Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has never worked as hard in his life, which is no mean feat. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Hitting a personal peak load would be some achievement. An electrical engineer by training, Finkel's lengthy CV includes building Axon Instruments, a company measuring neuron activity, which he sold in 2004 for about $US134 million. Using some of that wealth, Finkel launched Cosmos magazine with his biochemist wife Elizabeth in 2004. He also served as Monash University chancellor for eight years until 2016, before becoming chief scientist last year – a role he once told a friend he "wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole". The almost two dozen people Fairfax Media spoke to about Finkel – who have known him over the years or from his current frenetic job – are almost uniformly positive. Whatever the early misgivings, his traits – optimism, endless curiosity, mastery of detail and unflappability – boost the chances of securing a bipartisan pause in the climate wars that have raged in Australia for a decade.

Alan Finkel says renewables will need to have back-up capacity to bolster grid security. Credit:Getty Images ​"He's the perfect person to have in this place at this time," says Wilson da Silva, a science journalist who co-founded Cosmos. Helpful habits seem to start at home. One friend recounts how Finkel, his wife and two sons – one an aeronautical engineer, the other a software engineer – are known to front up for dinner with an agenda of talking points to debate. Alan and Elizabeth Finkel at the time of the successful launch of their Axon Instrument company. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer His mother, Vera Finkel, jokes at almost super-human powers, telling guests at a dinner party: "I worship the ground above which he walks. Everybody loves him."

Key gripes Whether the apparently broad affection survives greater scrutiny of his review remains to be seen. A key gripe is the fact Finkel's team modelled just one scenario – a 28 per cent fall in carbon emissions for the power sector from 2005 to 2030. That choice of a "par" cut of 28 per cent surprised many, not least because the electricity sector is widely considered ripe for much deeper cuts than the rest of the economy, given the availability of non-fossil fuel alternatives, such as wind and solar energy. These sources are already cheaper to build than new coal or gas-fired power stations – in part because they don't carry a "carbon risk" that their emissions will attract either a direct price or some other disadvantage. Finkel's recommendation of a to-be-determined emissions threshold per megawatt-hour has been targeted by former prime minister Tony Abbott and other opponents of climate action as a "tax" on coal, whatever the level settled on.

Finkel, though, has told questioners it wasn't up to him to set the emissions path. It would have been overstepping his terms of reference to model a cut beyond Australia's overall pledge of slashing emissions 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030. He also notes that unlike the Climate Change Authority – which modelled a cut in electricity sector pollution of as much as three-quarters over a similar period – he chose to settle on proven technologies. Model system Modelling choices, of course, open up a world of options, and Finkel looked at just three of them. His clean energy target emerges as his favourite because it delivers the lowest electricity prices for consumers, at least compared with "business as usual" and an emissions intensity scheme, which had been backed by Labor and most business groups. A carbon tax, which Finkel once argued for, is ignored as a choice.

But as Ross Garnaut, an economist with his own record of modelling climate policies, told the Australian Energy Storage Conference in Sydney this week that by extension,"if you have a stronger emissions target, the model will generate a lower [electricity] price". Similarly, a Labor insider queried why he didn't model a trajectory of the Opposition's 45 per cent target cut in electricity sector emissions out to 2030: "As a scientist, I would have thought he'd have modelled both parties' targets." That view has an echo in one of the Labor-led states, with a senior official saying the review "was supposed to be independent", adding "I've become more disappointed as the days have rolled on". Disappointments include the fact the states didn't get access to a review copy until the general embargo lifted last Friday and the modelling - promised for release the same day - didn't emerge until days. Concerns for this state include whether and how the Turnbull government will interpret Finkel's recommendation that new solar and wind energy projects come with "firm" dispatchable capacity to compensate for their intermittency.

This move, depending on how large an impost, could hinder the introduction of renewable energy projects that Finkel has plotted will increase their share from about 17 per cent now to 42 per cent of the National Electricity Market by 2030. Against that, renewable energy prices are tipped to fall a lot faster than Finkel's review predicts. One leading researcher described the $2190 per kilowatt used in the model for large solar photovoltaics as "well off the mark". Bloomberg New Energy Finance, too, estimated that new wind and PV would be cheaper than refurbishing old coal plants - a feature of the Finkel modelling - by 2023. Out to 2040, onshore wind costs will drop 42 per cent from 2017 levels, while solar will slide 63 per cent, Bloomberg predicts, making coal's decline "inevitable". Good hearing However, Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who chairs the backbench environment and energy committee, says he "absolutely" got a good hearing from Finkel.

Winning over Kelly, an outspoken sceptic of climate change who has claimed the First Fleet found Sydney hotter than it is today, has warmed to Finkel's call for back-up dispatchable capacity for renewables "so that the lights don't go out" as more clean energy is added to the grid. Kelly says he could back a program that puts downward pressure on energy prices – an issue likely to gain urgency with Energy Australia this week announcing an electricity price leap of almost 20 per cent for NSW households from July 1. Other suppliers are posting similar increases, with Victorians facing comparable rises from January. "I'm not in the pro-coal lobby, more the low-cost electricity lobby," Kelly says. Finkel also disappointed some by not modelling what amount of emissions would be fair for Australia if the world got serious about trying to keep temperature increases to 2 degrees, the upper end of the Paris climate target. "He told us 'it's not my job to second guess whether the government's policy will get us to 2 degrees'," according to one MP briefed by Finkel this week. The Chief Scientist, though, is "reasonably bullish about emissions reductions in other areas".

Indeed, the review hints at how Finkel's review might steer Australia out of what he has called a "minefield" left behind by that decade of "climate wars". Advances in appliances mean gas heating can be replaced by much more efficient electric "heat pumps", while electric cars – of which Finkel has two, including a Tesla – have the potential to rapidly displace fossil fuelled vehicles. Finkel spoke of his dream of an electric planet when appointed Chief Scientist in late 2015: "My vision is for a country, society and world where we don't use any coal, oil or natural gas, where we have zero emissions electricity." The Chief Scientist, though, has since moderated his enthusiasm for emissions-free economy, conservatively modelling 2070 as the zero-point for the Australia's power sector. 'Solid as a rock'

Should Turnbull fail to win support for the review's main points, friends say Finkel would likely move on to the next project, accustomed as he is to reversals in business such as the failure of electric-vehicle company, Better Place. "He's got a very strong, well-weathered exterior," says president of the Australian Academy of Science Andrew Holmes. "He's not going to find it a huge setback."



For Basarin, a retired Turkish-Australian historian, it was Finkel's unheralded personal actions that revealed the most about his character. The two got to know each other when a common friend was diagnosed with brain cancer. Loading Finkel's actions including finding the best doctor and arranging a fundraising exercise to support research that kept their friend active. He also lobbied for due recognition of his service, helping secure him an Order of Australia that their friend learnt about just before his death last November. "Even though it was a very busy time, [Finkel] would call up our friend several times a week," Basarin said. "He organised all the funeral arrangements, comforting everyone in the process. He was solid as a rock."