All forms of economic production and exchange involve the use of energy directly and in the transformation of materials. This paper centres on assessing the energy costs of modern day society and its relation to GDP.

The COVID-19 pandemic has utterly changed life as we know it — but it’s also laid bare how Washington’s militaristic budget priorities have left the country woefully unprepared for a crisis. This report lays out how militarism and the climate crisis are deeply intertwined and...

In 2018, the New Zealand Government decided not to grant any new petroleum prospecting, exploration and mining permits outside onshore Taranaki. The aim of this report is to extend the existing analysis by providing an assessment of what is known about the environmental effectiveness and...

The Western Australian Future Battery Industry Strategy aims to provide a framework for the State Government’s leadership to build upon its demonstrated expertise in the future battery industry and promote its significant competitive advantages.

This paper argues that a National Climate Disaster Fund should be established to reduce the cost burden of natural disaster response and recovery to Australian households and taxpayers. The Australia Institute suggests that it should be funded by a levy on coal, gas and oil...

Staring down the end of the coal industry that built the town, Collie faces a challenge dozens of communities around Australia, and thousands worldwide, will confront in coming decades. This report argues that a renewable transition and creating a circular economy can lower costs, diversify...

This report outlines how environmental regulators plan to allow Equinor to respond to an oil spill in the Great Australian Bight by deploying a banned chemical cocktail that doesn’t work and is toxic to humans and marine life.

This report reveals that if Norwegian company, Equinor, is given permission to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, it will likely pay the Norwegian government more than it will pay in Australian government taxes and up to 27 times more than they will...

An important economic paradox that frequently arises in the economic literature is that countries with abundant natural resources are poor in terms of real gross domestic product per capita. This paradox, known as the ‘resource curse’, is contrary to the conventional intuition that natural resources...

Could the world’s hunger for metals and minerals, and state strategies for securing access to them, propel the development of deep sea mining?