Media

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

Roughly $1 billion is being invested in what’s been called the Solar SunShot program — a solar manufacturing hub in New South Wales’ Hunter region, to be built on the site of the former coal-fired Liddell Power Station. Tim Buckley told ABC Radio that we need to transform the hunter valley and its workforce. Australia has abundant natural resources and capital to transform our economy and grid by using Australia-made solar panels instead of expensive imported diesel fuel from the Middle East. Read more

Tim Buckley articulates a concern about the sizable subsidies provided by the NSW government to Origin Energy (ORG), owner of Australia’s largest coal-fired power plant. Tim refers to a pattern established over a decade ago when Origin was awarded $75 million by the government and notes that the company has since made lucrative returns, even reaching pre-tax cash flows of $1 billion over the past three years. He highlights Origin’s negotiations for a further funding increase to keep the power plant operational. According to Tim, sustaining the plant is non-essential. He emphasises Amazon’s analysis outlying an adequately reliable grid without Origin’s operations. Tim urges the NSW government to avoid giving further multi-million dollar subsidies to Origin Energy. 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