Media

On the first anniversary of the game-changing US Inflation Reduction that has turbocharged energy transition there and triggered a global race to the top, Tim Buckley and Blair Palese review its top 5 impacts and the top 5 actions Australia should take to respond. Read more

“Fast forward 10 years when there’s a global price on carbon emissions, and Australia could be exporting decarbonization,” says Tim Buckley who would like to see A$100 billion of Australian capital, including super, hived off for critical minerals investment. Read more

“Australia must now, as a key strategic priority, work constructively with South Korea to ensure both economies are dealt into the North American value-added cleantech opportunity, and to leverage our combined world-leading capacity and skill sets,” authors Matt Pollard and Tim Buckley state in CEF’s new report. Read more

“China is moving faster than anyone,” on the clean energy race”, Tim Buckley said. Meanwhile, Australia’s efforts are more modest. In June the federal government gave its Northern Australia Investment Fund an additional $500 million to support critical mineral projects. Buckley called for government support proportional to the size of the opportunity. “Five hundred million dollars is one step, we need 100 steps,” he said. The opportunity for Australia is to move from the dig and ship model of coal and iron ore to creating more value by processing the mineral here. Read more

Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says United States President Joe Biden is seeing a “huge surge” in employment activity after the country invested in manufacturing. “The US has the inflation reduction act, and we are seeing investors piling in,” Mr Buckley told Sky News Australia. “There’s a bit of trade war that’s emerged between America and China and America’s response is to invest in manufacturing capacity in America, and so President Biden’s seeing a huge surge in employment activity.” Read more

Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says China and America are investing in solutions to solve the climate crisis which include solar power. “It is staggering to see how much manufacturing activity is actually underway in 2023 and it’s been led by China,” Mr Buckley told Sky News Australia. “It’s great in many respects, we’ve got a climate emergency, but it’s great both China, America even Europe, Japan, Korea, India they’re all piling in, they’re all responding and they’re investing in solutions at a scale that actually could solve the climate crisis.” Read more

As the global output of solar panels increases, Australia is set to benefit from an electricity price fall of 10%, a report from the think-tank Climate Energy Finance calculates. The Solar Pivot report by analysts Tim Buckley and Xuyang Dong forecasts that “solar costs will halve again before 2030, underpinning an accelerating disruption of world energy markets and driving energy transition momentum”. Read more

The price for solar panels keeps dropping, and China is leading the deflation by a massive solar manufacturing buildout flooding the market. Tim Buckley says that we expect solar module prices to drop at least 10% annually over the rest of this decade as China triples its solar module production capacity by 2024 across the entire solar supply chain. Read more

CEF’s new Solar Pivot report sees unprecedented trade and investment opportunities, in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars, for Australia to “ship sunshine”, embodying decarbonisation in its exports by using its solar and wind energy to process its world-leading critical minerals reserves, and to power manufacturing of energy transition materials. Australia has a once in a century opportunity for investment in renewables, exports, technology and employment, including in solar. It should seize it. Read more

A new report from Climate Energy Finance says booming solar investments is leading to a potential tipping point which could “dramatically accelerate the decline of the incumbent fossil fuel industry, and the decarbonisation of the world economy.” Read more

Tim Buckley details the global solar boom which is pushing down prices, and increasing manufacturing and installations on an unprecedented scale, foreshadowing a dramatic acceleration of the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and bringing hope for climate. Read more

As CEF China energy policy analyst Xuyang Dong writes, renewables are now leading China’s newly added power capacity for the first time, even as new coal power plants continue to come online. During the first quarter of 2023, China added a record 50 GW of RE capacity. Read more