Media

With the world racing ahead with huge subsidies attracting massive capital inflows, the $500m commitment in the new federal Critical Minerals Strategy released this week is a drop in the ocean, and fails to take advantage of Australia’s unique position in the energy transition as a potential critical minerals value-adding superpower. Read more

Australia has the potential to secure its position as a world leader in value-added critical minerals supply that underpins the energy transition. However, while the new Australian Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030 released by the federal government this week rightly foregrounds leveraging international supply and value chain partnerships, the new funding of $500m to NAIF fails to invest in Australia’s minerals boom at a scale commensurate with the opportunity – and is an inadequate response to the capital investments of our partners and competitors in the global decarbonisation race, such as the US IRA. Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down the statement by AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman today that we are not moving fast enough on decarbonisation of the grid; and speaks to the federal government’s Critical Minerals Strategy released today that announced a $500m commitment to minerals processing – a disappointing underinvestment in Australia’s once in a century opportunity to leverage our massive reserves and lead globally on value-added energy transition materials. Read more

Tim Buckley said he is “not surprised” to see a mining company continue its business in Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine. “It’s all about the money. In the coal industry in a good year, you can make a fortune. China doesn’t want to be dependent on Australia’s coal. We are 55 per cent of the world’s coking coal export. Therefore, China will happily buy from Russia.” Read more

Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says China and America are investing in solutions to solve the climate crisis which include solar power. “It is staggering to see how much manufacturing activity is actually underway in 2023 and it’s been led by China,” Mr Buckley told Sky News Australia. “It’s great in many respects, we’ve got a climate emergency, but it’s great both China, America even Europe, Japan, Korea, India they’re all piling in, they’re all responding and they’re investing in solutions at a scale that actually could solve the climate crisis.” Read more

As the global output of solar panels increases, Australia is set to benefit from an electricity price fall of 10%, a report from the think-tank Climate Energy Finance calculates. The Solar Pivot report by analysts Tim Buckley and Xuyang Dong forecasts that “solar costs will halve again before 2030, underpinning an accelerating disruption of world energy markets and driving energy transition momentum”. Read more

Tim Buckley writes that it’s about time NSW reflected QLD’s progressive coal royalty regime which has just delivered a stunning dividend to the people of the state. Read more

The Monthly daily newsletter questions the federal governments support for Middle Arm as renewables burgeon, citing CEF’s Solar Pivot report and its call for the teasurer to introduced solar module manufacturing tax incentives to onshore production and create jobs. Read more

The price for solar panels keeps dropping, and China is leading the deflation by a massive solar manufacturing buildout flooding the market. Tim Buckley says that we expect solar module prices to drop at least 10% annually over the rest of this decade as China triples its solar module production capacity by 2024 across the entire solar supply chain. Read more

A solar boom driven by falling costs and surging production capacity is putting the world economy on track for decarbonisation. A report released by Climate Energy Finance found China is leading by a huge margin, with the world on the brink of a dramatic acceleration in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Read more

With polysilicon prices dropping a third since 2021, Climate Energy Finance calculates Australians could soon start to benefit from cheaper solar panels as a dive in raw material costs and a “boom” in global output delivers annual solar electricity price falls of 10% for the rest of the decade, and a halving by 2030. Read more

CEF’s new Solar Pivot report sees unprecedented trade and investment opportunities, in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars, for Australia to “ship sunshine”, embodying decarbonisation in its exports by using its solar and wind energy to process its world-leading critical minerals reserves, and to power manufacturing of energy transition materials. Australia has a once in a century opportunity for investment in renewables, exports, technology and employment, including in solar. It should seize it. Read more