Media

Tim Buckley responds to the IEA Renewables 2024 report: “Thanks largely to China, we now have the global cleantech manufacturing capacity to accelerate deployments of renewables significantly to achieve the goal set at last year’s UN Climate Conference to treble renewables to 2030. The massive deflation of prices for renewables technologies and the drive for energy security both favour accelerating investment as the world looks to mitigate the escalating climate crisis of climate change.” Read more

Energy analysts, including Tim Buckley, say Origin needs to reveal how it will remain a major generator of power if it is to meet a customer book totalling about 4.5 million people. Read more

As Tim Buckley and AM Jonson write the record high of low-cost wind and solar in the grid comes as we are still waiting for the Coalition’s budget projections on its plan to nationalise the eye-watering cost of seven nuclear plants. Read more

Coal generated less than 50 percent of Australia’s electricity in the last week of August, dropping to a record low as renewable production surged, data showed Wednesday. Australia remains one of the world’s leading exporters of coal and gas and has relied heavily on fossil fuels to keep the lights on. But climate finance expert Tim Buckley said August’s record figures were caused by wild weather and a warm start to the spring, which had reduced demand on the grid by up to 20 percent. Winds exceeding 150 kilometres (93.2 miles) per hour in the southeast of the country had also almost doubled the usual wind generation. “It’s a historically low coal share for Australia in the national energy market, but it’s also a sign of where we are going,” Buckley told AFP. “It will only be a few years from now that coal is contributing virtually nothing,” he added. Read more

[On MENAFN] In a historic development for Australia’s energy sector, coal-fired power generation fell to an unprecedented low during the last week of August. Tim Buckley, a climate finance expert, highlighted that while this record low is partly a result of temporary weather conditions, it also indicates a broader trend towards diminishing reliance on coal. Buckley predicts that it will only be a few years before coal’s contribution to the national energy market approaches zero. Read more

You don’t need to believe in anthropogenic climate change to understand that our major coal export customers – China, Japan, and Korea – are rapidly transitioning to renewable energy, because they’d rather produce cheap power in their backyards than buy it from us. I remember being in a room with Tim Buckley, from Climate Energy Finance, who was telling Hunter community members that in 2023 alone, China built six times as much in solar energy generation capacity than Australia has ever built in history – including coal, gas, hydro, solar, and wind. Read more

Distributed internationally via AFP – Australia remains one of the world’s leading exporters of coal and gas and has relied heavily on fossil fuels to keep the lights on. But climate finance expert Tim Buckley said August’s record figures were caused by wild weather and a warm start to the spring, which had reduced demand on the grid by up to 20 percent. “It’s a historically low coal share for Australia in the national energy market, but it’s also a sign of where we are going,” Buckley told AFP. “It will only be a few years from now that coal is contributing virtually nothing,” he added. Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released its latest Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO), painting an optimistic picture of Australia’s energy future. The report suggests that with continued investment in new renewable and storage projects, the nation can successfully transition beyond coal-fired power generation. Tim Buckley, Director of Climate Energy Finance, highlighted that AEMO’s forecasts show power supply reliability can be maintained over most of the next 10 years, provided that established programs and initiatives are delivered on time. Read more

The Minns government asked the electricity grid operator to undertake more conservative modelling which showed Eraring’s closure would create a reliability shortfall just months before giving the green light to extend the nation’s biggest coal-fired power station. Climate Energy Finance chief executive Tim Buckley questioned whether the investment necessary to defer Eraring’s retirement could have instead been used to encourage “a lot of permanent, low cost, zero emissions private projects”. “Were alternative solutions actually even sought?” he said. Read more

Battery storage is supposed to throw a bit more competition into the market. But the problem is that many of these assets are now owned or contracted to the very same energy giants that control the rest of the generation. If anything, it’s made it easier for them to control prices and profits. And being in the grip of the big energy players doesn’t feel like a safe place to be at the moment, especially with gas prices at such highs – five times the price of other international markets – according to Tim Buckley, from Climate Energy Finance. And it gives the Coalition plenty to crow about, something that is now taking hold in the minds of the public. Read more

To have a chance of combating climate change, the world needs President Xi Jinping’s administration to find a way to decarbonise China’s economy. The country, with 1.4bn people and a massive industrial economy still highly dependent on coal, is the world’s biggest polluter — accounting for nearly one-third of global carbon emissions. Xuyang Dong, an analyst with CEF, says rapid reductions in the cost of wind, solar and battery storage technologies have sparked a “dramatic” change in the economics underpinning China’s energy system. Dong and colleagues predict that coal will fade over the next 16 years from being a central pillar of China’s power sector to a “back-up role” ensuring stability during the transition to renewables. Read more

As CEF’s Tim Buckley and AM Jonson write in the AFR, the NSW government has left its green energy project pipeline languishing for years. Now it is charging a coal keeper tax instead, gouging consumers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep ageing coal wheezer Eraring open. Read more