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Sun-soaked Australia’s lofty renewable energy ambitions were given a harsh reality check on Thursday, as looming electricity shortfalls delayed the long-awaited shutdown of the country’s largest coal-fired power plant. In many cases, nuclear makes sense for energy-deficient countries that had no domestic renewable options, such as Japan, energy analyst Tim Buckley told AFP. “Nuclear has no future in Australia,” he said. “Australia has not continuously built it, we have none of the skillset, none of the engineering, and none of the capacity for nuclear.” Read more

The Modi-led “Make in India” campaign “has been an own goal for the Indian people”, Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance (CEF) tells Carbon Brief, pointing out that both solar module and battery costs have halved globally over the past year. He says trade barriers have made solar more expensive to install and that India risks “being left behind” in the renewable energy race. He adds: “India has failed to understand the magnitude of the tech advances involved led by China; putting up trade barriers has deprived India. Modi has regularly talked about India building 50GW of solar in a year, but has averaged less than a third of that and has fail[ed] to deliver on it five years in a row.” Read more

New South Wales is not on track to meet climate change targets, according to the government’s own environmental database. The Climate Energy Finance director and analyst, Tim Buckley, said the Eraring subsidy would cost the taxpayer $150m a year. He said: We are putting band aids on end of life coal assets instead of investing in the solutions to permanent low cost zero emission solutions that Australia and NSW desperately needs to see approved. This is a race to the top and yet the NSW government in 2024 is now going in the wrong direction. We call on them to reallocate planning resources to approving the projects we critically need to solve the climate crisis.” Read more

Resources Minister Madeleine King announced on Thursday that Australia would ramp up gas projects as part of its Future Gas Strategy, saying it was needed to meet surging demand. Tim Buckley, director of independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, suggested the narrative of a gas shortage has been fabricated by the gas lobby in an attempt to expand the industry’s profits. Buckley also rejected the government’s claims that the Future Gas Strategy would help keep gas prices low for Australian consumers. “Placing a long-term commitment to this hyper-expensive climate-polluting fuel at the core of transition policy does exactly zero to ensure affordable gas for domestic use here in Australia first,” he said in a statement. “On the contrary, the gas cartel is the key culprit behind the domestic energy unaffordability that has smashed Australian households and businesses over the last several years and into 2024.” Read more

Tim Buckley from Climate Energy Finance says that Labor’s gas plan announcement is at odds with the government’s recent progress on its climate goals. Buckley says the Labor government’s Future Gas Strategy is a total undermining of the climate science and the climate action. Read more

Mr Buckley says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said Australia must embrace the new low-cost, zero-emissions energy solutions available to us to shift our economy to a fully renewable grid. But this strategy will only further entrench a high-emissions, low-tax-paying industry in Australia’s economy. “Placing a long-term commitment to this hyper-expensive climate-polluting fuel at the core of transition policy does exactly zero to ensure affordable gas for domestic use here in Australia first. “On the contrary, the gas cartel is the key culprit behind the domestic energy unaffordability that has smashed Australian households and businesses over the last several years and into 2024. Read more

John Menadue Public Policy Journal: I joined a large audience in the North Sydney electorate on 4 April at a community forum that Kylea Tink called on “The future of our environment”. The message I took home was that the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. Its impacts are increasingly obvious. Roughly 90 percent of the mining industry in this country is foreign-owned. Not surprisingly, when last year was a year of record profits, it was also a year of record lobbying action. Tim Buckley, Director of Climate Energy Finance, told the Sydney Morning Herald that profits from the export of $240 billion fossil fuels in 2022 led companies to “fund their lobbying efforts to delay climate action and protect their profits”. Read more

Extending the operation of Eraring power station beyond its planned closure in 2025 would cost NSW taxpayers between $120million-$150million a year, a report has estimated. The independent think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) report recommends the phased closure of the plant over 2025 with complete closure by the end of first quarter 2026. Read more

A delay in the closure of the massive Eraring coal fired power station in NSW could cost up to $150 million a year in taxpayer funds, and would be “unconscionable” given the massive handouts and windfalls enjoyed by its owner Origin Energy, according to a new report. The 2.88 gigawatt (GW) Eraring power plant – the biggest in the country – is slated for complete closure in August 2025, but the NSW government is worried the state will be at risk of blackouts or price hikes if it does actually close at that time. The new analysis from Climate Energy Finance says there will be no reliability gap, and the costs of keeping the plant open will equate to more than six times what NSW has spent in the past four years electrifying and solarising social housing. Read more

New South Wales may end up paying $150m a year to subsidise the extension of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant, money better spent accelerating the take-up of rooftop solar with storage, the energy analyst Tim Buckley has said. Read more

For Climate Energy Finance’s latest report on Eraring we reviewed available data to estimate that to keep all four generation units of Eraring open beyond 2025, NSW electricity users would bear the brunt of yet another coal subsidy of a minimum $120-150 million (USD 78.3-97.99 million) annually. NSW consumers are already funding Origin an estimated $468 million, since the government introduced measures in December 2022 to cap the price generators would pay for coal, a response to fossil fuel hyperinflation resulting from sanctions on Russian exports after its invasion of Ukraine. This represents nearly half-a-billion dollars of public money already sunk into the energy giant. Read more

NSW taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $150 million a year for every year the Eraring coal-fired power plant remains open, energy analysts predict, with the Minns government refusing to detail the terms of its negotiations with owner Origin Energy ahead of a likely extension beyond 2025. Read more