Glencore has warned that Australia has drifted past a "tipping point" of industrial energy "demand destruction" and that the nation has 12 months to re-establish reliability and affordability of its base load power capacity or risk permanent and unpredictable shifts in the shape of the economy.
The commentary by the most senior Glencore executive based in Australia, global coal boss Peter Freyberg, comes as the future of the Swiss-based miner's Queensland copper mining and processing estate is being undermined by a concert of uncertainties over the availability and price of gas and electricity supplies.
While Freyberg resisted our invitation for comment on the uncertain state of Glencore's copper business, Glencore's coal man seized the opportunity to express frustration that 15 years of failed governance had reduced one of the world's biggest energy exporters to a state of domestic shortage and paradigm-shifting pricing unpredictability.
"We have to meet Australia's energy needs now, in five years, 10 years and 15 years. We can't rely on blue-sky thinking. There is an energy crisis in the world's largest exporter of coal, the second largest exporter of gas and a major exporter of uranium. We need real solutions. Unless we make decisions really quickly, and I mean in the next 12 months, that re-establish base load capacity then we have no chance of sustaining the economy in the shape that it is in now.
