Our work

We review the Safeguard Mechanism reforms which have finally passed parliament, as a new report reveals the methane bomb at the heart of the SGM; our review of Macquarie’s efforts in decarbonising its financing; we take a look at the China “drums of war” rhetoric in the context of the threat of climate change; the latest on Adani and more Read more

Tim Buckley speaks at the University of Sydney to the key drivers and themes of the accelerating energy transition, including policy and legislative vehicles such as the transformative Inflation Reduction Act in the US, and the EU’s Net Zero Industry Act. Read more

The deal struck between the federal government, the Greens and the Teals today to get the Safeguard Mechanism legislation through parliament, to come into effect from 1 July, is a significant step forward on the nation’s decarbonisation pathway. Overall it enhances the ambition, public accountability, integrity and impact of the mechanism legislation initially proposed by the government, and while still far from perfect, it is a major advance on the state of play as recently as last week. Read our new analysis. Read more

In this presentation to UBS, Tim Buckley looks at key global energy transition themes and drivers including RE price deflation, pricing emissions, market returns, China’s leadership on decarbonisation, key international policy and funding initiatives e.g. the US IRA and EU NZIA (Net Zero Industry Act), India’s PLI, South Korea and Japan’s GX Roadmap, and Australia’s opportunity to position itself as a pre-export value-adding critical minerals superpower. Read more

Fifth in CEF’s climate finance analyses series of Australia’s Big 5 banks, Nishtha Aggarwal reviews the entirety of Macquarie Group’s climate impact across the Group’s four business lines, Macquarie Asset Management (MAM), Macquarie Capital (MacCap), Banking and Financial Services (BFS), and Commodities and Global Markets (CGM). We find The Group’s combined global 107GW portfolio of clean energy is unrivalled among major Australian financial institutions, but its dominance in conventional energy markets undermines the Group’s climate commitments by contributing to global warming above a 1.5 degree pathway. Read more

A new report by eminent environmental scientist Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, commissioned by Lock the Gate, finds that direct methane emissions from fossil fuel facilities make up ~70% of total greenhouse gas emissions covered under the federal Safeguard Mechanism (SGM), when the global warming impact is calculated over 20 years. Methane devastates the climate. It is 85 times more potent than CO2 in the short term. CEF is supporting release of the report. Read more

In this presentation for the Moir Group, Tim Buckley looks at key trends in the energy transition including renewable energy price deflation, emissions pricing, market returns, China’s dominance in decarbonisation, the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU Net Zero Industry Act, and Australia’s once in a century opportunity to lead the world in critical minerals and energy transition materials value-added processing and manufacturing, powered by renewables. Read more

Public discourse on national security in Australia is evolving, while geopolitics and sovereign security are inarguably important, Australian society also cares about the economy and issues such as resilience in the face of the impacts of the climate and energy crisis. Diversifying Australia’s security strategy to encompass these concerns is an urgent matter because China is no longer the only, or major, threat to the world – or to Australia. Climate change and the energy crisis are clearly endangering Australia’s national interests now, and require more nuanced conversations to tackle. Read more

The global race to decarbonisation massively escalated overnight with new regulations designed to turbocharge and onshore cleantech in the EU, following the US’s game-changing Inflation Reduction Act, which is spearheading the energy revolution there. The challenge is now on for Australia to accelerate investment and leverage its competitive advantages as a value-adding energy transition materials and renewables superpower – or miss the boat. Read more

Our news update, where we review the new EU Net Zero Industry Act and the pressure it puts on Australia to dramatically escalate decarbonisation investment; bust the AEMO myth that there is a gas shortage when the shortage is actually in gas cartel ethics; and look at the coming electricity price hike, moderated by the government’s market intervention last year Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)’s assertion in its Gas Statement of Opportunity today that we need more new supply to offset purported imminent shortages is counterintuitive. There is no shortage, just a cartel with a chronic shortage of ethics extorting Australians as they export the majority of domestic production and rake in obscene war profits. It should be a major priority for AEMO to provide rule modernisations incentivising new technologies to rapidly decarbonise our grid and decouple from extortionate, polluting, volatile fossil fuels. Read our take. Read more

Consumers slugged by interest rate rises are in for more pain as the Australian Energy Regulator today flagged retail electricity price rises of ~20% from 1 July – noting that absent the Albanese government’s wholesale domestic coal and gas price cap intervention in December, this would have been more like 40-50%. The solutions: make the war-profiteering fossil fuel multinationals pulling superoprofits from our resources pay a temporary windfall tax to offset cost of living pressures for those hardest hit; and rapidly accelerate decarbonisation, delivering clean low-cost firmed renewables to Australians, permanently reducing power prices. Read more