Media

A new CEF report has found that without immediate action to decarbonise the Pilbara – and harness hydrogen – Australia risks losing its place in the future green iron industry. A new report from Climate Energy Finance (CEF) warns that failing to decarbonise and electrify Western Australia’s Pilbara region could jeopardise Australia’s future in the green iron industry. The report, titled Superpowering-Up, highlights the critical role of hydrogen in transforming Australia’s iron ore exports into high-value green iron, positioning the country as a leader in the global renewable energy market. Read more

fDI Intelligence – Powering ahead: China’s huge investment in clean energy manufacturing and installation means it will hit its 2030 decarbonisation targets six years early. China’s global leadership in the energy system’s decarbonisation is nothing short of astonishing. There is a significant chance that the country, which represented 56% of the world’s coal consumption in 2023 according to the Energy Institute, will reach peak coal demand later this year. National carbon emissions will potentially peak and then plateau in lock-step. Read more

Liddell Power Station in Australia’s Hunter Valley burned through coal for five decades before closing last year. Opposition leader Peter Dutton now wants Liddell to be reborn as something banned in the country for a quarter of a century: a nuclear power plant. Tim Buckley, director of the Climate Energy Finance think-tank, said the opposition’s proposals would displace private capital with a “communist-style policy” requiring more than A$100bn of public funds. “It is not impossible, but it is financially illogical,” said Buckley, who questioned the move’s political motivations ahead of an election. “This is not nuclear versus renewables. This is about extending the climate wars.” Read more

As a confidential report to the NSW government, suggesting that closing Eraring would push power prices up, is released to the public, Tim Buckley provides a withering critique: “Does this analysis assume they (the NSW government) stand there like startled rabbits in the headlights and do absolutely nothing for a couple of years in the face of the stark knowledge that the largest coal fired power plant is at the end of its useful life and going to close? The permanent solution is not bandaids and more taxpayer subsidies for an end of life, unreliable high emissions coal clunker. $450m of tax payer monies would have crowded in a lot of permanent, low cost, zero emissions private projects.” Read more

Star of the South was first pioneered by three Australians back in 2012, before CIP bought into the project in 2017 when it was already one of the industry’s biggest players. “That was a huge shot of confidence to the Victorian government and the federal government,” says Tim Buckley, founder of think tank Climate Energy Finance. Australia’s potential has not been lost on the industry heavyweights. Orsted, RWE, Iberdrola and BlueFloat Energy also won Australian feasibility licences. “We’ve got almost every non-Chinese and non-Indian major global [developer] vying to build offshore wind in Australia,” says Mr Buckley. Read more

Battery storage is supposed to throw a bit more competition into the market. But the problem is that many of these assets are now owned or contracted to the very same energy giants that control the rest of the generation. If anything, it’s made it easier for them to control prices and profits. And being in the grip of the big energy players doesn’t feel like a safe place to be at the moment, especially with gas prices at such highs – five times the price of other international markets – according to Tim Buckley, from Climate Energy Finance. And it gives the Coalition plenty to crow about, something that is now taking hold in the minds of the public. Read more

On The Climatelist podcast, the world of green steel, global carbon pricing, and the opportunities for Australian businesses with Tim Buckley. Discover how China’s dominance in green technologies is reshaping global trade and creating a potential $250 billion export market for Australia. Tim unpacks the complex world of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAMs) and explores how Australian businesses can lead the charge in embodying decarbonisation for a profitable and sustainable future. Read more

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Tim Buckley breaks down why we have seen massive power price spikes in the NEM – coal’s unreliability, system gaming by gentailers and the failure of the approvals system to bring firmed renewables replacement capacity online Read more

EdF, which is now fully government owned after facing potential bankruptcy due to delays and massive cost over-runs at its latest generation large scale nuclear plants, had reportedly been working on a new design for SMRs for the last four years. Tim Buckley, from Climate and Energy Finance, seized on the news and called on Opposition leader Peter Dutton and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien to provide more details of their nuclear plans beyond the one page press release they released last month. “Come’on guys, how naive do you take the average Australian voter for?” Buckley wrote. “In your alternate fact world, who do you think will pay for the permanent around 50% increase in Australian energy prices for consumers? Are you really intent on destroying the international competitiveness of Australian industry purely in the service of your fossil fuel funders?” Read more

Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance, questioned how a form of energy that would produce “zero” electricity for the next 15 to 20 years, could bring down power prices. In the meantime, the Coalition’s plan would undermine investor confidence so Australia didn’t get as much electricity supply from other sources, Buckley said. “Less supply means higher prices — that’s economics 101.” He believes the Coalition’s nuclear strategy could increase electricity prices by 20-50 per cent over the next decade because of the need for more government intervention and funding to extend the life of coal plants. Buckley said the GenCost report — produced by Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO — found power from nuclear could also be double the price of firmed renewables. “Therefore power prices go up, not down,” he said. Read more

To have a chance of combating climate change, the world needs President Xi Jinping’s administration to find a way to decarbonise China’s economy. The country, with 1.4bn people and a massive industrial economy still highly dependent on coal, is the world’s biggest polluter — accounting for nearly one-third of global carbon emissions. Xuyang Dong, an analyst with CEF, says rapid reductions in the cost of wind, solar and battery storage technologies have sparked a “dramatic” change in the economics underpinning China’s energy system. Dong and colleagues predict that coal will fade over the next 16 years from being a central pillar of China’s power sector to a “back-up role” ensuring stability during the transition to renewables. Read more