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President Trump in January declared a national energy emergency, in part to keep the U.S. from falling behind China in the AI race. He has issued a series of related executive orders including one that aims to fast-track data-center construction and needed power infrastructure. The U.S. appears to have a lot of catching up to do. China will invest twice as much as the U.S. this year in power plants, storage and the grid, according to the International Energy Agency. It added about 429 gigawatts of new power generation last year, according to the think tank Climate Energy Finance, while the U.S. built about 50 gigawatts. Read more

Debate has reignited in Australia over how to leverage its rare earth resources to tackle China’s stranglehold over the industry, following Beijing’s tightening of export controls and Australian miners providing feedstock for a landmark magnet factory in Europe. The world’s fourth biggest rare earth reserves are in Australia, making it a key player in the race to build a supply chain outside China, which has the most reserves and controls more than 85 per cent of downstream processing. Australia is developing some of the world’s biggest rare earth processing and refining capacities outside China, but industry experts are urging a faster build-out to help secure western supply chains and create a commercially viable industry domestically. Read more

The director of Climate Energy Finance, Tim Buckley, said the Australia Institute modelling was as “accurate as possible” for an external third party to conduct and that it should prompt the Queensland and federal governments to investigate. Buckley is a former investment banker who has previously provided expert evidence in a court case involving Adani. Read more

Australian offshore wind is financially challenged by the high and rising cost of massive infrastructure projects and the key point that offshore wind is challenged by high quality onshore resources that are faster, cheaper and easier to build, with lower engineering, regulatory and financial risk. Buckley believes that while offshore wind might be able to drive the last 10 per cent of electricity decarbonisation in Australia, where reliability and system resilience is a priority over cost, that’s a question for five to 10 years away. Read more

Energy storage has emerged as a “key part” of China’s green transition, says Caroline Wang, a China expert with Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based think-tank. “They’ve added massive amounts of solar and wind in the last decade and now there are some issues with intermittency and grid stabilisation — energy storage is seen as a critical solution.” China’s battery makers, benefiting from sustained policy support and amid fierce market competition, are investing in options which can store more energy, such as solid-state batteries. This could make installations more efficient if brought to mass scale, Wang adds. Read more

Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based research group focused on China, says the country’s long-term cleantech ambition is “profound” and stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s rival superpower, the US, where President Donald Trump has embraced fossil fuel industries and gutted his predecessor’s support for renewable energy. “I think China is using it in a very, very geopolitically savvy way, taking advantage of America’s stupidity and regression back into a petrostate,” he says, adding: “China just wins. America has abrogated the playing field.” Read more

Tim Buckley, Director of Climate Energy Finance, told ABC Illawarra that Australia’s manufacturing sector is in serious decline due to […] Read more

Highlights China’s Envision announces a green passport for wind turbines Envision Energy, announced this week that its main wind turbine has been internationally certified via the Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) platform. 🔹 85–90% recyclability, maximizing circular economy potential 🔹 Supply chains on track for 100% green electricity by 2028 🔹 Transparent, internationally recognized carbon accounting China’s cleantech leaders are embracing an international alignment to build collaboration and a race to the top on climate, even as the US abrogates their global leadership daily. Read more

This sends a clear signal to the international community about China’s sustained commitment to addressing climate change in line with the Paris Agreement. While the absolute reduction figure seems modest, China has a record of under-promising and over-delivering. For example, it surpassed its 2030 wind and solar power generation capacity target in July 2024, six years ahead of schedule. Over the last decade, it has systematically and rapidly implemented a transformative national plan of economy-wide decarbonisation through building the largest and fastest growing renewable energy system in the world while increasing its electrification rate at 10 percentage points per decade. Read more

Fortescue’s Andrew Forrest and his board have shed light on what they expect from dual CEOs Dino Otranto and Agustin Pichot in return for a stack of company shares. Read more

Chinese battery and solar manufacturing capacity exceeds domestic demand by a widening margin, propelling renewable exports around the world that are already undermining fossil fuel demand. “They are just leading the world by an absolutely mind-boggling margin,” Caroline Wang, an analyst with the Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance told the WSJ on Chinese dominance in renewable technologies. Read more

Snowy Hydro, one of Australia’s longest-running renewable energy projects, has signed its first major battery storage deal with Akaysha Energy to build the Elaine Battery in Victoria. The battery will provide short-duration storage to complement Snowy’s long-duration pumped hydro, helping balance supply when solar and wind are unavailable. Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance says this marks a turning point, with battery tech disrupting Australia’s fossil-fuel-heavy energy market. Backed by global investor BlackRock, Akaysha plans five battery sites. Buckley argues that large-scale batteries are timely, cost-effective, and essential for decarbonisation, especially amid political inaction and failures of past mega-projects like Snowy 2.0 Read more