Renewable generation supplied more than half of Australia’s electricity in the fourth quarter of 2025, driving wholesale power prices down by nearly 50% and coinciding with record battery output, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Coal-fired generation fell 4.6% year on year to a record quarterly low, while gas-fired output dropped 27% to its lowest level in 25 years. Read more

Big themes 2026 – From Grant McDowell In 2025 we discussed the rise and rise of China. In 2026 I think we’ll see the rise and rise of the middle powers. New world disorder is opening up opportunities for China to collaborate with the middle powers, and beyond. China has learned from the mistakes of the Belt Road Initiative and seeking to collaborate. China’s EVs are displacing over one million barrels of oil demand a day. The middle powers are moving from molecules to electrons for clean electricity and transport. Middle powers are tired of being lumbered with decades long expensive fossil generators are now leaning into many small and cheap. See Ethiopia’s ban on petrol and diesel vehicle imports. Carbon trajectory – EU CBAM helps set a new market for world trade and carbon polluting countries. So once again we’ll be following the work of Ember and Lauri Myllyirta. And our conversations will naturally include Australia. I’ll be watching our energy transformation closely as we face a chicken and egg problem. As coal generation is extended investors are reluctant to back utility scale wind and solar projects. Which then allows the coal generation to extend. Utility scale batteries will play a role, however wind generation is key and every effort should be made to deploy, deploy, deploy. Read more

An influential Labor environmental group has kicked off a campaign pushing Treasurer Jim Chalmers to strip big miners of lucrative fuel tax credits, arguing that it would bolster the budget bottom line and accelerate the decarbonisation of the resources sector. Labor’s powerful Labor Environment Action Network launched the grassroots campaign last week to overhaul the mining fuel tax credits, which would cost BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue billions of dollars. Read more

Somewhere between unchecked middle-class welfare and unsustainable spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the government is losing its grip on the national credit card. The $57 billion deterioration in the budget since the May election, reported by The Australian Financial Review on Wednesday, symbolises Labor’s overarching failure to practise the financial discipline required to repair the budget. Australia’s fiscal health is being cannibalised by a sprawl of outlays. A swelling public service, rampant social spending programs led by the NDIS, higher state hospital disbursements and a suite of non-means-tested policies – such as ever more generous childcare payments – are among the litany of increasingly expensive line items. Read more

The last few weeks have been an object lesson in the benefits of the transformation of our energy market, dispelling the myths promulgated by fossil fuel vested interests that increased renewable energy means more expensive power and reduced grid reliability. We have seen exactly the opposite of that: with increased extreme weather events including unprecedented heatwaves and devastating fires in southeast Australia, the grid has proven resilient under surging demand and stress, and now the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) confirms that increased renewables correlates with a significant decline in wholesale prices. Read more

During the current heat wave, with nighttime temperatures around 40°C, rooftop solar panels are struggling to supply energy, and household […] Read more

Energy analyst Tim Buckley says Australia is on the right track with renewable energy but warns the pace of change must accelerate to ensure grid reliability, affordability, and climate targets are met. Speaking after Origin Energy announced a two-year extension for the Eraring coal-fired power station, Buckley criticised the decision as a short-term fix that highlights deeper issues in the energy transition. “Coal is unreliable, expensive and destroying our planet,” he said. “We’ve had 20 outages at Callide C in Queensland in just four years. These end-of-life coal plants are the real reliability problem.” Read more

As the world moves towards reducing its reliance on fossil fuels and combating climate change, nations are looking to capitalize on renewable resources like solar and wind power. When it comes to the wind energy sector, China is dominating the landscape — leading in annual installations, manufacturing, as well as building on two decades’ worth of streamlining a robust supply chain. By the end of 2024, China had installed a mind-boggling 521 Gigawatts of wind power capacity, according to data from China’s National Energy Administration (via Climate Energy Finance). Read more

The withdrawal is another blow to the technology, which has so far failed to live up to its hype, partly because the financial incentives to use CCS are not strong enough. “It’s only going to work if the economics justify it and the engineering can be done,” says Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley. “I think CCS could work at the wellhead, but you need a high price.” He points to Chevron’s $3 billion CCS system set up to capture carbon dioxide from the Gorgon gas field, offshore from Western Australia, as an example. Read more

Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley has previously pointed to Chevron’s Gorgon CCS project as an example of underperformance. Despite more than $3 billion in investment, the facility captured approximately 1.6 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2024, well below its design capacity. Under Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism reforms, large emitters such as Inpex are now required to progressively reduce emissions. Inpex reported emissions of 6.7 million tons of CO2 in the year to June 2024, just below its regulatory baseline. Read more

Climate Energy Finance founder and director Tim Buckley said the decision to extend Eraring’s closure reflected a “total failure of planning by Origin”. “Origin Energy has failed to build any replacement generation capacity despite knowing for decades Eraring is due for closure,” Buckley said. “But the reality is that the permanent sustainable solution is to build distributed and utility scale renewable energy firmed by batteries at speed and scale, ignoring the small but noisy minority trying to hold back the energy system transformation. “We need permanent solutions—new capacity—at speed and scale, not yet more bandaids on unreliable end-of-life coal plant clunkers.” Read more

Tim Buckley, energy analyst and director of Climate Energy Finance, says Western Australia’s coal industry is a long-running financial and […] Read more