This should send a loud message to Canberra. Ottawa wants to lock up the same gas markets we depend on; if we do not supply them, it will.

In South America, Argentina is aiming to produce one million barrels of oil a day by 2027 by fracking its giant Vaca Muerta shale field. If it hits its targets it will make Argentina a net exporter of oil and gas, with the potential to generate A$35–37 billion a year, as much as it makes from agricultural exports. Brazil is aggressively expanding its oil exploration, even in the environmentally sensitive Amazon River mouth. State‑run Petrobras started drilling just before Brazil played host to last year’s UN climate summit.

Riding the wave of soaring oil prices, Russia is cashing in by stepping up production. The world’s third‑largest oil producer is now pumping a little over 10 million barrels a day, and there is no shortage of buyers, collectively pouring hundreds of millions of euros a day into its coffers.

Across Africa, tens of billions of dollars are flowing into new oil and gas projects, with several dozen large gas and LNG developments in countries such as Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Mauritania already under construction or close to final approval.

Even the polar regions are in play. In the Arctic, Russia and China are expanding LNG projects, ports and shipping routes aimed at tapping offshore oil and gas and getting it to Asian markets, while analysts see their growing web of Antarctic research bases as positioning for future resource claims. Now throw in critical minerals and consider Trump’s deep interest in Greenland through the same lens.

This is an incomplete global survey but it does tend to suggest that Bowen’s assessment of where the world’s compass is pointing in the hunt for fuel security is, well, a tad wayward. Alas, his analysis doesn’t even pass muster at home, where there is bipartisan enthusiasm for hydrocarbon projects.

Premier Chris Minns has declared the NSW Government would open new areas for gas exploration in the state for the first time in more than a decade, “taking decisive steps to secure the State’s energy supply for households and businesses”. As an incentive for prospectors the government has slashed the gas exploration licence application fee from $50,000 to $1,000.

In Queensland the Crisafulli Government has already extended the life of coal‑fired power plants and now wants to unlock “the development of Australia’s first oil field in 50 years at the Taroom Trough, to bolster the nation’s long‑term fuel security.”

South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas knows the limits of a wind and solar‑dependent grid better than most. In February he announced a new Strategic Gas Reserve, in a “unique and unprecedented” deal under which Santos will supply enough gas each year from 2030 to power a city the size of Adelaide, locked in for a decade.

In the Northern Territory, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has championed the Beetaloo Basin as helping secure Australia’s energy future. Beetaloo Energy has just raised $66.3 million to fast‑track a pilot project, aiming for first gas sales by late 2026 and positioning the region as a new source of domestic and export supply.

Western Australia is the most gas‑dependent economy in Australia, so it is hardly surprising that Premier Roger Cook led the charge to ensure the Commonwealth did not impose a 25 per cent tax on gas exports, warning it would hurt the state and scare off the investment that keeps its lights, and mines, running.

The Prime Minister chose WA to put a stake through the heart of the push for a gas tax. But it wasn’t done at the premier’s behest. Anthony Albanese has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy around the region bartering for liquid fuel with Australia’s hydrocarbon chips of gas and coal. He knows Australia wouldn’t have a gas industry if it had not been financed by those nations and they would have told him that their energy security depends on our reliability on price and supply.

This message has been underscored by Foreign Minister Penny Wong. She embarked on her own flying fuel mission which included having to go cap in hand to China to try and get it to meet the commercial obligations to this nation that it abandoned when the first shots were fired in Iran. To all but a privileged few Beijing shut down fuel exports to preference its own supply. Surely, this must make any foreign minister ponder her nation’s long‑term security on the flight home.

Japan’s Prime Minister has just visited Canberra. Sanae Takaichi signed a joint statement on energy security with Anthony Albanese that makes clear she means hydrocarbons and wanted a written guarantee pushing back against the imposition of surprise taxes.

“We reaffirm our commitment to strengthen energy security; support the flow of essential energy goods, including liquefied natural gas, coal and liquid fuels between our two countries; and maintain stable and transparent engagement on the trade of energy products, while enhancing predictability and transparency regarding the investment environment.”

Transition talk was relegated to the next paragraph.

“We also confirm our commitment to diversify energy sources, including through supporting the energy transition and investment and cooperation in energy efficiency.”

Resources Minister Madeleine King was another strong voice in Cabinet urging caution on a gas tax. The West Australian is one of the few in Labor’s ranks who understands energy and holding your nerve in this unhinged era of energy myopia takes courage.

In 2022, when King made the routine announcement of 10 new oil and gas sites for offshore exploration, she said: “Gas enables greater use of renewables domestically by providing energy security. Australian [liquefied natural gas] is also a force for regional energy security and helps our trading partners meet their own decarbonisation goals.”

An aghast journalist wrote that this boilerplate statement of the bleeding obvious sent “a shudder through the sprawling ecosystem of climate activists and scientists in Australia”.

This vast ecosystem of richly funded, self‑aggrandising, moralising fanatics is responsible for stuffing Australia’s energy choices into the iron maiden of wind, solar and batteries and pretty much nothing else. This is the instrument of self‑harm Germany is now desperate to escape.

The same ideologues are behind the push for a gas tax. It should be clear, even to a casual observer, that they see this as the pathway to shutting the industry down.

But others should know better. Commonwealth Bank Chief Executive Matt Comyn has joined the ranks of those calling for a gas tax of between 15 and 25 per cent. It would have been better if he apologised for his company’s role in manufacturing our current energy crisis.

The Commonwealth has made a big deal about its goal of ending finance for coal, oil and gas and been as good as its word. The bank’s loans to fossil fuels decreased by 92 per cent from 2018 to 2022, from $4 billion to $267 million. This performative display of morality has done real harm to this nation.

As a rule of thumb this column is opposed to the federal government extracting another dollar from anyone because it will just get thrown on the giant money bonfire. But if more tax dollars must be tapped, then the Treasurer will find his mates at the cossetted, taxpayer‑underwritten big four banks present far richer fields than coal, oil and gas.

In 2025 Commonwealth Bank cleared north of $10 billion in profit, roughly four times Woodside’s take. If there are super profits to be milked then less harm would be done by slapping a big new tax on the banks than by mugging the companies that earn export dollars, support regional security and help keep the lights on.

This article first appeared in The Australian.