Media

Michael West speaks with energy finance analyst and renewable energy expert Tim Buckley. Read more

Australia’s energy transition to renewables is moving at record pace but there are warnings the nation’s main power grid could struggle to manage the shift if more isn’t done. That’s according to the Australian Energy Market Operator, which today released a draft plan to achieve the transition, in order to meet the federal government’s emissions reduction targets. But energy experts say rising costs and community pushback are making the plan tricky to achieve. Read more

Our full page Canberra Times op ed with John Grimes, CEO of the Smart Energy Council, Rewiring Australia’s Dr Saul Griffiths, Blair Palese of the Climate Capital Forum, Dr John Hewson and Mara Bun: The prospect of nuclear power generation in Australia is now a live debate. There are a number of barriers that make nuclear unviable as a solution for Australia’s energy transition in a timeframe necessary to respond to the climate, energy and cost-of-living crisis. We need energy, decarbonisation and cost of living solutions this decade. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends a 50 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. As former Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel has noted, It is hard to imagine first operation of small modular reactor (SMR) technology before 2040. Read more

In June, Clean Energy Finance’s Tim Buckley set the scene for a new “Solar Pivot”, based on the scale of solar installations and its plunging cost. “The speed of change is momentous. We are seeing combined momentum on three related fronts: rapid ongoing solar price deflation, multifold increases in solar manufacturing capacity and successive record solar deployments. Read more

India’s richest men, including Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, are investing billions into clean energy, even though they made their empire on the backs of fossil fuels. “There has probably never been a better time than now for India to grow more sustainably,” said Tim Buckley director of Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance. That’s because of two main reasons: the world is seeing unprecedented levels of investment in clean technologies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and solar energy is getting significantly cheaper, he explained. Read more

A capital recycling partnership with AustralianSuper or another pension fund where Origin built projects and then sold stakes after completion could allow 15 GW worth of projects over the next decade if combined with a dividend reinvestment plan underwritten by a big fund, according to Tim Buckley, a director at think tank Climate Energy Finance. Read more

Clean energy advocate Tim Buckley warned the performance test also encouraged investments in fossil fuels as the current list of market indices favoured past market performance, which has been “heavily skewed in the past year or two to fossil fuel commodity windfall profits”. “Reforming the benchmark could enable super funds, including AustralianSuper, to move from decarbonisation investment blockers into global leaders, like Canada’s Brookfield and Singapore’s Temasek and GIC,” he wrote in the Financial Review this week. Read more

Tim Buckley comments for Energy Mix magazine: “China is well on the way to delivering its previous pledge of 1,200 GW of renewables by 2030 up to six years early, so for China to treble its cumulative efforts by 2030 is entirely feasible, given the phenomenal momentum that is already well under way,” said Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think tank. Read more

Climate Energy Finance said the commitment at COP28 by over 100 countries to triple renewables by 2030 – particularly Australia, US, EU, Canada and Japan – was “excellent”. “Two years ago this would have been seen as next to impossible,” director Tim Buckley said in a statement. “But with China having transformed the world’s (manufacturing) capability to deliver on decarbonisation, this goal will collectively bend the climate trajectory towards what the science clearly dictates.” Read more

Wholesale prices of electricity are down about 50 per cent in the 2023 calendar year, relative to 2022, because the “hyperinflation of gas and coal commodity prices internationally over 2022 has now in 2023 progressively come off [more than] 70 per cent from their peak”, according to Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley. The government is being transparent about this, in sharp contrast to Angus Taylor, who, as energy minister in the Morrison government, sat on the relevant report predicting significant price increases in the run-up to the last election. Read more

CEF’s China energy policy analyst, report lead author Xuyang Dong, tracked investment trends of China’s 5 top State Owned Enterprises, reviewing reporting disclosures and corporate data in the original Chinese. Xuyang Dong said: “China is decarbonising the world and the Chinese energy SOEs are playing a significant role in this process, as their massive capital expenditure pivot into renewables and cleantech shows. China’s ambition to lead the greening of the world is evident in its energy policies and climate goals, and reflected in energy SOEs’ capex trends, which highlight the possibility of China exceeding its energy goals. ” Read more

At the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, starting on Thursday, negotiators from around the world will try to thrash out new global commitments to mitigate and adapt to climate change, one of the toughest challenges facing humanity. The world will also be looking to China to signal an intention to put a price on carbon emissions in domestic goods and imports, said Tim Buckley, director at Australia-based think tank Climate Energy Finance. “This would elevate China’s global leadership in all zero-emissions industries of the future and would signal the need for a clear international price on carbon emissions in global trade,” he said. Read more