Media

A new report from Climate Energy Finance is said by Tim Buckley to show Australia’s window to lead in green iron and steel is rapidly narrowing. Buckley states that iron ore and coking coal remain core export pillars, yet global steel decarbonisation is accelerating as governments and industry target net zero. He argues green iron depends on green hydrogen and is facing slowing momentum, project cancellations and capital cost blowouts, leaving Australia exposed to losing a “once‑in‑a‑generation” export shift. Read more

“Australia’s window of comparative advantage in supplying green iron to the Asian steel corridor is real, with our iron ore endowment, renewable energy potential, low geopolitical risk, established trade relationships, and a large capital base of strategic, long-term capital that could be deployed into enabling infrastructure,” CEF net zero transformation analyst Matt Pollard said. Read more

Tim Buckley from Climate Energy Finance was less reserved, saying the scraping of the mechanism was “just serving their fossil fuel paymasters.” “When I talk to industry, they go look, at the end of the day, we want policy certainty, the safeguard mechanisms in place, the price is not high, like European carbon prices…it’s not onerous. “I really would treat this as as seriously as Angus commitment to close down the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA 12 years ago,” he added. Read more

Australia has 11 green iron proposals dotted across Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, but none are ready for commercial production. While the federal government had launched programs to financially support their development, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said greater urgency was needed in the public and private sectors to launch projects and learn from them. “My key recommendation to the federal government is let’s actually get one, two or three first-of-a-kind (direct reduced iron) or green hydrogen-based iron projects at semi-commercial or commercial scale up and running,” he told AAP. Read more

Independent think tank Climate Energy Finance issues the warning in a report tracking policy and projects in the sector, including 11 green iron and steel proposals in Australia. No commercial plant has reached a final investment decision, the group warns, and Australia could lose out if progress stalls for another two years. The warning comes as the federal government considers applications to its $500 million Green Iron Investment Fund for early projects, and after a Superpower Institute study found green iron exports could generate $386 billion annually by 2060. Read more

Climate Energy Finance’s new report, Green Metal Statecraft: Policy, Investment and Technology Trends in the Green Iron Evolution, provides an update of the global and domestic investment, technology and enabling policy trends that will underpin the transformation of the iron and steel value chain in 2026. This report highlights that for every step forward on an individual project or market-level, the broader investment pipeline has just as many case studies of project delay, cancellation, and restructure in the face of unresolved structural headwinds. Read more

A new report by independent think tank Climate Energy Finance tracking policy, investment and technology trends in the global green iron and steel industry finds decarbonisation and electrification of the industry is undergoing structural recalibration, from speculative optimism and green hydrogen hype to incremental, halting and sporadic progress at a pace misaligned with the climate science. Steel production accounts for 7-9% of global emissions. Read more

A new report by independent think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) tracking policy, investment and technology progress in the global green iron and steel industry warns that Australia’s opportunity to leverage its comparative advantages to lead in low-emissions iron and steel production is narrowing rapidly, and increasingly time limited. Read more

In recent years, Chinese companies have come to dominate the market for wind energy equipment thanks to rapid domestic deployment of powerful low-cost turbines. But their overseas investment plans have run into steeper hurdles than companies in other clean energy sectors, such as electric vehicles and solar power, said Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, a think tank. Regulators are partly concerned about connecting Chinese-made wind turbines, which are more technologically sophisticated than other clean tech products such as solar modules, to national power grids, he said. But geopolitical concerns and the desire to protect domestic industries have also played a part. Read more

The foreign minister is travelling to Japan, China and Korea – to try and ensure Australia is prioritised by fuel supplier’s. The three countries provide a mix of diesel, petrol and jet fuel to Australia. Petrol prices have come down from the initial highs triggered by the closure of the strait of Hormuz. Tim Buckley the director of ‘climate energy finance’, says the dip stems from cautious energy companies. Read more

In FY24, the top 15 diesel users burned nearly 6 billion litres and received $2.9 billion in tax credits, as Renew Economy reported last week. This year, the total bill for the FTC is $11 billion and that will rise over time, as the 51.6c/litre rebate is linked to inflation and as the mining sector grows. Climate Energy Finance analyst Matt Pollard expects it to hit $13 billion in 2030. Pollard instead recommended an alternative transition idea – the big miners can still get their credits over $50 million, provided they make equal or greater investments in decarbonisation. Read more

Beyond the BHP deal, Tim Buckley, director at Climate Energy Finance, noted that Fortescue Metals – another major Australian mining firm – had already agreed last year to expand its yuan-denominated trade with China. In return, the Australian miner was rewarded with a five-year, 14-billion-yuan (US$2 billion) syndicated loan led by the Bank of China at a highly favourable 3.8 per cent annual interest rate. “China is … leveraging the US’ geopolitical isolation under [US President Donald] Trump as a way of building momentum away from the world’s historic reliance on the US dollar as the functional and reserve currency,” Buckley said. Read more