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Queensland, which has the highest dependence on coal of any Australian state, has announced that it will spend AU $776 million (US $500 million) to build Australia’s largest publicly owned wind farm.

The Tarong West wind farm will be sited in Ironpot, 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southwest of Kingaroy, in the South Burnett Region. It’s within the Southern Queensland Renewable Energy Zone, which is one of three regions designated by the state to accelerate renewables projects.

The 500-megawatt project will feature up to 150 wind turbines and could generate enough clean electricity to power up to 230,000 homes.

The Queensland government has a $2 billion Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Jobs Fund, which will pay for the project. The state-owned Stanwell Corporation will build and manage Tarong West. The government wants approvals completed by 2024, and aims for the wind farm to be operational by 2026.

As the Sydney Morning Herald points out in a 2018 article, Stanwell Corporation was ranked No. 3 in the country for worst carbon emissions in Australia:

Stanwell Corp runs the Stanwell and Tarong coal-fired power station, accounting for nearly half of all of Queensland’s coal-fired generating capacity.

The Queensland government’s State of the Environment Report 2020 states:

In 2018, Queensland contributed more GHG emissions than any other Australian state and territory, responsible for 32% of the nation’s total of 537.4 [metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent]. On a per capita basis, Queensland is the third highest emitting jurisdiction (34.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) per person) behind the Northern Territory (64.7 tCO2e per person) and Western Australia (35.2 tCO2e per person) and above the national average (21.5 tCO2e per person).

Queensland, which is Australia’s second-largest and third-most populous state, has a population of 5.2 million. The state has a 50% clean energy target by 2030 and a 30% emissions reduction below 2005 levels target by 2030. The latter target is the weakest emissions reduction target of any Australian state.

The Queensland government website states:

Queensland has already achieved 20% of our renewable energy target by 2020.

We are almost two-thirds to reaching our 2030 emissions reduction target having reduced emissions by 19% since 2005 based on the latest 2020 data.

Jason Lyddieth, a Brisbane-based clean energy and climate campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, told the Guardian:

Queensland is Australia’s highest emitting state and one of the biggest jurisdictions for per-capita emissions anywhere. Only Alberta in Canada and Qatar are worse.

The state is also going hell for leather with new mines and gas fields. The government needs to get serious and have a plan to get off fossil fuels.

Having a 2030 target of just 30% when the federal government has a 43% target is completely untenable.

Read more: Construction officially starts on the largest wind farm in Australia

Photo: Leonard Low, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons


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Trump’s Russia oil sanctions could just be starting as low prices leave room to escalate

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Trump’s Russia oil sanctions could just be starting as low prices leave room to escalate

U.S. Treasury sanctions Russian oil companies in push for Ukraine ceasefire

President Donald Trump could further rachet up sanctions against Russia’s oil sector, with an expected global surplus of crude next year leaving the U.S. room to escalate while insulating American drivers from a price shock.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil exporters, citing Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”

The sanctions mark the “most material move to date by the United States to shutter the Russian war ATM,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital markets, told clients.

The sanctions took the oil market by surprise. U.S. crude prices spiked nearly 6% to trade above $60 per barrel in response after many traders had discounted the risk of escalation due to Trump’s focus on keeping energy prices low.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude oil prices hit five-month lows Monday and are down nearly 14% this year. The market has been under pressure as OPEC+ increases production and renewed trade tensions between the U.S. and China trigger fears of a global economic slowdown.

Weaker oil prices have given Trump scope to act against Russia while shielding U.S. motorists, said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy and a former energy advisor to President George W. Bush. The White House likely saw this as an opportune moment to hit Moscow, with the U.S. midterm elections still a year away, Croft said.

“It’s about hurting the Russian finance ministry while protecting the U.S motorist,” McNally said.

Escalation on the horizon

Trump’s sanctions, which take full effect Nov. 21, are likely designed to force Russia to sell its oil at a steeper discount to global benchmark Brent rather than immediately targeting Moscow’s export volumes, McNally said. This would reduce Russia’s petroleum revenue while avoiding a price spike that pinches Americans’ pocketbooks, he said.

But the oil market faces a looming surplus in 2026 that would give Trump more leeway to escalate sanctions against Russia further next year, by directly targeting its export volumes, according to the former Bush advisor.

This would carry the added benefit of aiding U.S. shale oil producers who are under financial pressure from low prices, McNally said. U.S. shale executives have been deeply critical of Trump’s push to lower crude prices in anonymous responses to a quarterly survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“You can afford to do it because next year it won’t cause $100 oil — if anything it will help oil prices from dropping to $20 a barrel and killing shale,” McNally said.

“Next year somebody has to cut big – OPEC, Russia, Iran or shale,” he said. “Take your pick. The president doesn’t want shale to lose 2 million barrels a day plus like it did in 2020. He may want $40 oil but he doesn’t want $20 oil.”

Immediate market impact

The oil market may be close to pricing in the sanctions after the announcement caught traders by surprise, McNally said. Where prices go from here depends on how the measures are implemented. If the sanctions are loosely enforced, U.S. oil could dip back into the $50s but there’s also a risk that prices could push higher if the administration takes a hard line, the analyst said.

Lukoil and Rosneft account for more than half of Russia’s more than 5 million barrels per day in exports, according to data provided by Kpler. Trump’s sanctions come after former President Joe Biden in January sanctioned Russia’s third and fourth largest producers, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz.

Natixis' Senior Economist on India's pledge to stop buying Russian oil

India remained the largest buyer of Russia crude oil in September followed by China and Turkey, according to Kpler data. Trump has been pressuring India with tariffs to stop its imports of Russian crude.

“Refiners in India, China and Turkey are expected to conduct internal risk assessments on dealings with the sanctioned Russian firms while waiting for clarifications from their governments,” Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler told clients in a note.

That could lead to oil being “being resold — at steep discounts — to refiners willing to take the risk, such as already-sanctioned entities” or small, independent, privately-owned refineries in China, Smith said. “However, a major disruption to Russian crude exports appears unlikely,” he said.

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Clearer skies ahead: Shire gets into the electric ground equipment game

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Clearer skies ahead: Shire gets into the electric ground equipment game

Belgian aviation support brand Shire is hoping to change the airport ground support equipment (GSE) game with a line of purpose-built baggage and cargo tractors engineered from the ground up as electric vehicles.

A spinoff of M-ECS (Mertens Electrification & Control Systems), a Belgian engineering company with expertise in automation, electrification, IoT, and smart systems, Shire is leaning on its decades of engineering know-how to develop purpose-built electric GSE that, they believe, is vastly superior to retrofit designs that put electric motors in spaces originally designed for ICE.

“Retrofitting remains essential in the short term,” explains Toon (his real name) Mertens, founder of M-ECS. “But purpose-built electric machines are the real path to long-term efficiency, safety, and resilience.”

With the short distances driven at limited speeds under extreme loads, ground handling and support equipment (GHE/GSE) at airports present a nearly ideal use case for battery-electric vehicles. That’s a good thing, too. As demand for on-road fossil fuels drops, airports and airlines – historically responsible for about 4% Earth’s global warming – are becoming a bigger and bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking pie when it comes to the fossil fuel emissions generated by the aviation and air travel industries as a whole.

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Shire’s first products are the all-electric baggage and cargo tractors shown, above. Shire calls these “a natural starting point,” as these vehicles alone can account for nearly 30% of ground emissions at major airports. But, as significant as those vehicles are, GSE is already looking into other vehicle families specifically tailored to the unique needs of its airport customers.

Shire product line

  • Shire_TT22e: Electric baggage tractor with lead-acid battery (battery included). Li-ion option 50–70 kWh.
  • Shire_TT22e-DC: Double-cabin (5 seats) baggage tractor, 80V 67.2 kWh Li-ion.
  • Shire_TT30e: 4-ton cargo tractor, high-voltage 70 kWh Li-ion.
  • Shire_TT40e: 6-ton cargo tractor, high-voltage 140 kWh Li-ion.

No word yet on whether or not Shire’s products will make it to North America — if they do, zero emission initiatives like those at the new JFK ONE terminal could make a great home for them.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Shire, via Airside.


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Elon Musk spent $288M to cost Tesla $1.4B in lost revenue – and more to come

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Elon Musk spent 8M to cost Tesla .4B in lost revenue - and more to come

Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to find a way to turn lobbying, which is typically one of the most efficient ways to spend money as a company, into a net revenue loser for his company – flipping the script again from a true “innovator” in the field of corporate destruction.

Tesla released its 10-Q filing today, to supplement its Q3 shareholder letter and conference call from yesterday’s quarterly report.

The filing gives us more detail about what’s going on with Tesla’s financials, namely, how Tesla managed to have record revenue last quarter and yet still have a 40% drop in operating income from the year-ago quarter.

One explanation for this drop is lost revenue from regulatory credits. Regulatory credits have been a relatively stable portion of Tesla’s earnings over the years, as it is one of few companies producing more electric vehicles than it is legally required to.

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What are regulatory credits?

Several governments have committed to reducing pollution, and one way that they can do so is by requiring automakers to make less-polluting vehicles.

Generally, if an automaker fails to meet the guidelines set up by government, they have to pay a penalty for polluting the air too much and harming everyone with that pollution. Or, instead of paying that penalty, they can buy credits from a company that exceeded the guidelines, thus transferring money from the companies that are doing a bad job to the companies that are doing a good job.

Every government has a slightly different way of implementing requirements and credit swaps, but this is generally how it works on a high level.

Put aside for the moment that these penalties, or the cost of credit swaps, are almost always far lower than the actual amount of damage done by pollution, this is at least one method that governments can and have used to try to encourage cleaner air and lower health costs for the populations they govern.

Rules changed by republicans to cost you more money

That is, until the republican party came along. Buried in the $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites passed by republicans earlier this year was another provision to reduce the cost of regulatory fines in the US to $0.

Congress could not legally eliminate the fines, since they are mandated by the Clean Air Act, and republicans in Congress didn’t want to modify the Clean Air Act because it would be more obvious to everyone that they want dirty air, and because they didn’t have the votes to do so. But they did have the votes to do an end-run around democracy and eliminate the fines, which makes the regulation effectively useless.

So now, automakers have less incentive to work on making their cars more efficient. This means you’ll be buying more gasoline, that each gallon will have higher prices (and the increased price won’t go to any social good, but rather to line oil companies’ pockets), and that you’ll suffer from more air pollution which leads to higher health costs for everyone.

When, in contrast, President Biden had strengthened this rule, just the modifications made by his administration were estimated to save $600-700 over the lifetime of each vehicle, or $23 billion in total across the US. But that’s only from Biden’s improvement of the rule; the rule in total saves much more, in comparison to not having the rule at all.

But what does this all have to Elon Musk?

Elon Musk lobbied to have these rules removed, harming his company

During the 2024 US election, Elon Musk spent a total of $288 million on bribes to get anti-EV candidates elected. He did this despite full public knowledge that these candidates opposed electric vehicles, and had promised to harm them.

But, due to Musk’s social media addiction to his bizarre upside-down twitter feed, he and many others convinced themselves that somehow, harming EVs would be good for EVs.

So, Musk spent the millions, got what he wanted, claims it was all because of him (egotistical much?), and as a result, his company… is worse off.

According to the company’s 10-Q filing, Tesla lost $1.41 billion worth of revenue in just the last 9 months that it would have had if not for changes in regulatory regimes. Here’s the passage, in financial speak:

Automotive Regulatory Credits

As of September 30, 2025, total transaction price allocated to performance obligations that were unsatisfied or partially unsatisfied for contracts with an original expected length of more than one year was $3.27 billion. Of this amount, we expect to recognize $877 million in the next 12 months and the rest over the remaining performance obligation period. Changes in regulations on automotive regulatory credits may significantly impact our remaining performance obligations and revenue to be recognized under these contracts. In 2025, governmental and regulatory actions have repealed and/or restricted certain regulatory credit programs tied to our products, contributing to the $1.41 billion decrease in our remaining performance obligations as of September 30, 2025 compared to December 31, 2024.

Translated, that means that the value of the various contracts that Tesla has to sell regulatory credits to other companies has reduced by $1.41 billion dollars as compared to where they were at the end of last year. Tesla says that the specific reason for this is due to the change in regulatory credits that its bad CEO lobbied for.

Some could argue that the value of Musk’s lobbying was to get a foot in the door, and to be able to influence republicans to do less anti-EV stuff than they might have otherwise done, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. There is no indication that republicans have softened their anti-EV position, and in fact, they keep doubling down on trying to harm you and ignoring science. And besides, Musk hasn’t even maintained any relationships, after a very public breakup.

So, somehow, Musk managed to turn lobbying spend from one of the most efficient possible ways a corporation can spend money, into one of the most inefficient ways.

Lobbying is generally highly efficient spend; Musk flips the script again

Normally, lobbying is considered an incredibly efficient way for companies to make money. Various analyses have suggested that the average return on investment from lobbying dollars is anywhere between 22,000% and 104,000%. (Yes, this is a problem, but it’s not what we’re discussing at the moment).

However, in this case, lobbying produced a loss of 489% of the money spent – and that’s just counting the losses caused by the last 9 months, and only in regulatory credits. Those credits are pure profit, too, with no cost of revenue associated with them, so this is just a straight loss of money for the company and its shareholders.

In addition to those losses, there’s the lost revenue from vehicle sales. While this has not yet been recognized by the company, going forward Tesla sales will experience a dip now that all of Tesla’s automotive and home energy products – essentially, all of the products that Tesla sells – have been made more expensive in the US due to political changes.

Either Tesla can choose to lower prices to maintain post-credit pricing and take a hit to margins of $7,500 per vehicle and 30% on home energy products, or it can hold prices the same and lose customers due to lower affordability of its products, or it can release subpar long-awaited products that cost more and are worse than the thing they’re replacing.

Needless to say, none of these options are great for business.

And so, since vehicle credits didn’t end until the end of Q3, and since home energy credits go away at the end of this quarter (and if you want your last chance to get in before they do, get started here), that means business going forward from this quarter will be a lot worse.

In addition to the lost revenue from credits, there is another issue which is more difficult to track, but is definitely happening.

That is the issue of brand damage that Musk’s political activities have had on the company. Tesla is the only EV brand with negative perception, and it’s directly correlated to Musk’s political activities. His actions haven’t just harmed Tesla domestically, but abroad, where the company has lost business opportunities in in the UKAustraliaGermanyDenmark, and has seen falling sales in most territories, along with protests and embarrassed owners.

Tesla has already lost a lot of sales and will lose more, which means less revenue, and less profit. That $1.41 billion is just a start.

Despite directly harming Tesla, Musk wants you to pay him $1 trillion to stay on

Despite this horrendously inefficient use of funds by a CEO who has shown time and time again that he is outright hostile to the company he runs, Musk has also directed the company to spend more funds on an advertising effort to give him up to $1 trillion worth of Tesla stock.

The trillion-dollar number takes into account some optimistic stock growth for the company (which is unlikely given Musk’s recent performance as CEO, where earnings have dropped precipitously), but is still around 40x more than Tesla has ever made over its entire history. It’s also the largest CEO payday in history by multiple orders of magnitude.

Regardless of whether stock appreciates enough to give Musk all the shares covered under the plan, there is still room in the proposals for him to be granted well over 200 million newly printed shares of stock for doing nothing whatsoever, leading to dilution of voting rights and share value for current shareholders. The plan gives Musk’s personal friends on Tesla’s board significant discretion in this matter, and saddles the company with his poor leadership for another decade.

It would also give him a huge source of wealth, which he could turn into cash, to spend on other lobbying activities to harm Tesla’s business, as he has proven above that he is happy to do. If Musk can manage to lose Tesla $1.41 billion plus with $288 million, imagine what he could do with $1 trillion.


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