Media

Tim Buckley joins Kelly Higgins-Devine to discuss Climate Energy Finance’s new report analysing Queensland’s energy transformation, covering government investment, renewables, rooftop solar and energy prices. Read more

The sunshine state is at the precipice of transforming from a legacy coal and gas petrostate to a renewable energy superpower. It is in the process of unleashing its once-in-a-century opportunity to lead the world in exporting decarbonised critical minerals and metals key to the global energy transition. As we find in our new CEF report, Queensland’s nation-leading investment into transmission, large-scale low-cost renewable energy and Consumer Energy Resources (CER) is crowding-in a tidal wave of public and private capital. Off the back of the state’s game-changing Energy and Jobs Plan, this is turbocharging the energy transition, reducing reliance on expensive, polluting fossil fuels and slashing household and commercial energy bills. Read more

A new report by Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based think tank, praises Queensland’s energy and jobs plan, a climate, energy and future industries policy designed to eliminate the state’s reliance on fossil fuels. The report, Queensland’s Energy Transformation: From Coal Colossus to Renewable Energy Superpower, will be released Wednesday. It says the jobs plan, backed by a 75 per cent 2035 emissions reduction target, has put the state on “the precipice of a clean-tech revolution, one that well positions the state as a renewable energy and cleantech superpower”. “In an incredibly short timeframe, Queensland has pivoted from energy and climate laggard to a national leader in distributed rooftop solar and large-scale firmed renewables and infrastructure.” Read more

Tim Buckley said Tuesday’s blackout shows why it is important the energy market diversify, particularly as climate change escalates and extreme weather becomes more extreme and more frequent. “Our power system needs to factor this in as part of sensible adaptation. Victoria, like Australia, is on notice. We need to plan and build in energy system resilience as a key priority, and invest in a modern, flexible grid that is future-proofed,” he said. Buckley added that thermal coal power plants were not part of that solution, instead they were the problem. “Australia’s world-leading distributed rooftop solar and battery residential systems can be built in a day, or for commercial properties, a month, at speed and scale,” he said. Read more

Grid expert Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, said that when you had 30 per cent of Victoria’s power generation centred on a single, ageing facility, “you have a real concentration of risk”. “The idea that Loy Yang A is going to be operational 10 years from now is really remote,” Buckley said. “The engineers say it has a 40-year life asset. Forty years is next year, so any year beyond 2025 is a bonus year. “So we have critical point reliance on something that already next year reaches its end of useful life and we’re banking on it being held down for another decade. It’s already unreliable.” Read more

Environmentalists have implored Queensland’s opposition party to “end the climate wars” by backing the government’s carbon emissions reduction target as renewables industry leaders also call for bipartisanship on the issue. Climate Energy Finance director, Tim Buckley, said the industry requires bipartisan support for long-term planning and security. “That means it’s got longevity and credibility and therefore it provides the investor certainty that is needed to really underpin the literally hundreds of billions of dollars of investments that are required to make this work,” Buckley said. Read more

Victoria, like Australia, is on notice. We need to plan and build-in energy system resilience as a key priority, and invest in a modern, flexible grid that is future-proofed. This requires pivoting emphatically and as a matter of urgency from risky dependence on end-of-life, unreliable, polluting centralised coal-plants like Loy Yang A, built four decades ago for a completely different energy market. Thermal coal power plants are not part of the solution – they are the problem. Alongside big solar, wind and batteries, we stand on the precipice of a revolutionary opportunity to massively upscale consumer energy resources, like solar PV on rooftops everywhere, household batteries, and EVs sending power to the grid. Read more

Recent blackout crisis in Victoria is caused by a decade of inaction by the Coalition government in addressing climate and energy policy. The blackout was caused by storm damage to power lines, leading to the shutdown of coal-fired generators, which contributed to a third of the state’s power supply being lost. Tim Buckley argues that a lack of investment in transitioning the grid to renewable energy sources, such as rooftop solar and battery storage, has left the energy system vulnerable to such crises. Urging for a shift towards decentralized, decarbonized, and renewable energy solutions, the article emphasizes the need for state and federal cooperation and investment in a modern, resilient energy grid. Read more

“It was not Loy Yang A tripping that caused the blackouts, it was the grid connected to Loy Yang that got taken out, and Loy Yang tripped because [it] couldn’t export the power [it was] generating,” explains energy analyst Tim Buckley. He says distributing the sites at which power is generated and stored and the number of transmission lines connected to these sites to end users would strengthen rather than weaken the grid. “It’s about having a spiderweb so if the one line or one string goes down, the grid overall doesn’t collapse.” Read more

Tim Buckley, the director of Climate Energy Finance in Sydney described yesterday’s events as a “debacle” and called for a rapid rollout of wind, solar, and battery energy storage. “The result is electricity prices spiking to the maximum $16,600/MWh – meaning all electricity producers are absolutely cashing in big time, profits for generators, a nightmare for Victorian energy users. Time to break the fossil fuel cartel gouging Australians and accelerate the deployment of firmed renewable energy as fast as possible,” wrote Buckley in a post on LinkedIn. Read more

A leading energy analyst says Victoria needs to improve the resilience of its power supply. Tim Buckley is director of the public interest think tank Climate Energy Finance. He joined Raf Epstein to share his view of what Victoria needs to do to future-proof the grid. Read more

Millions of low-and-middle income Australian households are struggling to pay soaring power bills, so hearing that one of the big companies supplying that power is raking in enormous profits may be hard to swallow. AGL Energy has posted a first half underlying profit after tax of $399 million, up 359 per cent on the same period last year. It achieved the bumper profit through higher prices for customers. Tim Buckley told ABC that the wholesale cost has came down, but the retail prices held up. This is due to the function of the regulator’s protections that are in place under the Australian energy regulator. As a result, we see a lag impact on the retail pricing, and we will see a different profile come the 1st of July 2024 than the profile we’ve seen in the last 2 years. Read more