Newly uncovered documents reveal how Australian government agency ABARE systematically underestimated renewable energy potential and overstated climate action costs, effectively giving the fossil fuel industry a veto over policy. The modeling failures - including predicting solar would provide minimal power when it now supplies over a third of generation - cost Australia decades of climate progress.
This is the smoking gun showing how coal and gas interests didn't just lobby against climate action. They captured the very models government used to make decisions.
ABARE - the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics - was supposed to provide independent economic analysis to inform policy. Instead, according to investigation by Drilled Media, it produced modeling that consistently favored fossil fuel interests while dismissing renewable energy potential.
The numbers are damning. In one draft study, ABARE suggested solar power would contribute only a "small amount" to Australia's electricity grid. When challenged by the Department of Education, Science and Training on this assumption, ABARE found a more recent study suggesting renewables might contribute "in the region" of 10% by 2019.
The actual figure when 2019 arrived? Renewables contributed 21% to the Australian energy grid. As of 2024, they supply 36% of total power generation. ABARE wasn't slightly wrong - it was catastrophically wrong in ways that systematically favored fossil fuel incumbents.
Mate, this wasn't a modeling error. This was institutional corruption. When your predictions are off by a factor of three, consistently in the same direction, that's not incompetence - that's capture.
ABARE's approach was criticized at the time, particularly for talking with certainty about costs of climate action while emphasizing doubt and uncertainty about climate harms. That framing shaped political debate for decades. Politicians could cite ABARE modeling showing climate action would be "too expensive" while dismissing climate impacts as "uncertain."
The agency's modeling fed directly into Australia's climate policy paralysis. Governments from both parties used ABARE analysis to justify weak emissions targets, continued coal expansion, and resistance to international climate agreements. The modeling gave political cover to what was essentially fossil fuel industry lobbying.
The renewable energy predictions are particularly egregious because the technology trajectory was already clear by the early 2000s. Solar panel costs were dropping exponentially. Wind technology was proven and scaling globally. Battery storage was advancing rapidly. ABARE somehow missed all of this, instead projecting that fossil fuels would remain dominant indefinitely.
This failure of imagination - or deliberate blindness - locked Australia into decades of delayed climate action. Infrastructure investment, grid planning, energy policy, emissions reduction targets - all were based on ABARE modeling that systematically underestimated clean energy and overstated fossil fuel necessity.
The political economy is straightforward. ABARE operated within a government where fossil fuel industries had deep influence through political donations, lobbying, and personal relationships. The agency's modeling reflected those interests, consciously or not. When your analysis consistently favors powerful incumbents while dismissing challenger technologies, that's capture.
Compare Australia's energy transition to countries that didn't suffer from captured modeling. Denmark reached 80% renewable electricity by 2024. Germany hit 50%. Even Texas - hardly a bastion of environmentalism - now generates 30% of power from wind and solar because the economics worked.
Australia has among the world's best renewable resources - abundant sun, strong coastal winds, massive land area for solar and wind farms. We should have been leaders in renewable transition. Instead, ABARE modeling and fossil fuel influence kept us locked into coal and gas for decades longer than necessary.
The cost of this delay is measured in emissions, climate damage, and lost economic opportunity. Australia could have built renewable energy export industries, battery manufacturing, grid-scale storage - all the industries that are now booming globally. Instead, we bet on fossil fuels because government modeling said that was the smart play.
The documents uncovered by Drilled Media show ABARE's modeling wasn't just wrong - it was systematically biased. That matters for accountability. If modeling errors are random, you can chalk it up to forecasting difficulty. When errors consistently favor one industry while disadvantaging its competitors, that's evidence of institutional bias at minimum and possibly corruption.
Modern climate and energy modeling from bodies like the CSIRO, Australian Energy Market Operator, and independent analysts shows very different trajectories than ABARE projected. They recognize renewable cost declines, technological improvement, and system integration possibilities that ABARE dismissed.
But the damage is done. Australia spent decades making policy based on captured modeling. Coal plants that should have closed kept running. Gas projects that should never have been approved got built. Renewable investment that should have ramped up in the 2000s was delayed until the 2010s.
The climate consequences are global, but Australia bears particular responsibility. As one of the world's largest fossil fuel exporters and historically high per-capita emitters, our policy choices matter. ABARE's modeling failures contributed to Australia being a climate laggard rather than a renewable leader.
The question now is what lessons are learned. Government economic modeling needs independence from industry influence. Assumptions need transparency and peer review. Forecasts need regular reality checks against actual outcomes. And when agencies get it as wrong as ABARE did, there need to be consequences.
Institutional capture is real, it's costly, and it's still happening across multiple policy domains. The ABARE case is a warning: when powerful industries can shape the models that inform policy, they can delay change for decades while claiming to follow "sound economic analysis." The fossil fuel industry played that game brilliantly in Australia. The rest of the world is paying the price.
