Media

Two-thirds of all new solar and wind power projects are based in the country. But to wean industry off coal, Beijing needs to set up a real energy market. If things go Xi’s way over the coming years, that will no longer be the case. “Considering the significance of the scale of everything China does, reaching or exceeding almost every energy transition target it sets has far-reaching impacts for the climate and our global emissions reduction goals,” says Xuyang Dong, a China energy analyst at Sydney-based think-tank Climate Energy Finance. Spending levels across the sector will need to increase over the coming decades if China is to reach Xi’s dual carbon targets, says Dong, of CEF. That includes adding around 330GW of solar, 80GW of wind capacity and 4GW of nuclear to the grid every year until 2040 — numbers that are “significantly above the current run rate”.  Read more

[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

Tim Buckley accurately predicts no new details in costings or any other aspect of the LNP’s nuclear ‘policy’ were revealed in Peter Dutton’s speech to CEDA the day after this interview. The LNP nuclear thought bubble remains unviable – too costly, impractical and decades too late for Australian decabonisation. Read more

The director of Climate Energy Finance, Tim Buckley, said while Australia was right to court capital from the UAE for the green energy transition, it was also important to keep expectations in check. “I welcome collaboration with UAE, but we have to be realistic about how much money they might pour into Australia,” he said. “Particularly as the UAE is already emerging as a competitor for Australia in clean energy, because it has a big pool of capital for projects and an abundance of wind and solar, like us.” Mr Buckley said the truly “massive” commercial opportunities for Australia still lay in collaborating with major economies in the region like China and Japan to assist their decarbonisation progress. Read more

The global dynamic in the energy transition focuses on Australia, Europe or the US, with occasional reference to China. The capacity and deployment stats coming out of China are staggering, and not well reported. Read more

The flaws in the Adani Godda power plant agreement have been widely documented in international media as well. Tim Buckley, a leading energy expert, told The Washington Post in 2022 that Bangladesh would pay over five times the country’s average wholesale electricity price for power from Adani’s plant. Even if coal prices revert to pre-Ukraine war levels, Bangladesh would still be paying 33 percent more for Adani’s electricity compared to its domestic coal-based power plants. Buckley described this contract as “an absolute gouge” and questioned how any reasonable person could have signed such a detrimental deal on behalf of Bangladesh. 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

As Tim Buckley and AM Jonson write the record high of low-cost wind and solar in the grid comes as we are still waiting for the Coalition’s budget projections on its plan to nationalise the eye-watering cost of seven nuclear plants. 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