SYDNEY, Aug 19 2022 – The failed leadership team at troubled energy company AGL must expedite their exit and step away from the strategic review currently underway, Greenpeace Australia Pacific says.
This morning AGL reported that its annual profit had sunk by 58 per cent to $225 million, the composition of the board remains unchanged and board member Diane Smith-Gander will remain at the company longer than previously stated. [1]
“AGL’s lame duck leaders need to leave immediately and should have nothing to do with the strategic review that is currently underway. Investors should be deeply alarmed by the slow pace of change and the fact that outgoing directors with a track record of failure still have influence over this crucial process,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific Senior Campaigner Glenn Walker said.
“At the heart of AGL’s financial and environmental failures is the dead weight of coal, specifically AGL’s decrepit power stations that spend as much time broken down as they do generating dirty power. AGL CEO Graeme Hunt trying to paint the unreliability of his coal burning power stations as ‘a confluence of planned and unplanned outages’ are weasel words aimed at deflecting responsibility for a failure to plan for the future.”
“AGL’s current leadership seem to be in no rush to break their ties with coal despite soaring prices and maintenance bills and a political and business climate that has shifted rapidly in favour of emissions reduction through clean energy like wind and solar.
“AGL has the potential to be a climate leader by closing its coal burning power stations by 2030 and working with their large household customer base to switch off gas appliances to electrification. But it needs new and experienced leaders to step up to steer it in the right direction.”
AGL’s strategic review is expected in September, following a horror year for the company which saw its attempt to demerge, and hive off its polluting coal-burning assets into a separate company, sunk following shareholder pressure.
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