Industry figures fear wariness at the Foreign Investment Review Board about Chinese-linked investment is hindering the flow of capital needed to advance Australia’s energy transition, slowing progress on new wind and solar farms and stalling acquisitions.
A $813m deal by a unit of energy major BP to sell five solar farms to Beijing Energy International Holding is close to collapse as the buyer seeks to secure foreign investment approval.
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Some of the key highlights from this report are:
Need for a clear embodied decarbonisation price signal in international trade, extending the EU ETS and CBAM with an Asian CBAM
Iron ore and met coal exports from Australian mines in FY 2024 generated gross profit of A$120bn from the Asian Steel Sector, plus A$10 bn pa of royalties to each of WA and Queensland state governments.
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Australian manufacturing will be eroded and power to the sector switched off unless urgent action is taken to reduce barriers to gas investment, the boss of Australia’s biggest energy company warned.
Woodside chief Meg O’Neill called for an end to “anti-gas rhetoric” and to scrap Victoria’s ban on certain onshore gas production over concerns supply shortages would hit economy. “The worry I have is when you get to a point where there’s not enough power to go around to meet the needs of all of the power consumers,” she told reporters following her address to the Melbourne Mining Club on Thursday.
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The Climate Capital Forum, a network of investors,
industry, climate finance experts and philanthropists, are calling on the federal
government to immediately pass the Production Tax Credit Legislation (PTC) during
this sitting week.
PTC incentives form the financial backbone of the Future Made in Australia package,
with a pay on delivery model that ensures funding only goes out to industry once the
product is successfully produced.
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Tim Buckley returns with Grant McDowell to guide us through Spark Club Podcast’s usual segments: Highlights, Lowlights, The Main Story, and What’s Coming Up.
This episode kicks off with some positive news from the Middle East, where large-scale solar and battery storage deployments are setting new records. Tim also covers the $2bn Green Aluminium production tax credits, Labor’s 2025 ‘Build Australia’s Future’ plan, and impressive global numbers for large-scale BESS installations. Also discussed was China’s headline energy and economic growth numbers for 2024
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This week, the global climate movement is in mourning. Under Trump’s reign of executive orders, not only has the US out of the Paris Agreement, but they’ve bulldozed a $300bln wind energy project pipeline and promised to desecrate the incredible climate progress under the IRA.
Already, sceptical commentators are calling on Australia’s political contenders to follow suit, abandon climate concerns and double down on ‘bread and butter’ issues ahead of this election.
But what they fail to realise, is the incredible opportunity this now presents for Australia.
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Despite being the hottest year on record, 2024 saw a cooling in attitudes towards climate action, with the realpolitik of corporate profits sidelining environmental, sustainability and governance concerns. For some companies, the reality of taking steps to achieve their green targets was shoved into the “too hard”, “too expensive”, or “just plain irrelevant” baskets.
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On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump wasted no time dismantling his predecessor’s climate policies and promising a new era of fossil-fuel dominance.
As promised, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, one of dozens of executive orders he signed in the hours after being inaugurated as the 47th president.
Under Trump’s marker, the fossil fuel industry was promised new horizons and renewable energy industries were put in the back seat of the American economy.
While it’s still not clear how many of these decrees will pan out as Trump intends, the consequences are likely to be felt across the world.
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The suspension of the group came just days after its biggest member, BlackRock, said it would quit the organisation. In a letter to its clients, the New York-headquartered asset management giant said membership of the net zero initiative had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials”.
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In this episode we discuss the highlights and the lowlights for the week and then go onto discuss the recent Climate Energy Finance report – Australia is seeing an Acceleration in our Electricity Sector Transition, putting our 82% Renewables by 2030 Target in reach.
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Tim Buckley shares his insights in a 15 minute video presentation about geopolitical energy landscape. There are geopolitical headwinds to decarbonisation in the U.S., but that just leaves more scope for a China-EU race to the top. Australia needs to collaborate with our number one trade partner.
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