Media

A new CEF report has found that without immediate action to decarbonise the Pilbara – and harness hydrogen – Australia risks losing its place in the future green iron industry. A new report from Climate Energy Finance (CEF) warns that failing to decarbonise and electrify Western Australia’s Pilbara region could jeopardise Australia’s future in the green iron industry. The report, titled Superpowering-Up, highlights the critical role of hydrogen in transforming Australia’s iron ore exports into high-value green iron, positioning the country as a leader in the global renewable energy market. Read more

Last week, Australian oil and gas company Woodside Energy Group Ltd announced it would buy Texas’ OCI Clean Ammonia Holding BV, a company outside Woodside’s core area of expertise. Analyst Tim Buckley, founder and director of Climate Energy Finance, called the deal “a huge overpayment for a project that’s not even operational. “It’s such an ambitious and expensive first move; the risks are stacked against them.” Read more

fDI Intelligence – Powering ahead: China’s huge investment in clean energy manufacturing and installation means it will hit its 2030 decarbonisation targets six years early. China’s global leadership in the energy system’s decarbonisation is nothing short of astonishing. There is a significant chance that the country, which represented 56% of the world’s coal consumption in 2023 according to the Energy Institute, will reach peak coal demand later this year. National carbon emissions will potentially peak and then plateau in lock-step. Read more

Liddell Power Station in Australia’s Hunter Valley burned through coal for five decades before closing last year. Opposition leader Peter Dutton now wants Liddell to be reborn as something banned in the country for a quarter of a century: a nuclear power plant. Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think-tank, said the opposition’s proposals would displace private capital with a “communist-style policy” requiring more than A$100bn of public funds. “It is not impossible, but it is financially illogical,” said Buckley, who questioned the move’s political motivations ahead of an election. “This is not nuclear versus renewables. This is about extending the climate wars.” 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

[Starts at 37:46] Tim Buckely told Bloomberg that Adani’s renewable energy aspirations are entirely feasible, and it is in lockstep with the Indian government. Surging power demand will complicate India’s energy transition efforts. Read more

As a confidential report to the NSW government, suggesting that closing Eraring would push power prices up, is released to the public, Tim Buckley provides a withering critique: “Does this analysis assume they (the NSW government) stand there like startled rabbits in the headlights and do absolutely nothing for a couple of years in the face of the stark knowledge that the largest coal fired power plant is at the end of its useful life and going to close? The permanent solution is not bandaids and more taxpayer subsidies for an end of life, unreliable high emissions coal clunker. $450m of tax payer monies would have crowded in a lot of permanent, low cost, zero emissions private projects.” Read more

Despite the progress to date in diversifying China’s electricity supply – and the business models of the country’s power sector SOEs – major challenges lie ahead, Ember says. A number of central SOEs also have major interests in other parts of the coal ecosystem. Central SOE China Shenhua, for example, spent 8bn yuan (about $1bn) on coal mining development and exploration, and only 824m yuan (about $113m) in hydropower in the first half of 2023, according to a report by CEF. Read more

Tim Buckley discusses the LNP’s nuclear furphy with French newspaper Les Echos: The Australian Conservatives’ proposal is nothing more than a political bluff that “conflates higher electricity prices with renewable energy”, said Tim Buckley. Among the weaknesses of the plan in question, he cites the envisaged use of SMRs “which are not even commercially available”. He also notes that, when it comes to nuclear power, “Australia is relying on foreign know-how, because we have no skills, expertise or technology, zero”, which suggests that budgets and delivery times are likely to be exceeded. Read more

Tim Buckley told Straits Times that Australia is set to be one of the world’s largest sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar power, and that these could eventually be used to produce vast quantities of green hydrogen. “Twiggy (Dr Forrest) was too far ahead of the curve – he has now pivoted to something that is more achievable this decade,” Read more

Tim Buckley said disengagement by ACCR was a powerful signal that investors need to reevaluate their trust in emissions-intensive companies. “ASIC is pursuing corporate greenwash as a form of investor deception,” Buckley said. Making public statements that a company is taking action on net zero, and then privately lobbying or funding lobbyists to undermine this action, “is illegal”. “Investors absolutely need to know if a company is undertaking greenwash.” Read more

Star of the South was first pioneered by three Australians back in 2012, before CIP bought into the project in 2017 when it was already one of the industry’s biggest players. “That was a huge shot of confidence to the Victorian government and the federal government,” says Tim Buckley, founder of think tank Climate Energy Finance. Australia’s potential has not been lost on the industry heavyweights. Orsted, RWE, Iberdrola and BlueFloat Energy also won Australian feasibility licences. “We’ve got almost every non-Chinese and non-Indian major global [developer] vying to build offshore wind in Australia,” says Mr Buckley. Read more