Three-quarters of the gas extracted by Australia is sold overseas, mostly to customers in Japan, China and South Korea. Does this make Australia a petrostate? Tim Buckley, a former investment banker, now director of the analysis firm Climate Energy Finance, is among those who believe it does. He points to the documented history of Australia’s fossil fuel industry to pay, pressure and cajole governments to get its way. The result is that the country has continued to expand gas and coal operations, with no articulated end in sight, since it rejected a climate-laggard rightwing Coalition administration in 2022 and replaced it with a Labor government promising to take a leadership role on the climate crisis. Read more

Source: AEMO Gas Statement of Opportunities If privatisation of gas and electricity networks and the consequent complexity of the market are partly to blame for high energy bills, it is worth pondering whether a more independent regulator might be in order. We are talking about the Australian Energy Market Operator (AMEO), which independent energy expert Tim Buckley described this week as “captured by the methane gas cartel”. Read more

Tim Buckley comments for this feature on Andrew Forrest’s recalibration of his green hydrogen ambitions. Read more

Tim Buckley discusses with Kieran Gilbert the power price spikes AEMO identifies in its latest quarterly energy dynamics report – including the devastating impacts of aging coal clunker outages. Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down why we have seen massive power price spikes in the NEM – coal’s unreliability, system gaming by gentailers and the failure of the approvals system to bring firmed renewables replacement capacity online Read more

Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said Fortescue chief Andrew Forrest was not alone in betting big on green hydrogen as part of the energy transition but costs had, in fact, gone up instead of following the usual pattern of better affordability for clean technology such as batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles. “Twiggy went way too hard, way too fast and way too hyped about hydrogen,” Mr Buckley said. “Australia put out like 50 per cent of the world’s press releases of hydrogen in the last five years but none of them have come to fruition.” With Australian coal and gas exports to decline as the world decarbonises, Mr Buckley expressed doubt green hydrogen would be able to fill the void, pointing out the first ship capable of transporting chilled hydrogen at scale is at least 10 years away. He said green hydrogen’s value was helping Australian resources companies to pivot to value-adding, such as processing critical minerals and producing strategic metals such as green steel. Read more

Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance, questioned how a form of energy that would produce “zero” electricity for the next 15 to 20 years, could bring down power prices. In the meantime, the Coalition’s plan would undermine investor confidence so Australia didn’t get as much electricity supply from other sources, Buckley said. “Less supply means higher prices — that’s economics 101.” He believes the Coalition’s nuclear strategy could increase electricity prices by 20-50 per cent over the next decade because of the need for more government intervention and funding to extend the life of coal plants. Buckley said the GenCost report — produced by Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO — found power from nuclear could also be double the price of firmed renewables. “Therefore power prices go up, not down,” he said. Read more

Straits Times: In Asia, a carbon price of about US$100 a tonne is needed to make investment in CCS work, said Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think-tank in Sydney. Every step of the CCS supply chain was costly, he said, from capturing the CO2 from the smokestacks of power plants and heavy industry, chilling and liquefying the gas, building the ships, transporting the CO2 and then storing and monitoring it for decades. “It’s a pretty straightforward equation. If you don’t have a price on carbon, or the equivalent tax, why would it work?” he said. Read more

As Tim Buckley an Annemarie Jonson argue in this op ed, the LNP’s egregious $100bn+ taxpayer funded nuclear hoax is fiscal irresponsibility of the highest order, designed to disrupt and delay the accelerating renewables transition, as it does catastrophic damage to surging investor confidence in Australia’s firmed renewables rollout and trashes our Paris commitments. Read more

In the West Australian, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said the CSIRO’s modelling of costs to build nuclear reactors was conservative, estimating the capital cost of the entire project at between $80 billion and $100 billion. “On top of that, you’re looking at $30 billion to $50 billion for the rehabilitation in 60 years time when they have to be decommissioned, another $10 billion for upgrades and refurbishments in 30 years’ time,” he said. Read more

Syndicated across News Corp mastheads nationally including all regional sites in QLD: Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley has hit out at the Coalition government for providing little information when revealing its nuclear energy plan.Mr Buckley said his best cost estimate for the Coalition government’s nuclear energy plan following the CSIRO GenCost report would be $100 billion. “It’s a rather large number to not have any facts on,” Mr Buckley said. “For the shadow energy minister to spend a year building a detailed analysis of the federal opposition energy and climate strategy and provide rather limited facts, rather limited details – a one-page flyer really doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about a $100 billion of public money being invested. It’s a little bizarre that Ted O’Brien’s announcing this policy without any facts.” Read more

Tim Buckley’s Sky News interview excoriating the LNP’s nuclear con is embedded in this feature on the Australian by its Canberra Bureau Chief and Political Editor summarising responses from a broad range of thought leaders Read more