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“The single biggest opportunity for Australia is to enhance and pivot our relationship with China,” Tim Buckley, director of think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF), tells ESN Premium ahead of Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit Australia 2025. Buckley believes Australia’s positive trade relations with China will increase the investability prospects in the country’s energy storage market, which could prove vital in Australia’s shift to a green economy. Read more

Trump has declared an “energy emergency”, scrapped both environmental restrictions on oil and gas exploration and permits for wind farms, all to the benefit of an oil and gas industry that spent $US219m installing his government. So what is the impact? When Trump last abandoned the Paris Accord, many observers argued they would rather have a recalcitrant US alone outside the tent rather than wrecking things within. The UN treaty that drives the global climate response demands consensus in key votes. Having the US side with fossil states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia might have gummed up a cumbersome process even further. Read more

Woodside Energy’s CEO Meg O’Neill sounded a self-serving alarm last week about the risks for Australia of the US’s new administration’s “drill baby drill” mantra, concluding that the ever-looming east coast gas supply shortage demands urgent government actions to accelerate gas exploration and development. Read more

Australian manufacturing will be eroded and power to the sector switched off unless urgent action is taken to reduce barriers to gas investment, the boss of Australia’s biggest energy company warned. Woodside chief Meg O’Neill called for an end to “anti-gas rhetoric” and to scrap Victoria’s ban on certain onshore gas production over concerns supply shortages would hit economy. “The worry I have is when you get to a point where there’s not enough power to go around to meet the needs of all of the power consumers,” she told reporters following her address to the Melbourne Mining Club on Thursday. Read more

The suspension of the group came just days after its biggest member, BlackRock, said it would quit the organisation. In a letter to its clients, the New York-headquartered asset management giant said membership of the net zero initiative had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials”. Read more

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Tim Buckley speaks with Jaynie Seal about the newly released bogus costings for the LNP’s nuclear plan, which the CSIRO confirmed last week would cost twice the price of firmed renewables Read more

In the light of Trump’s election in the US, Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley framed China’s dominance in clean technology manufacturing as an opportunity rather than a threat. “China wants to partner with us,” Buckley said, noting that Australia’s status as China’s leading trading partner provides a strong foundation for technology transfer and manufacturing collaboration. Read more

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Tim Buckley, Sydney-based director at Climate Energy Finance, said: “I think that Adani’s indictment will slow the Adani Group’s access to international capital for a while, but financial markets are amoral and will quickly ignore most of the charges [even] if they are not resolved.” The incoming Donald Trump administration would probably bolster the US-India relationship despite the charges against the Adani group chairman, he added. “I think the Indian renewables sector has built significant global credibility and depth of capacity in recent years so that it will continue to prosper irrespective of the fraud and bribery charges against one of the leading players in this sector,” Buckley said. Read more

The highlights include a keynote address from Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance on “The Energy Transformation – Looking Towards 2025”. Tim Buckley said connecting and developing the climate tech investors in Australia is an urgent task. “We’re building the solutions to these massive energy and Decarbonisation problems and we need to make sure we can finance them at much greater speed and scale in the domestic context,” he said. Read more

Tim Buckley speaks to David Chau at ABC TV’s Close of Business about COP29 and how effective it is as a forum for global action on climate in the face of the election of Trump in the US and China’s staggering global leadership on decarbonisation. Tim notes that Australia’s $50m commitment to helping developing nations deals with the impacts of climate change is a tiny number compared to the $150bn in gross profits Australia’s fossil fuel exporters made in the last financial year, highlighting our hypocrisy as one of the world’s top 3 fossil fuel exporting nations. Read more