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Tim Buckley said: “There’s been such a dramatic rate of technological improvement with batteries, coupled with scaling up, that any advantage other technologies may have had, to meet the evening demand peak, from five to six years ago is gone,” he said. “Batteries will do a huge amount more heavy lifting than even thought a few years ago.” Read more

As part of the USSC Debate Papers series, the Centre invited Xuyang Dong, China energy policy analyst at Climate Energy Finance, and Noah Gordon, acting co-director of the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss whether the United States, Australia and other like-minded allies and partners should cooperate or compete with China when it comes to fighting climate change. Read more

Tim Buckley comments that “although networks across the country are “antagonising” Australians by creating “sun taxes”, a fee to export rooftop solar power into the grid during peak periods, the cost is still immaterial compared to the savings people get from their rooftops. “That antagonism and mistrust and misinformation is an issue,” he says. “But the real one is when you put rooftop solar in, your electricity use goes down by 50 per cent, so how does the grid operator maintain their compensation? The answer is increasing their charges. If you put a battery in as well, your grid use goes down by 90 per cent, so your retailer’s and transmission operator’s revenue goes down by 90 per cent. “In one respect the electrification trend is a perfect counter to that [because AEMO forecasts electricity use will rise by 30 per cent in the coming decade].” Read more

[On Caixin] China has been a world leader in investing in cleantech outside its border, too. Between January 2023 and September this year, Chinese state-owned and private companies committed more than $100 billion in foreign direct investment in relevant industries, according to the CEF. The Australia-based think tank analyzed projects that were proposed, under construction, or completed during the period in a report it released on Oct. 2. “It is a significant number considering that there are no other countries who have invested so heavily into cleantech across the world like China has,” said Dong Xuyang, an analyst of China’s energy policies at CEF. Read more

CEF published a major report on the electrification and decarbonisation of the Pilbara in August 2024, that argued that AREH could be a key part of the solution. Tim Buckley and colleague CEF Net Zero Transformation Analyst Matt Pollard, believe that AREH has the potential to act as a model for the Pilbara in how private enterprise can effectively collaborate with state and federal governments to accelerate large-scale renewable energy projects. ‘Renewable energy hubs at the scale of AREH can provide significant cost advantages over distributed, smaller-scale renewable energy projects,’ they say. Read more

Tim Buckley, told the Financial Times that “China was not just exporting its clean-tech manufacturing capacity surplus but was increasingly exporting its technology, engineering, supply chain and financing capacities.” Read more

Responding to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook which tracks an ‘unprecedented growth in renewables’ and says fossil fuels will peak before 2030, Tim Buckley said: “The fossil fuel era is drawing to an inevitable close. Our future prosperity depends on hastening our energy transition and repositioning as a value-adding trade and investment leader.” “We should be deploying our solar and wind to process our energy transition materials like green iron and the critical minerals essential for cleantech onshore pre-export.” Read more

Tim Buckley, from Climate Energy Finance, says the IEA report is still likely to be underestimating the deployment of renewables. “Each year the IEA upgrades their renewable energy estimates, having underestimated the deflation of solar and BESS, and underestimating the technology improvements in cleantech as well – wind, solar, BESS and EVs,” Buckley says. “As such, the IEA’s expectation of peaks in all types of fossil fuel energy types is likely still too conservative. This is great news, as clearly global scientists have likewise underestimated the compounding impacts of climate change. “China clearly leads the world in both the manufacturing, domestic installation and export of all cleantech aspects. Read more

Tim Buckley on the Energy Transition Show podcast on China’s stunning transition and decarbonisation progress in Australia and India: Read more

“China leads the world in clean tech – including solar, wind, batteries and new energy vehicles – with its investments more than double those of the US or the EU,” the Australian non-profit organisation Climate Energy Finance said in a report on October 2. Dong Xuyang, a China energy policy analyst with Climate Energy Finance and one of the report’s authors, said this year there has been a “material step up” of Chinese investments in Australian renewable energy projects. Dong said China provides cost-competitive clean tech to the global market, adding “trade barriers” from the US and EU “risk raising costs for domestic consumers and industries engaged in the energy transition”. Read more

The report, “Green capital tsunami: China’s >$100 billion outbound clean-tech investment since 2023 turbocharges global energy transition”, released on Oct 2 by the independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, or CEF, said Chinese firms have committed more than$100 billion in outbound foreign direct investment since 2023. Xuyang Dong, CEF’s China energy policy analyst and co-author of the report, said China leads the world in clean energy. “It is actively injecting more and more zero-emissions energy into its national power system even as it progressively shifts to electrifying everything and upgrading its energy policy to accelerate the energy transition progress,” she told China Daily. “China is increasingly the world leader in almost all these zero-emissions industries of the future, and that opens up opportunities to invest globally into clean energy,” she said. Dong said the problem for Australia is a “lack of effective communication and trust” between the two countries. Read more

TIM BUCKLEY speaks fortnightly with Grant McDowell on his reqular podcast featuring fireside chats with energy transition leaders traversing the key themes in global and Australian decarbonisation Read more