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Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says United States President Joe Biden is seeing a “huge surge” in employment activity after the country invested in manufacturing. “The US has the inflation reduction act, and we are seeing investors piling in,” Mr Buckley told Sky News Australia. “There’s a bit of trade war that’s emerged between America and China and America’s response is to invest in manufacturing capacity in America, and so President Biden’s seeing a huge surge in employment activity.” Read more

Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says China and America are investing in solutions to solve the climate crisis which include solar power. “It is staggering to see how much manufacturing activity is actually underway in 2023 and it’s been led by China,” Mr Buckley told Sky News Australia. “It’s great in many respects, we’ve got a climate emergency, but it’s great both China, America even Europe, Japan, Korea, India they’re all piling in, they’re all responding and they’re investing in solutions at a scale that actually could solve the climate crisis.” Read more

As the global output of solar panels increases, Australia is set to benefit from an electricity price fall of 10%, a report from the think-tank Climate Energy Finance calculates. The Solar Pivot report by analysts Tim Buckley and Xuyang Dong forecasts that “solar costs will halve again before 2030, underpinning an accelerating disruption of world energy markets and driving energy transition momentum”. Read more

The Monthly daily newsletter questions the federal governments support for Middle Arm as renewables burgeon, citing CEF’s Solar Pivot report and its call for the teasurer to introduced solar module manufacturing tax incentives to onshore production and create jobs. Read more

The price for solar panels keeps dropping, and China is leading the deflation by a massive solar manufacturing buildout flooding the market. Tim Buckley says that we expect solar module prices to drop at least 10% annually over the rest of this decade as China triples its solar module production capacity by 2024 across the entire solar supply chain. Read more

CEF’s new Solar Pivot report sees unprecedented trade and investment opportunities, in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars, for Australia to “ship sunshine”, embodying decarbonisation in its exports by using its solar and wind energy to process its world-leading critical minerals reserves, and to power manufacturing of energy transition materials. Australia has a once in a century opportunity for investment in renewables, exports, technology and employment, including in solar. It should seize it. Read more

A new report from Climate Energy Finance says booming solar investments is leading to a potential tipping point which could “dramatically accelerate the decline of the incumbent fossil fuel industry, and the decarbonisation of the world economy.” Read more

Tim Buckley details the global solar boom which is pushing down prices, and increasing manufacturing and installations on an unprecedented scale, foreshadowing a dramatic acceleration of the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and bringing hope for climate. Read more

Tim Buckley believes the world may be at a watershed moment for energy transition, with solar manufacturing, installs and capacity booming globally. He notes that in one quarter of one year China built, in solar alone, as much energy capacity as has been created in the entire history of Australia’s National Energy Market. Read more

“America has announced 40 gigawatts of new solar module manufacturing capacity in the last six months, on the back of the Inflation Reduction Act – a six-fold expansion [in] American solar module manufacturing capacity. China has announced 294 gigawatts of new solar module manufacturing capacity in just the last three months, all of which will be commissioned within the next two years, if not sooner,” says Buckley. “The IEA says China accounted for 65 per cent of global clean tech manufacturing factory expansions in the first three months of this year.” Read more

Tim Buckley: ” A halving of installed solar costs by 2030 will accelerate the energy transition and progressively unwind the fossil fuel cost of living crisis inflicted in 2022/23, and create a medium term deflationary tailwind to offset the rising interest rate cycle hitting households in 2023.” Read more

Tim Buckley said, “We expect that this could well be the peak in absolute electricity and gas prices at the retail level. There is a massive lag in the system in passing through the 2022 hyperinflation of fossil fuel commodity prices, which in turn squeezed up electricity prices to record Australian highs. It is really important for Australian consumers to understand that unlike inflationary fossil fuels, renewables are progressively deflationary, even including firming costs. For example, we expect solar module prices to decline by ten per cent per year over the rest of this decade, re-engaging the decade long trend seen since 2010.” Read more