Media

“Just staggering,” wrote Tim Buckley, head of Climate and Energy Finance. “China installed 92.9GW of solar and 26.3GW of wind in just the month on May 2025! “ Before we get too excited, there is a pull-forward on installs with a national strategic policy change on renewables that took effect from June 2025 – so we see a real risk of a significant slowdown for the rest of 2025. Read more

China leads the world by a huge and growing margin across almost all of the frontiers of our decarbonised future, from sophisticated clean tech manufacturing to domestic renewable energy installations to foreign direct investment into the energy transition. In April alone, China installed over 45GW of solar power capacity, more than Australia’s entire solar fleet. Read more

The Highlights * Tim’s TED X Sydney * Net-Zero Export Target Proposal: ANU’s Frank Jotzo and Annette Zou * Heavy Equipment Decarbonisation: BHP signs MoU with China’s XCMG * China’s Cleantech Outbound Investment (OFDI): China building cleantech infrastructure abroad (e.g., 10GWh EV battery plant in France for Renault). $170B tracked in cleantech OFDI since 2023 Read more

On a recent delegation, I saw the futuristic factory of solar giant Longi in Jiaxing, with its omnipresent robots, combining automation, big data, AI and 5G to flexibly customise solar module components for diverse application scenarios and customers, revolutionising advanced manufacturing at massive scale. This is not an isolated case. China leads the world by a huge and growing margin across almost all of the frontiers of our decarbonised future, from sophisticated clean tech manufacturing to domestic renewable energy installations to foreign direct investment into the energy transition. Read more

As Energy Minister Bowen flags a carbon tariff on some imports, Australia well placed to lead development of a path towards a regional Asian Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism Read more

Albanese and Dutton’s pre-election stoush over the Port of Darwin made one thing clear – Australia remains deeply ambivalent about Chinese investment. Each promising to end the lease if elected, the major parties clearly believed a billion-dollar national security stunt would play well with the electorate. This, despite Dutton taking no issue with the lease as a cabinet minister in 2015, and multiple reviews by Australian security agencies finding insufficient grounds to terminate it. Read more

According to corporate announcements and financial statements compiled by Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based research group, Chinese companies have, since the start of 2023, committed $156bn in outbound foreign direct investment across more than 200 clean technology transactions. This effort is expanding Beijing’s political and economic influence globally just as the Trump administration pursues a hard decoupling from Chinese supply chains and roils global trade Read more

At the public meeting organised by SPA on 26 April, Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance (CEF), made the following points: – CEF acts on the basis of climate science, and the last 11 years were the warmest on record – The world invested US$2.1 trillion in cleantech in 2024, over 11% year on year – The boom in solar and wind pushed the world past 40% clean electricity in 2024 Read more

Highlights Federal election has been called this morning – for 3rd May 2025 Budget – not much climate or energy information in the budget, perhaps there’s more to be announced during the election. BYD’s amazing stats. Matt Pollard’s oped in RenewEconomy. 120,000 R&D staff!!! EV momentum Tim shares overall EV market stats, perhaps a lowlight for Tesla. Caroline’s Wang work on electricity generation stats. Highlighting the first two months of 2025 performance. Harry Martin’s International Solar PV and Bess Manufacturing Trends. See Climate Energy Finance report. Read more

CEF observes continued price deflation in solar PV and batteries – prices dropped 20% for batteries, and Chinese panels plummeted by 37 to 46% in 2024. This cost reduction has turbocharged deployment rates, with almost 600GW of solar PV installed in 2024. Assuming continued growth in China deployments, 700GW this year seems likely, and CEF projects this will rise to 1,000GW per annum by 2030. BESS installation rates are expected to treble in this timeframe. With solar modules and battery manufacturing capacity at three times the current global installations, expectations of plateauing installations are entirely unlikely. Read more

China has emerged as the global leader in clean technology, making significant strides in renewable energy technology, manufacturing, domestic deployments […] Read more

Battery storage can turn record-high instances of negative spot pricing in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) into investment opportunities. That was the view expressed by various panellists and sources at the Energy Storage Summit Australia 2025 in Sydney this week. Tim Buckley, founder and director of the think tank Climate Energy Finance, got the ball rolling on Day One yesterday, flipping traditional views on negative pricing events in describing them as “an advantage.” Australia has “world-leading negative pricing in wholesale markets,” Buckley said, noting that in the states of Victoria and South Australia, negative pricing was experienced for 24% and 26% of last year, roughly four times higher than experienced in European power markets. Read more