Media

A new report by eminent environmental scientist Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, commissioned by Lock the Gate, finds that direct methane emissions from fossil fuel facilities make up ~70% of total greenhouse gas emissions covered under the federal Safeguard Mechanism (SGM), when the global warming impact is calculated over 20 years. The report also finds that the use of carbon credits to offset methane, as allowed under the safeguard, is not technically feasible, and more rigour is urgently needed, such as Zali Steggal’s proposed cap on methane within the scheme, Read more

Meanwhile, Xuyang Dong, a China energy policy analyst for Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the Australian media’s hand-wringing over a possible war with China has clouded the country’s focus on the greater threat of climate change. “Diversifying Australia’s security strategy to encompass these concerns is inarguably important because China is no longer the only, or major, threat to the world, or to Australia,” Dong said on Tuesday. “Climate change and the energy crisis are clearly endangering Australia’s national interests now, and require more nuanced conversations to tackle.” Read more

The IPCC’s latest report this week again sounded the alarm that the window to avert climate catastrophe is closing. But there is hope. On the positive side of the ledger, Tim Buckley breaks down the huge policy and investment shifts that are driving a massive uptick in energy transition, including the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Net Zero Industry Act. Read more

The global race to decarbonisation has massively escalated with new regulations designed to turbocharge and onshore cleantech in the European Commission nations. Australia is positioned to emerge as a value-added critical minerals superpower Read more

In this online presentation Teal MP Allegra Spender and CEF’s Tim Buckley engage in a discussion breaking down Australia’s climate policy and its key centrepiece, the Safeguard Mechanism designed to drive down emissions by Australia’s 215 biggest polluters. Read more

AEMO’s assertion in its Gas Statement today that we need more new supply to offset purported imminent shortages is bizarre and counterintuitive. There is no shortage, just a cartel with a chronic shortage of ethics extorting Australians as they export the majority of domestic production and rake in obscene war profits. It should be a major priority for AEMO to provide rule modernisations incentivising new technologies to rapidly decarbonise our grid and decouple from extortionate, polluting, volatile fossil fuels. Read our take. Read more

Tim Buckley talks to AEMO’s ESOO noting that its statement there is a shortage of gas is bizarre when production has tripled in the last 10 years, and the only shortage is an ethics deficit from the extortionate multinational gas cartel extracting superprofits as they export Australia’s sovereign resources and smash Australians with energy price hyperinflation. Read more

As the Australian Energy Regulator announces a projected 20% rise in retail electricity prices from July 1 – a hike which would have been closer to 40-50% had the Albanese government not intervened to cap domestic wholesale coal and gas prices in December last year – we look at the causes and solutions of the energy price crisis. Read more

Tim Buckley comments on the Japanese government sinking $2bn into a coal gasification to hydrogen project in Victoria: “Last time I checked, there won’t be a ship ready to transport hydrogen in the next decade… it looks like they are pushing carbon capture storage and hydrogen shipping – neither of which are proven technologies. If the Japanese government want to commit $2bn into an unproven pilot facility, good luck to them, but I don’t want to see a huge amount of taxpayer money going into a project that is designed to promote the extension of more high emitting coal gasification technologies that have continually failed to work globally.” Read more

Tim Buckley: “I’m forecasting 10 per cent annual module price reductions over the next decade. Module prices are falling — and the speed of the fall is accelerating” as the number of solar panel manufacturing facilities being built in China dramatically escalates. Global solar PV annual production capacity will triple by the end of the year, with most of the new capacity in China. Read more

On the purchase by a little known Australian investor, with Indonesian partners, of two coal mines divested by BHP, Tim Buckley notes: “Divestment by credible leading Australian companies to far-less accountable Indonesian family-controlled companies, in isolation, does little to solve the climate crisis. On the positive, it does progressively starve the fossil fuel sector of capital and acknowledges the fossil fuel sector’s progressive loss of a social licence to operate.” Read more

CEF’s critical minerals report with commentary by Tim Buckley and Dr Alan Finkel featured across 100+ mastheads via AAP. The report calls for urgent action, policy ambition and private investment to leverage Australia’s lucrative opportunity to lead the world in mining, refining and making clean energy products, as it identifies Australia’s “once in a century” opportunity to process critical minerals and manufacture onshore, powered by our abundant renewable energy. Read more