5 days ago
Diggers and Dealers panel questions Australia's energy future and emissions target
Duelling perspectives on Australia's transition to renewables and whether it is dead in the water have played out on the floor of one of the country's major annual mining conferences.
More than 2,300 delegates are in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, 600 kilometres east of Perth, for the annual Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum, bringing the industry's practical and financial arms together for the 34th time in Western Australia's gold mining capital.
While this year's gathering comes amid a surging gold price, questions over housing the industry's local workforce, and shaky futures for nickel and rare earths, organisers chose to shine a spotlight on the future and feasibility of Australia's shift to renewables.
While miners, particularly in remote parts of Western Australia, have followed the state's smaller communities in setting up their own independent renewable energy infrastructure, the forum's keynote panel questioned the likelihood of renewables meeting the nation's total energy needs.
The panel, featuring Canadian nuclear energy advocate Chris Keefer and Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) director of energy research Aidan Morrison, urged attendees to question the assumptions being made by industry and political leaders.
"There is no serious intellectual defence for the prospect we'd meet net-zero targets in 2050," Mr Morrison said.
He told the forum that the transition to a fully renewable grid was only being propelled by increasingly generous state and federal subsidies.
"Forcibly intubated and resuscitated by government subsidies," he said.
"It shows what it looks like to have a resuscitated zombie coming to life, the dead starting to walk again."
Dr Keefer said nations such as Australia and Canada were getting caught up in a geopolitical fight over energy between China and the United States that they had no part in.
"The levers of emissions reduction are not really in the hands of countries like Canada and Australia anymore," he said.
"In Inner Mongolia, [China is] building what they call 'energy bases' — something like 6 gigawatts of solar, similar amounts of wind and batteries.
"But also coal, mine-mouth coal, 4 to 5 gigawatts."
The panel, moderated by broadcaster and CIS executive director Tom Switzer, also questioned the feasibility of renewables powering Australia's enormous grids on the largest possible scale.
"As if we're some singular, big bucket where if it's sunny somewhere, it's immediately shareable somewhere else on the continent," Mr Morrison said.
"If you think about that from a cold, hard engineering perspective, it is absolutely bonkers."
Others at the conference were more positive about renewables and pointed to smaller, localised successes.
Australia's first "net-zero" gold mine was announced at the forum late on Tuesday.
Bellevue Resources managing director Darren Stralow said the mine, 40km north of Leinster in the northern Goldfields, recorded net-zero carbon emissions for the first half of 2025.
"It's allowed us to work with some like-minded partners, to see if there's a benefit to that in terms of revenue, and to look to sell our gold in a bit of a different way."
The mine is forecast to be 80–90 per cent powered by renewable energy, the highest penetration in Australia.
For Regis Resources managing director Jim Beyer, renewables were a question of economics rather than advocacy.
"For a remote mine site, renewables make good economic sense," Mr Beyer said.
"At Duketon [1,000km north-east of Perth] we put in a solar farm and it saved us diesel.
It is a similar story with wind and solar infrastructure at the remote Tropicana Gold Mine, about 1,000km east of Perth.
"Power there runs off gas," Mr Beyer said.
"But when the blades are turning and the sun's out … it's cost-sensible as well as carbon reduction."
Resources Minister Madeleine King pointed to heavy renewable energy investment at the Kathleen Valley Lithium Mine and the Bellevue Gold Mine, while reiterating the government's position.
"I don't mind people having an opinion; I don't share that opinion," she said, in response to the keynote panel's comments.
Her West Australian counterpart, David Michael, said there would be no shift in the government's position on uranium mining, ruling out any further approvals following those granted by the Barnett Liberal Government in 2017.
Deep Yellow's project at Mulga Rock, estimated to be Australia's third-largest untapped uranium resource, is the only project in WA free to proceed under current laws.
