Media

Sydney Ausgrid electricity consumers will see 3 per cent retail price declines for the new financial year starting 1 July 2024 under the Default Market Offer (DMO) draft ruling from the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) this morning, and small and medium enterprise (SME) customers a much more significant decline of 10 per cent. The default market offer is a maximum price that retailers are allowed to charge. Read more

After two years of hefty increases… it looks like the price of power for consumers in the eastern states is set to drop. The Australian Energy Regulator has today released its draft decision on the nation’s main consumer price caps which are known as “default market offers”. It’s recommended the maximum retailers can charge drop by between one and ten per cent, depending on where you live and whether your bill is for a small business or private residence. Read more

CEF worked with Dr Alan Finkel on this op which argues government authorities should apply an affirmative duty of care to displace fossil fuel power with renewables when assessing developments for large scale wind and solar. Read more

A coalition including leading union, investor, energy, industry and First Nations peak groups today called on the federal government to embed requirements for locally produced and supplied components into all renewable energy supply chain manufacturing and development. A measured, considered local content requirement (LCR) in CIS tenders will support the domestic clean energy and technology supply chains to mature. Read more

A Gina Rinehart-backed mining company has soared in value by 75%, after the government agreed to provide financial support as it aims to increase Australia’s production of rare earth elements. The director of Climate Energy Finance, Tim Buckley, says the announcement shows private finance can’t be relied on to provide critical minerals. “We probably shouldn’t be relying on private billionaires to do the national interest,” he says. Buckley says competition from Chinese and US production after president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act could crush Australian production without government action. “The idea that we’re just going to leave it to the free market is farcical when the American government started with a trillion dollars in subsidies on the table,” he says. Read more

Tim Buckley, the Sydney-based director of the Climate Energy Finance think tank, said the adoption of DER systems, particularly rooftop solar panels, should be scaled up significantly in Asia to reach their potential. “DER is a massively underutilised resource, particularly for land-constrained nations who have good solar resources like India and others in Asia,” Buckley said. Citing an example in Denmark, Buckley said construction is under way to build the world’s largest solar rooftop power plant. When completed, the plant on top of a logistics centre in the city of Horsens will have 35 megawatts of capacity, equal to a typical solar farm. Read more

In what is a feat of corporate climate denialism and dereliction of fiduciary duty to invest strategically for the long-term interests of shareholders, Woodside this week cited market uncertainty over the climate science as a reason to delay its green investments. The $55 billion fossil fuel giant – Australia’s biggest – will simultaneously accelerate deployment of three high-emissions greenfield methane gas and oil developments globally, pointing to mythically high return projections completely unsupported by reality to support the play. Apparently, Woodside just sees too many climate scenarios and doesn’t know which one to pick! And blames its customers for its corporate confusion. Read more

On the Planet A podcast dive into the world of renewable energy and decarbonization with Tim Buckley, Director of Climate Energy Finance – an engaging discussion on the future of energy, global energy markets, and how we are becoming a multi-polar world. Read more

The sudden enthusiasm of the LNP for nuclear energy is another divisive, cynical and damaging ploy to ignite Climate Wars 2.0 and disrupt and delay Australia’s accelerating renewables transition on behalf of the fossil fuel cartel. The LNP’s climate and energy luddites burned a decade when they were in office. We can’t afford more of the same policy lunacy. Read more

Tim Buckley, the director of the independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the opposition’s nuclear energy solution is about delay, which he views as the “new denialism.” “We’ve got this pure hypothetical political spin about waiting for 20 years for SMRs. We can’t afford to wait,” he told The Canberra Times. “We have a climate crisis. We have a cost-of-living crisis now. What this is all about is sowing disinformation and delay. It’s climate science denialism. Read more

Climate Capital Forum member Satya Tanner in Port Stephens News of the Area new site, on the importance of communities remaining engaged in consultation on offshore wind in Australia. Read more

The false dichotomy of distributed small-scale versus utility-scale renewables, coupled with the nuclear and CCS furphies, is the latest chapter in the Coalition’s efforts to stymie and repoliticise Australia’s energy transition. As Andrew Forrest succinctly put it at his National Press Club address this week: “If we swallow this new lie that we should stop the rollout of green energy and that nuclear energy will be our fairy godmother, we will be worse off again.” Read more