Giles Parkinson

Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of the EV-focused The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for 40 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

Giles's recent articles

GILES PARKINSON. How AEMO's new boss will reform Australia's energy vision.

Audrey Zibelman, the new chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, has been in the job for little over a week, but is already making her mark, signalling the biggest shift in energy management philosophy in a generation.

GILES PARKINSON. Turnbull leads attack on wind as Coalition readies carbon price backflip.

A rebadged carbon tax! In its review of its climate change policies, the government will try to dance its way through internal politics, the demands of the fossil fuel lobby and comparisons with Labor's proposals. Turnbull and Frydenberg appear to have concluded that the best way to appease the far right rump of the Coalition is to abandon direct support for renewables, help open up the Galilee coal resource and push for more coal seam gas.

GILES PARKINSON. Coalitions stunning hypocrisy and ignorance on renewable energy.

The Coalition appears to have abandoned all pretence that it supports renewable energy, now contradicting assurances by the grid owner and market operator and now the biggest generator in the country that the source of energy was not at fault for the massive blackout in South Australia last week. After Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg used the opportunity to use the blackoutto try to force the Labor statestargets. They were joined by Industry, Science and Innovation Minister Greg Hunt on Monday. In an opinion piece written for the Australian Financial Review, reported as the...

GILES PARKINSON. Dumb politics means we may be stuck with an even dumber grid

It was just six years ago when Malcolm Turnbull, then deposed Liberal Party leader, attended thelaunch of the Beyond Zero EmissionsZero Carbon plan for 2020, which suggested Australia should and could attain 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020. Turnbull, by all accounts, was an enthusiastic participant, and was particularly excited by solar towers and molten salt storage. There is a real opportunity there, with that technology, to generate baseload power from solar energy something of a holy grail.

GILES PARKINSON. Uhlmanns bizarre prediction of national blackout if we pursue wind and solar

The ABC is supposed to have a ban on advertising. But even if it was allowed, money couldnt buy the sort of advocacy the fossil fuel industry and incumbent energy interests are receiving this week from the networks chief political correspondent, Chris Uhlmann. On Thursday,we took Uhlmann to taskfor the way he reported the blackout event in South Australia, and his suggestion that the states large portfolio of wind energy assets were at fault. Later that day, Uhlmann doubled down,in an articleon the ABC website,and then on a major piece to camera on the flagship 7pm TV news....

GILES PARKINSON. Coalition launches fierce attack against wind and solar after blackout.

The Coalition government launched a ferocious attack against wind and solar energy after the major South Australian blackout, even though energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the grid operators admitthat the source of energy had nothing to do with catastrophic outage. Frydenberg, however, lined up with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, One Nations Malcolm Roberts, independent Senator Nick Xenophon and a host of conservative commentators, including Andrew Bolt, Alan Moran, theABCs Chris Ullmann,and Fairfax Brian Robinsto exploitthe blackout to question the use of renewable energy. Frydenberg used the blackoutto continue his persistent campaignagainst the renewable...

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