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Australia Earth

Atlassian Co-Founder Wants To Buy Australia's Biggest Polluter To Make It Greener (wsj.com) 92

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Mike Cannon-Brookes thought Australia's biggest polluter wasn't doing enough to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, so he sought to buy the company. From a report: Mr. Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of Nasdaq-listed software company Atlassian teamed up with Canada's Brookfield Asset Management to try to acquire electricity generator AGL Energy Ltd., in a proposal valued at more than $3.5 billion. Central to their ambition is a plan to shut AGL's coal-fired power plants years ahead of schedule and replace them with renewable energy. AGL, which the Australian government's Clean Energy Regulator says is Australia's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, said Monday that it had rejected the takeover proposal as too low.

The company plans to close the last of its coal plants by 2045. Mr. Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield, whose head of investing in low-carbon technology is former Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney, say they can make AGL a net-zero emitter by 2035. "AGL accounts for over 8% of Australia's emissions," Mr. Cannon-Brookes said. That is more than the current emissions of Australia's domestic aviation industry and fleet of jets flying on international routes, or every car on the country's roads, he added.
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Atlassian Co-Founder Wants To Buy Australia's Biggest Polluter To Make It Greener More

Atlassian Co-Founder Wants To Buy Australia's Biggest Polluter To Make It Greener

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  • let's move energy control to cloud only and kill server.

  • Even power companies do grid as storage accounting?

  • I hope they succeed, but under the following conditions. You can't raise rates any faster than normal, you must provide reliability equal to or better than what is currently provided.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nucrash ( 549705 )

      I agree with the sentiment of this. I want him to succeed so that perhaps Australia moves to renewable energy as quickly as possible.

    • I hope they succeed, but under the following conditions. You can't raise rates any faster than normal, you must provide reliability equal to or better than what is currently provided.

      Translation: "I am in support of looking after our planet, just as long as it doesn't cost me anything or inconvenience me in any way."

      • This isn't as unreasonable as it sounds. The world economy grows at a rate of 2-3% a year, which means a doubling in total existing wealth every few decades. This increased wealth tends to go into increasing standards of living. If it went towards fixing the climate, people would, in principle at least, be able to keep their current standard of living without degradation. It wouldn't improve further from what it is now, but it wouldn't become worse either. But that also means standards of living in the thir

  • https://www.economist.com/lead... [economist.com]

    "Divesting from dirty assets" only moves the assets somewhere else. It doesn't stop carbon emissions. The idea that "divesting from carbon emitting assets" will somehow cause them to cease to exist is untrue. There are enough investors out there who don't care about carbon emissions that someone will buy the assets and operate them.

    Even the boss of BlackRock - arch-capitalists - says the way to reduce emissions is to own assets and reduce their emissions, not just feel good

    • Re:Relevant reading in the Economist (Score:5, Informative)

      by UngodAus ( 198713 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @10:38AM (#62288307)
      That was his plan though, to shutter these coal burning power plants and accelarate the shift to green technologies. Not offloading, shutting down entirely.

      • or shutting down the coal/NG and replace with modern nuclear reactors --unfortunately australia doesn't really have a backup option like Germany does (did?)

        but nahhhh that would make far too much sense.

        • or shutting down the coal/NG and replace with modern nuclear reactors --unfortunately australia doesn't really have a backup option like Germany does (did?)

          but nahhhh that would make far too much sense.

          Australia has by far the biggest uranium reserves on earth, but have no commercial reactors of their own.. And their second biggest export is coal (after iron ore).

          It is both funny and sad at the same time.

        • That would make no sense at all, not even a little bit, because we can build renewables cheaper, cleaner, and faster... Even WITH storage. Nuclear does not make any sense and cannot help with AGW.

          • well no, we really can't. Even discounting the baseload question, or clouds (which admittedly, it's australia) or a lack of wind etc etc.
            but okay cool. Good to see the anti-nuclear FUD alive and well.

            • well no, we really can't. Even discounting the baseload question, or clouds (which admittedly, it's australia) or a lack of wind etc etc. but okay cool. Good to see the anti-nuclear FUD alive and well.

              Nuclear is not allowed in our future green utopia. Discussion of hydrogen is verboten as well. Only wind and solar have the necessary environmentalist seal of approval.

              And if the sun is not shining, or the wind is not blowing, we can just rely on our friendly neighbors to supply all of our needs as well.

              • Nuclear power has never been a reality in Australia.

                The time for discussion was back in the 1970s when Sir Henry Bolte had all but commissioned a site but backed out of the deal.

            • we can build renewables cheaper, cleaner, and faster... Even WITH storage

              well no, we really can't. Even discounting the baseload question, or clouds (which admittedly, it's australia) or a lack of wind etc etc.

              I see you missed the part about storage, it must be hard to read with your head that far up your asshole.

  • Non paywall link (Score:5, Informative)

    by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @10:38AM (#62288309)

    the $8bn offer was at a 4.6% premium to AGL Energy shares, which closed on Friday at $7.16, and a 20% premium to the average traded price in the past month.

    It meant a fast-track of AGL’s decarbonisation plans with a strategy to achieve net zero emissions by 2035, rather than its current 50% reduction in emissions plan by 2030 from the levels of fiscal 2019.

    But in a market announcement this morning, AGL Energy said it rejected the “unsolicited, preliminary, non-binding” indication of interest because it “materially undervalues the company on a change of control basis” and is not “in the best interest of AGL Energy shareholders.”

    “Mike has $20 billion he wants to throw at renewable energy investment, AGL is worth about $8 billion – he hasn’t launched this bid expecting it to be the last and this just means the bell has gone for round one,”

    https://stockhead.com.au/energ... [stockhead.com.au]

    • yep it was a pretty pathetic opening bid that AGL would have been insane to accept, surprised it wasn't laughed out of the room on the day it was proposed rather than waiting till monday.
    • It was an incredibly dumb opening bid. It was way underpriced for a share that was recovering from lows. All the bid has done is alert investors to profit opportunity and sent the shares even higher, now a second bid will need to be at a large premium to the first to have any chance. The bid price needed to be at least 7.75 or 8.00 so it could have at least been considered, the joke of a bid would have taken them all of 30 seconds to reject, makes me wonder if they were really serious about it or it is just

      • Did he buy a few million shares before making the offer? If so it was very astute, he just made a few lazy million dollars.

        • I would say the process of partnering with the investment firm, lawyers etc will have cost him a lot more than any potential lazy few million. Any significant purchase of sufficient size to outweigh those costs would have had to have been declared through ASIC.

  • ... than stand-alone renewables. Managed as an end-to-end utility, issues like storage, spinning reserves, contractual delivery obligations and generation scheduling will be addressed properly.

    Not like the distributed, customer-owned systems. Can you imagine the stink that would be created if the local system operator reached out over the smart grid and said, "We have enough generation on line. We're turning your roof-top panels off."

  • Lost cause (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @12:10PM (#62288607)
    If he can't get a fucking usable search function into Confluence, how can he be expected to make electrical power generation work?
  • Sell China their coal so the Chinese can breathe in the pollution all those renewable solar cells are going to produce during their manufacture.
  • He might find it's harder than he thinks.
  • It's not about shutting down Australia's biggest polluter but making more money from his investments in solar plants etc. Shutting down the plants early would push prices from renewables up and he's counting on all those government subsidies continuing to increase his profit margin. Nothing like using other people's money to fund your business decisions especially when it's the poor taxpayer whose pockets get robbed to line that of billionaires who aren't even paying tax. It's all well and good for the wea

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