For green hydrogen, the valley is looming large after two energy giants withdrew support for multibillion-dollar Australian projects within one month.
Following the announcements, a $14 billion plant will no longer be built in Gladstone, Queensland and a $55 billion proposal for Western Australia’s Pilbara region is in doubt.
But while the global green hydrogen hype is starting to deflate, climate, energy and finance experts say there are still plenty of reasons to pursue production of the zero-emission fuel in Australia.
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Highlights
Australia’s Federal Senate Disinformation inquiry
ARENA award to Calix $45m
Allegra Spender Productivity and Tax Roundtable
Lowlights
Lithium Hydroxide Refinery Write-off by IGO
Main Story The Race to 82% Renewables
AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics 2QCY2025
Methane gas generation plays an important but small and progressively declining role
25% upscaling of the CIS
Big BESS News
What’s coming up?
CEF hoping Minister Bowen will go the top end of the CCA’s 65-75% reduction target.
Australia is yet to win the presidency of #COP31, if we do, that will be a key priority for CEF’s Caroline Wang over the coming 15 months.
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Tim Buckley, a former investment banker and the director of Climate Energy Finance, describes Adani’s finances as an “extremely complex, opaque corporate structure”.
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Stiell’s comments come as Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce and One Nation’s Pauline Hanson push a private member’s bill to scrap Australia’s 2050 net zero target, exposing divisions within the Coalition. Meanwhile, the Albanese government is preparing to set its 2035 target next year, due in September, a decision widely viewed as a test of whether Australia intends to match the pace of global decarbonisation or remain tethered to its fossil fuel export model.
Tim Buckley, founder of Climate Energy Finance, said the 2035 target represents Australia’s chance to align with the global clean energy transition and secure long-term economic and geopolitical benefits.
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Adani’s accounts show that even though revenue has been rising from the Carmichael operations, it has enough interest on related-party loans and other expenses to keep reporting losses.
ATO disclosures for the Abbot Point terminal business, now named North Queensland Export Terminal Holdings, between 2013 and 2023 showed just one record of the Adani entity paying tax, which was for $4m in 2017-18.
The port regularly generates annual income of between $300m and $550m.
Tim Buckley, a former investment banker and the director of Climate Energy Finance, says that given Adani has not paid tax during recent periods of surging coal prices, it probably never will.
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“The Chinese companies are ready to go,” says Tim Buckley, director at Climate Energy Finance. “But they’re waiting on clarity around incentives, and a signal they’re welcome.”
Treasury has confirmed that private Chinese firms like CATL, BYD and Trina Solar face no restrictions under FIRB rules – though state-owned enterprises remain sensitive. Still, Buckley warns, “we need to partner with them, bring in their robotics, and leverage our low-cost energy future”.
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Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, a pro-renewables energy analysis group, said the Albanese government had been ignoring its responsibility for the emissions caused by the fossil fuel it sells overseas.
“The Albanese government has acted on scope one through the safeguard mechanism [which forces industry emission cuts],” Buckley said. “They’re acting on scope two by decarbonising our electricity system. But they’re failing to act on scope three – that’s what the Woodside decision highlighted.
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It will be of a Barnaby Joyce sideshow in a parliamentary corridor in which he announced he would introduce a private member’s bill to dump Australia’s goal to reach net zero by 2050. Joyce and his former political foe Michael McCormack had apparently arrived in Canberra having cooked up a plan to carve up the spoils of the Coalition’s comprehensive election loss.
“This is a hell of crowd,” Joyce chirped as he lobbed up to the press pack he had gathered. He gave three main reasons for dumping the target, all of which are wrong.
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China has already moved to reduce its dependence on Australian iron ore via a joint venture in Guinea to unlock a vast new high-grade deposit. In the context of these shifting trade dynamics, failure to position Australia now in the green steel supply chain with China is an opportunity cost that threatens to blow a +$50bn annual hole in Australian exports.
In the face of these enormous opportunities and risks, it was highly significant this week to hear the PM and Australian iron ore business leaders reaffirm their commitment to working in partnership with China to jointly drive steel sector decarbonisation.
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Tim Buckley from Climate Energy Finance highlights the major opportunity for Australia and China to collaborate on green steel production, describing the sector as one of the world’s most carbon-intensive industries. Buckley outlines that conventional steelmaking generates over two tonnes of carbon emissions per tonne of steel but sees significant emission reduction potential—up to 95%—by using renewable energy and modern technologies in place of coking and thermal coal. He points to South Korea’s recent $600 million investment in a steel plant set to achieve substantial emissions cuts as indicative of global momentum.
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The Prime Minister has spent much of the day trying to guarantee the future of Australia’s critically important exports to China’s steel industry, wrapping up a high-level roundtable on green steel in Shanghai.
Australian coal and iron ore exports have fuelled China’s construction boom and underwritten Australian prosperity for years, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the budget.
But as China’s steel industry moves to decarbonise — as well as diversifying its imports and winding down production — Australia’s long resources boom faces an uncertain future.
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