[On Carbon Brief] The Biden administration has “proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns”, Reuters reports, adding that the move could in effect stop “nearly all Chinese cars from entering the US market”. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) publishes an opinion article by Xuyang Dong and Tim Buckley, analysts at thinktank Climate Energy Finance. They argue: “Viewing China’s overcapacity merely as a threat overlooks the massive potential it brings for an accelerated roll-out of clean energy in a world that must rapidly decarbonise to tackle the existential problem of climate change.” Read more

Surging small-scale renewables generation is helping China address growing power demand and slashing the role of coal in the country’s power mix, but Beijing’s widely followed monthly data reports omit output from the fast-growing sector. “China NBS’s generation data for wind and especially solar only capture some of the generation, whereas their capacity figures show the full picture,” said Xuyang Dong, China energy policy analyst at Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance. Read more

China’s massive expansion of green technology can help the world decarbonise and decrease prices at a speed and scale required by the climate crisis. Read more

Energy analysts, including Tim Buckley, say Origin needs to reveal how it will remain a major generator of power if it is to meet a customer book totalling about 4.5 million people. Read more

[Republished on Chinese media WeChat official account – Radio2000华语] Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, emphasized the potential for cooperation between China and Australia in the fields of green energy transformation and manufacturing in an interview with reporters. As a major iron ore exporter, Australia can export green iron to China by using its own renewable energy for value-added processing, helping its steel industry decarbonize. In addition, there are huge opportunities for cooperation between the two sides in solar energy technology and polysilicon production. Overall, Australia can expand its competitive advantages in clean energy technology, key minerals and green manufacturing through cooperation with China, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results. Read more

Coal generated less than 50 percent of Australia’s electricity in the last week of August, dropping to a record low as renewable production surged, data showed Wednesday. Australia remains one of the world’s leading exporters of coal and gas and has relied heavily on fossil fuels to keep the lights on. But climate finance expert Tim Buckley said August’s record figures were caused by wild weather and a warm start to the spring, which had reduced demand on the grid by up to 20 percent. Winds exceeding 150 kilometres (93.2 miles) per hour in the southeast of the country had also almost doubled the usual wind generation. “It’s a historically low coal share for Australia in the national energy market, but it’s also a sign of where we are going,” Buckley told AFP. “It will only be a few years from now that coal is contributing virtually nothing,” he added. Read more

[On MENAFN] In a historic development for Australia’s energy sector, coal-fired power generation fell to an unprecedented low during the last week of August. Tim Buckley, a climate finance expert, highlighted that while this record low is partly a result of temporary weather conditions, it also indicates a broader trend towards diminishing reliance on coal. Buckley predicts that it will only be a few years before coal’s contribution to the national energy market approaches zero. Read more

[On One Media – a Chinese social media platform on WeChat] On September 3, 2024, the Australia Financial Review Asia Summit was held at the Sofitel Melbourne. The theme of the summit was “Securing Australia’s Asian Destiny”, aiming to cope with the increasingly complex strategic environment and economic opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region. The summit brought together political and business leaders from Asia and Australia, as well as scholars, strategists, entrepreneurs and technical experts to discuss the far-reaching impact of geopolitical competition, economic growth, and technological and social changes in the Asia-Pacific region on Australia’s future. Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, emphasized the potential for cooperation between China and Australia in the fields of green energy transformation and manufacturing in an interview with reporters. As a major iron ore exporter, Australia can export green iron to China by using its own renewable energy for value-added processing, helping its steel industry decarbonize. In addition, there are huge opportunities for cooperation between the two sides in solar energy technology and polysilicon production. Overall, Australia can expand its competitive advantages in clean energy technology, key minerals and green manufacturing through cooperation with China, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results. Read more

You don’t need to believe in anthropogenic climate change to understand that our major coal export customers – China, Japan, and Korea – are rapidly transitioning to renewable energy, because they’d rather produce cheap power in their backyards than buy it from us. I remember being in a room with Tim Buckley, from Climate Energy Finance, who was telling Hunter community members that in 2023 alone, China built six times as much in solar energy generation capacity than Australia has ever built in history – including coal, gas, hydro, solar, and wind. Read more

Woodside disregards historic investor rejection of its climate plan; the energy giant’s US$1.2bn natural gas takeover negates its US$2.35bn carbon capture buy “more than 21 times over”. Woodside paid a “massive” 75% control premium for Tellurian versus the prevailing 2024 share price, Climate Energy Finance founder Tim Buckley said. Leadership is disconnected from climate science forbidding new greenfield fossil fuel project developments or infrastructure, he said. Read more

Tim Buckley, Climate Energy Finance Director said AEMO’s new 10 year ESOO concludes there is no reliability gap until 2034 in any state in the NEM unless there are project delays in the deployment of replacement capacity. “AEMO forecasts show that power supply reliability levels can be maintained over most of the next 10 years – assuming programs and initiatives already established are delivered on time and in full,” he said. “We simply need a lot more zero-emissions energy capacity approved and built, particularly utility-scale renewables.” Read more

[On the Straits Times] China approved the building of nine gigawatts (GW) of coal power generation in the first half of 2024, down by more than 80 per cent compared with a year earlier as the nation adds renewable energy capacity in record amounts, according to a study published on Aug 22. China is the world’s top renewable energy investor and has been adding ever-growing amounts of wind and solar capacity. It added 134.5GW of renewable energy capacity in the first six months of 2024, a 25 per cent year-on-year increase, according to Australian think-tank Climate Energy Finance and China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Wind and solar comprised 128GW of this total. Read more