Events

Melbourne Energy Institute - Public lecture / Hybrid event

The Melbourne Energy Institute invites you to a public lecture by Associate Professor Chiara Lo Prete from Pennsylvania State University.

Over the past decade, cold weather events such as the 2014 Polar Vortex and Winter Storm Uri caused widespread power outages, driven in part by fuel supply interruptions at gas-fired power plants. These interruptions are especially acute in the Northeastern U.S., where pipeline constraints during peak heating demand periods limit gas deliveries to power plants. During such periods, residential and commercial customers are prioritised over other customers holding firm gas transportation contracts. Additionally, federal regulations mandate non-discriminatory access to pipeline capacity among firm contract holders, placing power plants and industrial customers at the same priority level. This paper explores an alternative strategy to improve gas allocation efficiency within existing infrastructure. Specifically, we examine advance exchange agreements in which industrial customers voluntarily release firm gas transportation capacity to power plants in exchange for monetary compensation during winter emergencies. To evaluate this option, we develop an optimisation model that accounts for competing gas uses across sectors, transportation contract types, and emergency curtailment priorities. The model is applied to a realistic gas-electric system that represents the Northeastern U.S. during the 2014 Polar Vortex, leveraging a novel dataset on gas deliveries by sector and contract type. Results indicate that advance exchange agreements between end users reduce system costs and unserved electric energy, but do not fully resolve reliability challenges because only a small fraction of gas can be reallocated from industrial customers with fuel-switching capabilities to nearby power plants.

The first webinar in the Australian Centre’s 2025 Critical Public Conversations series: Settler Nationalism and its Discontents.

The NSW Builders Laborers Federation played a central in the fight against the racist Aborigines Protection Act and in broader struggles for self-determination and land rights in 1960s. Strong and effective anti-racist action by the BLF was led by socialist construction workers who gained leadership of the union in 1961, including growing number of Koori members, who had recently migrated to Sydney from rural reserve communities. This presentation will explore both key moments in the struggle and the anti-racist ideas that animated these union activits, including a rejection of “White Australia” nationalism and support for global struggles against colonialism and war.

ACCESSIBILITY

If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au.

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THE SERIES

Settler Nationalism and its Discontents

In 2025, the Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series we will explore the fragility, incoherence and contradictions of contemporary settler-colonial nationalisms. We seek to understand the associated politics of race, sex/gender and identity, to analyse the connections between settler colonialism, settler nationalism, and neoliberalism.

Across the series, CPC25 will track the violence of settler nationalism within and beyond so-called Australia. This is a critical juncture. Neoliberalism is dead, but the new is not emerging. The climate catastrophes of colonialism and capitalism loom. Old imperial alliances are revived; new reactionary ones emerge. The nation and its borders are obsessively reasserted.

Sovereign Indigenous people have always been on the frontline of resisting the violence of settler nationalism. CPC25 will foreground trans/national solidarities against settler trans/nationalism, making space to explore resurgent projects of Indigenous Nation-building alongside other possibilities for living otherwise. The series will diagnose the disorders of ‘the nation’ in its present moment. In highlighting the empty, incoherent and contradictory nature of settler colonial nationalism, the series seeks to contribute to its unraveling.