Media

Energy analyst Tim Buckley, a former long-time managing director at Citigroup who now runs Climate Energy Finance, said modelling is “exceptionally biased”. He said the modelling assumes coal plants run almost constantly [91%], despite global coal plants operating at half that rate. Buckley also said modelling ignores that in Australia power prices go negative a fifth of the time due to solar. Read more

“The path forward to a more sustainable economic model is being driven by multiple factors that are increasingly aligned, irrespective of whether some cave into short-term vested interests thinking they can hold back the tide,” says Tim Buckley, founder of think-tank Climate Energy Finance. The WEO report wasn’t without controversy, however, with many commentators blasting the decision by the IEA to reintroduce a Current Policies scenario (in addition to a Stated Policies and Net Zero Emissions by 2050 scenario). Rumour has it the need to model what would happen if nothing changes was the result of US pressure. Read more

Green technology start-ups are struggling to attract financing from multibillion-dollar government investment funds that are unwilling to take on high levels of risk, which the agency responsible for managing the economic transition says will slow Australia’s transition to net zero. Read more

Energy analyst Tim Buckley said the report supplied further evidence that China was leading the world in the transition to renewables, driven by its geopolitical urge towards energy independence. In the month of June, China imported exactly zero dollars’ worth of fossil fuels from the US,” Buckley said. This follows imports worth $US1.5 billion ($2.3 billion) in September. Read more

BHP has confirmed that producing green steel in Western Australia remains several years away, despite the Premier’s recent suggestion that […] Read more

The scheme is due to come into effect in some states in July before potentially being extended by 2027, the energy department said. The government has also moved to subsidise household battery installation to store solar electricity generated during the day. Tim Buckley, director of think-tank Climate Energy Finance, called the move a “no brainer”, saying it would create a “demand pool” during the day when people can run air conditioners, washing machines and pool cleaners to balance the grid. The plan “guts coal even faster and makes gas less relevant”, he said.   Read more

The federal energy minister’s plan to make electricity free for three hours in the middle of each day for customers in Default Market Offer regions has made a big splash in the energy world, and sparked calls for more electrification and demand flexibility. “This is excellent, minister,” said Climate Energy Finance founder and CEO Tim Buckley on LinkedIn. “This means many, many more consumers will … benefit from free solar power … at zero cost to the market, and massively incentivise demand load shifting to the middle of the day. Read more

While the diesel rebate has been held up as a major disincentive to investing in battery-electric haulage, getting rid of it may be a step too far. But what if there was a way to do it and not cost the most miners anything? Clean Energy Finance director Tim Buckley may have a solution. He suggests a Transition Tax Incentive. It does not eliminate the diesel tax rebate entirely. Rather. Buckley’s version caps the diesel fuel tax rebate at $50 million per annum, which he believes will affect only 15 mining companies and not long-haul truck drivers or farmers. Read more

Batteries are the biggest disruptive force in global energy markets in 2025. Australia becomes world’s third-largest utility battery market. Australia has overtaken the UK to rank behind China and the US in utility-scale battery capacity, with 14GW/37GWh of projects at or nearing financial close. Rystad Energy estimates the Australian pipeline of battery projects jumped 45GW in one year from 109GW in August 2024 to 154GW now. Meanwhile Minister Bowen is rightly crowing about the >100,000 home battery installs so far. Worth noting the world’s largest hybrid BESS by MASDAR in the UAE, a 5GW solar and 19GWh BESS designed to provide 1GW of 24/7 power supply commenced construction this week. And AEMO’s new 3Q2025 Quarterly Energy Dynamics report reveals that average wholesale electricity prices across the National Electricity Market, fell to $87/MWh, down 27% on the same quarter last year. AEMO says the surge in battery storage – up an average 461MW in the evening peaks – clearly had an impact on other peaking generation sources, with gas fired generation down 11%. All of these factors also helped the renewable share hit a new 3Q high of 42.7%, nearly 10% higher than the Q3 average of 39.3% last year. You’d never know this reading the mainstream climate science denialist media! AEMO’s Quarterly Energy dynamics report had great news for Minister Bowen. Read more

Ironically, the government’s own Treasury modeling says the value of Australia’s coal and gas exports is predicted to plummet by 50% over the next five years as global demand declines. The modeling, released in September, found the annual value of fossil fuel exports is expected to drop by more than $40 billion (A$60bn) by 2030 under any future scenario of emissions reduction within Australia. Former analyst Tim Buckley, founder and director of the think tank Climate Energy Finance, says Australia’s “gift horse” of fossil fuel revenue could turn into a “resources curse.” Read more

Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance at the Public Interest think tank, says coal is definitely declining, even in […] Read more

Tackling battery attachment rates in Australia. The initiative is also a means to bolster the country’s budding distributed energy resources market. Rooftop solar PV is already a staple of the energy mix, having surpassed 26.8GW in H1 2025. Despite this, battery attachment rates have traditionally lagged behind. The initiative has been praised by various members of Australia’s renewable energy community, including Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF). In an interview with ESN Premium earlier this year, Buckley noted that the scheme could turn Australia into a ‘red-hot market’ for battery energy storage systems (BESS). Read more