Media

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled the “Future Made in Australia Act” to help compete with global partners who are providing massive subsidies to new industries. The act, to be discussed by parliament this year, would mark a departure from Australia’s decades-old free market policies on trade and investment. Tim Buckley, director of independent public interest think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the act would lay the foundations to make Australia a zero-emissions trade and investment leader and global clean energy “superpower”. About 27 percent of the Australian economic output came from exports to international partners and this new act would have flow-on effects and help them decarbonise as well, Buckley told AFP. “State intervention is the new competition. We can’t afford to ‘sit it out’. The Future Made In Australia Act puts Australia into the global race. It is the investment signal and de-risking private capital needs,” he said. Read more

As Yellen laid out plans to formalise dialogue with China over excess industrial capacity in electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels and batteries, saying Washington would not accept U.S. industry being “decimated”, the Chinese finance ministry issued a statement saying it had already “fully responded” to her concerns. One industry where global demand does not keep up with Chinese production, though, is solar. Xuyang Dong, China energy policy analyst at Climate Energy Finance in Sydney, estimates China’s wafer, cell and module capacity coming online in 2024 is sufficient to meet annual global demand now through to 2032. Read more

In a speech to Queensland’s Media Club, Albanese laid out the foundations of federal Labor’s plan to use taxpayer-funded incentives to advance the manufacturing and clean energy industries, including hydrogen, green metals, solar power and emerging renewables. “Albanese’s speech announcing the Act is ambitious and visionary,” said Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance and a former MD of Citigroup. “It has the makings of the foundation for our future as a zero-emissions trade and investment leader and global clean energy superpower, as we inevitably pivot from our historic dependence on carbon exports. Buckley says Albanese’s vision is to build on Australia’s existing strengths – and critically, also look beyond them – a point many “old-school economists” have so far failed to grasp. “Relying on traditional competitive advantage logic misses that the transition to net zero is a $US4-6 trillion annual investment opportunity globally for the next couple of decades… and one in which every major economy has invested massive national interest public capital,” Buckley said on Thursday. Read more

Battery storage is the hot-spot in the Australian renewable energy transition right now, but it has barely touched the sides when looking at its potential. The so-called “Swiss Army Knives” of the renewable energy transition have learned how to make returns in some key parts of the grid, but much of their potential – long duration storage and specific services – remains difficult because either the market does not exist, or because of the lack of funding and support. Tim Buckley joins Giles Parkinson, Founder & Editor of Renew Economy, alongside Paul Curnow from Akaysha Energy and Daniel Burrows from Eku Energy. 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

Greg Combet’s ascension to incoming chair of the Future Fund is already generating plenty of discussion around the sovereign wealth manager’s role in investing in Australia’s green economic transition, even though he won’t take the reins until July. “They’ve gone from having a climate luddite to a climate evangelist in the chair — so you would expect the fund to have a more significant role and invest more in that area,” said Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance. Read more

IN Australian Resources and Investment Magazine, Tim Buckley recommends producers look for strategic partners who want to secure long-term, reliable supply, possibly supported by an equity share. “This can be globally – say, Korea, Japan, India and the US, supported domestically by leveraging the growing interest of government-owned finance entities like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), Export Finance Australia (EFA), and the National Reconstruction Fund (NRF),” he said. Read more

Consolidation in China’s crowded solar power sector is pushing smaller players out of the market, but excess production capacity – with more on the way – threatens to keep global prices low for years. “Many non-solar companies in China have been enticed by massive sustained market growth opportunities in solar and favourable policy support,” said Dong of Climate Energy Finance, who expects most plans by such players not to materialise. Read more

Xuyang Dong of Climate Energy Finance, an Australian think-tank, said that “China’s estimated wafer, cell and module capacity that will come online in 2024 is sufficient to meet annual global demand now through to 2032. This shows an immense domestic solar production oversupply, which has resulted in price slump in solar components”. Read more

The Federal Government last week announced a $1 billion investment in Australian solar manufacturing in the historic fossil fuel heartland of the Hunter Valley, the Solar Sunshot program. Its establishment at the Liddell coal power plant site is symbolic. The play is designed to boost a regional economy formerly dependent on fossil fuels, and help pivot the region and future workforce into the zero-emissions industries of the future, presenting a stark alternative to the Coalition’s “vision” of a nuclear reactor for every former coal generator site. Read more

Tim Buckley, from Climate and Energy Finance, wrote on LinkedIn that the shadow price of $A105/t by 2030, rising to $A221/t by 2040 and $A420/t by 2050 gives a credible price signal consistent with the cost to Australians of carbon pollution for all new energy infrastructure assessment and approvals. Buckley also says it shows the likely trajectory of carbon emissions pricing as strongly upwards over time, consistent with the International Energy Agency (IEA) modelling. “It’s past time the polluters paid,” Buckley wrote last year when assessing the NSW government’s proposed shadow carbon price, a mechanism that would have knocked controversial gas projects such as Narrabri on the head. Read more

Tim Buckley, the founder and director of Climate Energy Finance, says Solar Sunshot puts Australia in the global cleantech race, while also rebuilding its sovereign manufacturing capabilities and bolstering energy security and economic resilience. “Sunshot and these related initiatives are important steps in a uniquely Australian response to the US Inflation Reduction Act – the $1 trillion “green new deal” that is turbocharging cleantech re-industrialisation in the US and attracting a tidal wave of hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital,” Buckley says. Read more