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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

A group of organisations is calling for a $100 billion investment in clean energy technology over the next 10 years, to counter the enormous spending already committed internationally.They say that incentives worth $100 billion would deliver at least $300 billion in annual clean export revenue by 2035 and 700,000 direct jobs, mainly in rural and regional Australia. The funding pot would be to support new industries in anything from green iron and steel to advanced manufacturing such as solar and wind componentry, to transmission infrastructure and clean energy exports. “A $100 billion package will help re-industrialise the nation,” said Climate Energy Finance founder Tim Buckley. 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

Climate analyst Tim Buckley said the EPA “courageously” attempted to tackle the climate challenge when there was a policy vacuum at a national level. He said withdrawal of the guidelines meant there had been four years of inaction with the federal government only just implementing an effective safeguard mechanism, when in reality the original policy wouldn’t have cost the industry much at all to comply with. “The burden on the industry is nothing compared to the profits the industry makes,” Mr Buckley said. Read more

Tim Buckley has a menu of “no regrets” investments in renewables that NSW Energy Minister Sharpe and the Treasurer Mookhey should consider regardless of Eraring. They include: backing with front-loaded finance and accelerated planning approvals 1200MW of utility scale renewables and 1200MW of distributed (customer-owned) renewables each year until 2030; accelerating the rollout of rooftop solar and batteries in public housing and schools across NSW; accelerating the frequency and ambition of Renewable Energy Zones auctions; cajoling NSW transmission and distribution companies to use tech company Neara to identify existing spare grid capacity for new renewables to be plugged in (it reckons there’s room for 10,000MW); and accelerating electrification for rentals and behind-the-meter batteries. Read more

What is the real cost to transition? The cost of retaining Eraring for an additional 1-2 years would be $200-$400 per year. Eraring has no long term supply locked in beyond 2025, therefore will pay export price parity for coal supply. Locking in coal infrastructure will slow down the transition to renewables. We need to accelerate the deployment of low cost, zero emissions, replacement capacity, not continue with an unreliable coal clunker. Coal subsidies will crowd out replacement capacity that would otherwise permanently solve the problem. Read more

There are concerns that current construction market pressures could delay the rollout of wind, solar, and battery projects needed to plug supply gaps when Eraring comes offline in 2025. “It’s sensible to look at what alternatives $200-$400m/yr provide for New South Wales citizens,” Tim Buckley. Read more

Energy analyst Tim Buckley contests O’Reilly and AEMO’s views on the ability of Eraring to boost electricity system reliability. “Extending the life of a coal clunker that is one of the oldest power plants in the electricity system is not a way to boost reliability.” Keeping Eraring open will generate around 9 million tonnes of additional CO2 emissions a year — around 2.8% of Australia’s total — and cost $1.2 billion to offset via the purchase of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), a recent Nexa Advisory report found. Read more

The NSW government has decided there is a case for extending the life of the nation’s largest coal-fired power station to mitigate our energy risk. But the growing risk for NSW actually lies in relying on one near-moribund plant at Eraring in Lake Macquarie for 16 per cent of power generation. In 2022, forced outages at Australia’s ageing coal power fleet meant coal capacity fell way short of forecasts, crippling the national electricity market. Keeping this increasingly unreliable coal power generator on life support as it enters terminal decline, and paying its operator hundreds of millions in public subsidies to do so, is totally unjustified. Read more

The NSW government will “engage with Origin Energy” on a proposed extension of the life of Australia’s largest black coal-fired power plant. Tim Buckley, from Clean Energy Finance, said providing government subsidies to keep Eraring open could lead to more setbacks for future wind and solar projects. “Every time you extend a coal plant, you delay and defer expenditure on replacement capacity,” he told ABC Radio Sydney. “So these subsidies would be crowding out the replacement capacity that would permanently solve the problem,” he said. Read more