Media

Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley told The Australian Financial Review an integrated approach to investment was needed, to benefit local communities, Indigenous Australians and future workers. “To leave it to the free market is just, in my view, to be deluded,” he said. “The IRA has stimulated a massive, massive manufacturing boom. The amount of money going into manufacturing in America in the last 12 months is four times the highest level of any previous year in American history.” He said the strict rules of funding attached to programs meant a rethink was needed in Australia. Read more

Fossil fuel subsidies in Australia reached $11 billion in 2022-23, extending decades of direct capital transfers and tax concessions to some of Australia’s most polluting industries and making Australia one of the G20’s largest providers of subsidies for fossil fuels. The scale of the impact to our economy is enormous. The FTCS is the largest fossil fuel subsidy in Australia and is the 18th largest government expense program in 2023-24. The federal government estimates the FTCS will cost over $9.5 billion in tax concessions in 2023-24 alone, with the credits largely going to Australia’s bulk commodity and fossil fuel mining firms. Read more

Tim Buckley says we have a ‘once-in-a-generation’ chance to pivot our economy towards industries of the future. Australia imports 29 billion litres of high emissions, inflationary diesel each year, heavily subsidised by the Federal Government, critically undermining Australia’s climate and green manufacturing ambitions. A cap to the fuel rebate scheme would create a tailwind for electrifying Australia’s mining fleet, deploying the best technology to become a world leader in embedded decarbonisation. Read more

Australia could kick start the electric truck era by curbing off-road diesel rebates that go to the mining sector, economic modelling shows. A report to be released by independent think tank Climate Energy Finance on Monday calls for the diesel fuel tax credit (FTC) for the mining sector to be capped at $50 million a year per company.”This is not a revenue grab, we’re trying to encourage them to do the right thing,” co-author Tim Buckley told AAP. He said Australia must deal with the “hyper-inflationary” dependence on imported high-emissions diesel and build onshore manufacturing. Australia needs its biggest companies to be “leaders not laggards” on electrification and emissions reduction, he said. “This is all about them having a policy tailwind to back their own strategy of decarbonisation,” he said. Read more

An extended interview with Tim Buckley on the Utopia Now! podcast covering why finance is important for mitigating the ecological and climate crisis, how the green energy transition is going, whether we are decarbonising fast enough, and government capture by fossil fuel interests amongst other topics. Read more

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

Tim Buckley speaks at the Australian National Manufacturing Summit noting that while the federal government has plans to value add to get more out of the country’s rich endowment of in-demand minerals, “Australia’s critical minerals strategy has lovely words but $500 million doesn’t cut it,” in the context of massive accelerating public capital commitments to energy transition by our trade partners and competitors. Read more

The Productivity Commission report is a misreading of the implications for Australia of a profound global geopolitical shift already underway: unprecedented government intervention by the United States, European Union, Canada, South Korea, Japan and a growing list of other economies to reposition themselves in the accelerating global energy transition, rebuild manufacturing onshore, and secure clean-tech supply chains against China’s decade-long head start. Read more

A new Productivity Commission report misses the mark by arguing against public capital investment in cleantech. As Tim Buckley writes, At this inflection point, Australia can ill-afford an approach to industry policy that will further hollow out our manufacturing sector and consign us to the zero value-add, dig-and-ship mentality of yesterday’s fossil-fuel dominated mining behemoth. We must seize the once-in-a-century opportunity to leverage our natural advantages and position ourselves as a value-adding clean industry and export superpower. And as other economies have recognised, this requires government investment. 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