Media

SMH reviews the deal struck between the government and the Greens to ensure passage of the Safeguard Mechanism through parliament: “Tim Buckley calculates the cost of offsetting rather than reducing emissions to be $5 billion annually by 2030. ‘Industry can’t just afford a hit like that,’ he says. ‘Solutions once considered unviable are now immediately financially inevitable’.” Read more

Tim Buckley said that Adani’s woes may bring benefits to opening space for other companies. There are other Indian companies interested in investing in renewable energy and now there could be an acceleration of India’s transition to cleaner energy. “Adani Group’s continuing interest in new fossil fuel projects put the Indian government under pressure to deliver a fossil fuel agenda and less pressure to deliver on renewables. At the end of the day, it’s about removing the biggest single private developer of new fossil fuel projects in India, reducing their impact on the political system and democracy in India.” Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down the deal struck today by the federal government with the Greens to support its proposed Safeguard mechanism legislation, with some amendments – including a hard cap on emissions, and some significant advances on limiting and reporting methane, a key driver of climate change and 70% of the emissions covered by the SGM. Read more

Tim Buckley refute assertions by the opposition that the safeguard deal struck today will raise energy prices, noting any price increases arising from the mechanism would be “immaterial”: “The impact of the safeguard mechanism on the Australian consumer is almost immaterial in terms of the overall impact of energy prices and resulting wider inflation. Extreme weather events have a much greater impact on businesses’ bottom line than any costs they would incur under the legislation, with the $8.5 billion in losses caused by flooding in 2022 alone exemplifying how the costs of inaction on climate far exceed any “costs” of decarbonisation. Read more

Professor Ian Lowe’s op ed on his new methane report (release supported by CEF) throws a spotlight on the elephant in the room of the Safeguard Mechanism debate currently at the pointy end in federal parliament: the outsized contribution to our emissions budget of the climate-wrecking greenhouse gas methane, and the need for increased ambition and rigour in the SGM framework to account for and reduce it. Read more

“Many of the foreign entities controlled by Gautam Adani’s brother Vinod appear to function as middlemen for shifting money around the conglomerate while obscuring the source of those funds, analysts and critics said. Many of the companies had no obvious signs of operations or reported employees, yet collectively moved billions of dollars into Indian Adani entities, often without required disclosures, Hindenburg said. ‘I’ve never seen a corporate structure so opaque, so untraceable,’ said Tim Buckley.” Read more

Tim Buckley (a former senior executive at Citigroup and Deutsche Bank) on the banking crisis: “Regulatory warnings about banks’ risk management without consequences are a waste of time. Will anyone go to jail? No. That was one of the issues I had at Citigroup – it was a one-way bet that management would be rewarded while the music plays. And I said but if the music stops, we’re fucked. ‘But the music won’t stop,’ was the response.” Read more

In this Safeguard mechanism explainer across News Corp papers, Tim Buckley notes that “any price increases arising from the safeguard mechanism would be “immaterial” in terms of the overall impact of energy prices and resulting wider inflation, with extreme weather events having a much greater impact on an Australian business’s bottom line than any costs they would incur under the mechanism”, citing the “$8.5 billion in losses caused by flooding in 2022 alone”. The story further covers the findings of Professor Ian Lowe’s report that the legislation for the safeguard mechanism radically underestimates Australia’s current and future methane emissions, and its massive climate impacts. Read more

Across Canberra Times and 100+ mastheads, Tim Buckley comments on the new report by Professor by Ian Lowe revealing that methane comprises the 70% of emissions from fossil fuel facilities under the Safeguard mechanism: “The report highlights the critical need to differentiate between methane and carbon dioxide, and endorses an emissions budget as an additional safeguard. Setting a maximum limit on emissions for this decade would mean new entrants would be determined within that budget, and not freely added to national emissions.” Read more

A new report from Professor Ian Lowe, commissioned by Lock the Gate, shows that the vast majority of emissions from fossil fuel facilities covered by the Safeguard Mechanism are climate-wrecking methane when calculated over 20 years – 85 times more potent than CO2 in the near term. Tim Buckley comments: “We have a global climate emergency that needs critical attention this decade and next. As such, applying a global warming potential assessment of 100 years to emissions (as the CER does) dramatically understates the destructive cost of methane. We need to evaluate its global warming potential over 20 years as Woodside Energy, our biggest methane producer and exporter, advocates. On a 20 year basis, methane represents 69% of all emissions from the 215 facilities covered by the Safeguard Mechanism and over half of all Australian domestic emissions.” Read more

Tim Buckley speaks with Sky Breakfast on the new report finding that 70% of emissions under the SGM are methane from fossil fuel facilities, and the blindspot in the legislation that fails to differentiate between CO2 and methane – which is 85 times more damaging to climate in the short term. Tim discusses key solutions, principally a high, rising price on carbon to drive new cleantech and decarbonisation, and potential developments to cut methane such as asparagopsis to reduce emissions from ruminant cattle. Read more

Meanwhile, Xuyang Dong, a China energy policy analyst for Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the Australian media’s hand-wringing over a possible war with China has clouded the country’s focus on the greater threat of climate change. “Diversifying Australia’s security strategy to encompass these concerns is inarguably important because China is no longer the only, or major, threat to the world, or to Australia,” Dong said on Tuesday. “Climate change and the energy crisis are clearly endangering Australia’s national interests now, and require more nuanced conversations to tackle.” Read more