Media

Alistair Kitchen & Tim Buckley: The US war on Iran at the start of 2026 gave Australia a major reminder of why energy security is yet another reason for the whole of our country to embrace the energy system transformation to electrification and decarbonisation – a permanent solution to our addiction to expensive, high emissions, scarce diesel and oil imported from the Middle East. Nowhere is this need and opportunity more evident than in remote communities of outback Australia. For these communities, excessive dependency on imported diesel means energy insecurity is a near daily threat. Read more

Highlights – CEF’s field trip to China CATL, XCMG and China Hongqiao Group, Asian Carbon markets progress; Main Story – My keynote presentation this week to the RE Construction Summit; Lowlights – The WA by-election last week Read more

Buckley, the head of Climate Energy Finance who returned recently to Australia from his latest trip to China, said the “staggering” scale of manufacturing and the speed of construction there put Australia’s $2.5 billion efforts to bail out facilities such as Tomago in the shade. The visit took in the Hongtai Aluminium smelter in the southern province of Yunnan. Construction on the site began in December 2019, with the first metal produced within a year. Read more

Data centres could consume 13 per cent of National Electricity Market power by 2036. Australia should require them to bring new firmed renewable energy rather than add pressure to the grid. We all saw the shocking scenes last week as a glacier collapse in the Himalayas produced a biblical flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, obliterating everything in its path. The impact was such that it triggered seismic activity signalling an earthquake. Panicked people tried desperately to outrun a churning wall of water metres high. At the time of writing, over 900 are dead, swept away in the raging torrent, with thousands missing, villages and infrastructure destroyed, and scores of Australians unaccounted for. Read more

Climate Energy Capital director Tim Buckley says attempting green hydrogen without access to China’s capital or capex costs, or its scale “is a waste of time”. “Let China lead, prove it, and once they’ve commercialised it, partner with them,” he told Renew Economy. “No one’s building anything in Australia. Even AREH has moved away from hydrogen, saying let’s just be an energy provider to the big mining companies. That was one of the biggest hydrogen proposals. Read more

Energy analyst Tim Buckley argues Australia’s super funds could play a much bigger role in our pursuit of cleaner, cheaper energy. Buckley has 30 years of experience in finance and runs an independent think tank. He said that if we want to start taxing foreign renewables, we need to first be fostering local investment. According to Buckley, Australia has trillions of dollars worth of potential investment tied up in superannuation funds, but proportionally, a very small amount of that goes toward clean energy projects. Read more

Climate Energy Finance (CEF) director Tim Buckley says energy independence is China’s driving motivator. “There is no lack of ambition in China to be a world leader in all zero emissions industries of the future, and there is a clear and well-structured national plan to deliver on this,” Mr Buckley said. “However, China will build the new before dismantling the old.” Read more

Tim takes us from his early career in financial research and forensic company analysis to carbon pricing, corporate governance, superannuation, ESG, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, China’s manufacturing scale, green steel, batteries, data centres and Australia’s opportunity to become a clean-energy powerhouse. This is a conversation about how capital actually moves, why incentives matter, why governance matters and why the energy transition will ultimately be shaped by economics as much as engineering. Read more

Climate Energy Finance research head Matt Pollard said the development would advance green iron research in Australia and could also accelerate work on rival projects. “That is a big step forward because that electric smelting furnace technology is the focus of the NeoSmelt project in Kwinana and it’s what a number of other companies around the world are focusing on as well,” he told AAP. Read more

The federal programme emerged from Labor’s re-election in the 2025 federal election, having been a central pillar of its energy policy platform. Around the time of its launch, Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance, told ESN Premium that the scheme could make Australia a “red-hot market” for battery storage, predicting it would help build out local supply chains and stimulate broader investment in the sector. Read more

While each household battery is not large, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said together they had made a major difference to energy demand, and could reduce power prices this year and the next. “You can have your solar during the day, you can use that to charge your battery, and the battery is big enough on average to power most houses through the night as well,” he told AAP. Read more

Snowy Hydro and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will seek partly-developed wind and solar battery hybrid projects to meet a newly-inked 10-year arrangement to supply Tomago aluminium smelter with renewable energy from 2033 onwards. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today confirmed that the $2.5 billion rescue deal, split 50:50 between the federal and New South Wales government, would underwrite 3GW of renewable generation and firming capacity, and that a statewide search would identify projects languishing between development approval and final investment decision. Read more