Federal fuel tax credits have come under renewed scrutiny as the Commonwealth pursues budget savings and faster emissions cuts in line with its climate targets. Costing roughly $11 billion a year and no longer tied to the costs of maintaining roads, critics argue it is too big a fiscal burden and is keeping users hooked on a fuel that’s emissions-intensive and vulnerable to supply chain shocks, as exposed by the Middle East conflict. Under a model put forward by Climate Energy Finance, diesel tax exemptions could be capped at $50 million but businesses could still claim rebates beyond the cap if they reinvested the funds into electrification. Read more

The scam is the SA Government’s largesse of prepaying for the gas, which allows Santos to invest in the Moomba Central Optimisation pipeline, virtually guaranteeing Santos shareholders risk-free returns of up to 25%. That’s Santos’ own assessment of the deal, where the SA Government is locking in a decade of gas offtake from the Central Fields project in the Cooper Basin. But wait, there is more, Santos also brags the development lowers scope 1 emissions “by over 40,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year”. According to Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance, “That’s a big number, until one compares it to Santos’ 2025 Scope 1 and 2 Net emissions of 3,810,000 tonnes” – or 1.04%. Read more

This year, the Australian federal government will spend billions on a scheme that makes it cheaper for miners and other industries to use diesel and petrol. It’s known as the fuel tax credit scheme, and there are growing calls for it to be wound back. With the federal budget under pressure, Nour Haydar speaks with Adam Morton about the most costly anti-climate policy in the Australian government budget, working against efforts to cut emissions Read more

Australia, an LNG exporter, stands to benefit from regional energy diversification efforts but also faces a domestic crunch for transport fuels. Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think-tank, said that at the start of the year Australia had just 25 days’ worth of diesel reserves and 29 days of petrol. “We have essentially no buffer against what is unfolding.” Read more

Data Centres Australia also took shots at the idea that these facilities could be curtailed during grid peaks, infeasible because “cloud and AI inferencing workloads require continuous availability”. Ditto for more stringent requirements for embodied emissions and efficiency, water use restrictions (“the bottleneck sits with water utilities, not operators”), and any requirements for transparently disclosing what is happening inside the data centres (“differentiating AI from non-AI workloads is technically problematic”). Tim Buckley, the director of Climate Energy Finance (one of the signatories of the principles), fired back at DCA head Belinda Dennett: “A lobbyist for private vested interests singing for your supper and trying to get involved after the event and in doing so, undermining the much-needed community interests your members require to build social licence and government approvals.” Read more

Nevertheless, the numbers show investment in new projects is “running laps around the targets required for Australia to hit its net zero targets”, says Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley. “The best way to get Australian energy prices trending down sustainably is to get more net new supply of generation online ahead of demand growth,” he said on LinkedIn. “Rooftop solar and 250,000 [behind the meter] batteries really help solve this challenge, but we need a lot more utility scale projects – scale and speed!” Read more

A coalition of energy and environment groups, including the Clean Energy Council, Electrical Trades Union, Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Energy Finance, proposed a set of “public interest principles for datacentres” that include investing in new renewable energy and using water responsibly. “If you want to build a datacentre, you should have to build the renewables and water recycling to power it,” the ACF chief executive, Adam Bandt, said. “Big tech corporations should be forced to do their fair share so they don’t drain our resources.” The Australian Energy Council says key policy questions still need answering: will datacentres need to be 100% renewable? And will that be based on total demand, or take into account when the electricity is being used? Read more

Tim Buckley, CEO of Climate Energy Finance, says Australia should welcome data centre investment linked to AI and renewables, but […] Read more

Demand is expected to balloon from 1.35 gigawatts now to between 5-8 GW by 2035 on projections prepared in a Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Baringa report. New approvals should come with clear community benefits, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said. “After all, the data centres can only be built leveraging the existing publicly funded water and grid infrastructure we have all paid for,” Mr Buckley said. Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said data centres should be building new solar and wind capacity and have “flexibility and redundancy” built in to protect the network. Read more

Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance and a signatory to the statement, emphasised the urgency of the situation in a LinkedIn post. “Without effective planning to enable new renewable energy, the surge in demand will push up retail power prices, significantly increasing climate pollution, slowing the transition to renewables, the realisation of a Future Made in Australia, and straining electricity grids and scarce water resources,” Buckley wrote. Read more

CEF Director Tim Buckley said data centre investment is red hot, governments are expected to ensure giving approvals to new infrastructure projects comes with clear community benefits. “After all, the data centres can only be built leveraging the existing publicly funded water and grid infrastructure we have all paid for,” Buckley said. “Approvals should be conditional upon new long-term firmed renewables power purchase agreements (PPA) as a pre-requisite … and come with clear community alignment and best practice, including developing a green energy powered future made in Australia.” Read more

The alliance notes that where data centre growth drives the need for new transmission, firming or network augmentation, those costs should not be socialised onto households and small businesses. “Data centre investment is red hot, so we expect our governments to ensure that giving approvals to new infrastructure projects comes with clear community benefits,” says Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley. “After all, the data centres can only be built leveraging the existing publicly funded water and grid infrastructure we have all paid for.” “Approvals should be conditional upon new long-term firmed renewables PPA as a pre-requisite.” Read more