Media

Meanwhile, Xuyang Dong, a China energy policy analyst for Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the Australian media’s hand-wringing over a possible war with China has clouded the country’s focus on the greater threat of climate change. “Diversifying Australia’s security strategy to encompass these concerns is inarguably important because China is no longer the only, or major, threat to the world, or to Australia,” Dong said on Tuesday. “Climate change and the energy crisis are clearly endangering Australia’s national interests now, and require more nuanced conversations to tackle.” Read more

The IPCC’s latest report this week again sounded the alarm that the window to avert climate catastrophe is closing. But there is hope. On the positive side of the ledger, Tim Buckley breaks down the huge policy and investment shifts that are driving a massive uptick in energy transition, including the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Net Zero Industry Act. Read more

The global race to decarbonisation has massively escalated with new regulations designed to turbocharge and onshore cleantech in the European Commission nations. Australia is positioned to emerge as a value-added critical minerals superpower Read more

AEMO’s assertion in its Gas Statement today that we need more new supply to offset purported imminent shortages is bizarre and counterintuitive. There is no shortage, just a cartel with a chronic shortage of ethics extorting Australians as they export the majority of domestic production and rake in obscene war profits. It should be a major priority for AEMO to provide rule modernisations incentivising new technologies to rapidly decarbonise our grid and decouple from extortionate, polluting, volatile fossil fuels. Read our take. Read more

Tim Buckley talks to AEMO’s ESOO noting that its statement there is a shortage of gas is bizarre when production has tripled in the last 10 years, and the only shortage is an ethics deficit from the extortionate multinational gas cartel extracting superprofits as they export Australia’s sovereign resources and smash Australians with energy price hyperinflation. Read more

As the Australian Energy Regulator announces a projected 20% rise in retail electricity prices from July 1 – a hike which would have been closer to 40-50% had the Albanese government not intervened to cap domestic wholesale coal and gas prices in December last year – we look at the causes and solutions of the energy price crisis. Read more

Tim Buckley comments on the Japanese government sinking $2bn into a coal gasification to hydrogen project in Victoria: “Last time I checked, there won’t be a ship ready to transport hydrogen in the next decade… it looks like they are pushing carbon capture storage and hydrogen shipping – neither of which are proven technologies. If the Japanese government want to commit $2bn into an unproven pilot facility, good luck to them, but I don’t want to see a huge amount of taxpayer money going into a project that is designed to promote the extension of more high emitting coal gasification technologies that have continually failed to work globally.” Read more

On the purchase by a little known Australian investor, with Indonesian partners, of two coal mines divested by BHP, Tim Buckley notes: “Divestment by credible leading Australian companies to far-less accountable Indonesian family-controlled companies, in isolation, does little to solve the climate crisis. On the positive, it does progressively starve the fossil fuel sector of capital and acknowledges the fossil fuel sector’s progressive loss of a social licence to operate.” Read more

Tim Buckley forecasts a 10 per cent annual module price reduction over the next decade, with his confidence is driven by the increase in the production capacity of PVs in China, which will likely triple by the end of this year. Read more

While the federal government’s safeguard mechanism reform is flawed – in particular, offsets should be strictly limited – it does provide the policy architecture for a high permanent price on carbon – essential to driving decarbonisation, alongside the suite of policy initiatives designed to accelerate the energy transition. After 10 years of LNP failure, this is a massive win. Read more

AEMO’s electricity opportunities update today confirms significant progress on grid decarbonisation in the last 6 months – with a staggering 209GW of new firmed renewables worth > A$250 billion in the pipeline – coupled with the urgent need for accelerating investment in generation, long-duration storage and transmission to ensure supply over the next decade. The acceleration of long delayed deployment of EVs and charging networks also means it’s time for AEMO to start modelling EV-to-grid charging opportunities. With ~20 million EVs in Australia within two decades, this equates to a collective new asset base of 800 gigawatt hours of batteries. Read more

Tim Buckley comments on today’s release by the Australian Energy Market Operator of its electricity market update, noting there has been significant progress on decarbonising the energy grid in the past six months, with a 209 gigawatt pipeline of new firmed renewables proposals worth over $250 billion, highlighting the massive regional employment and investment opportunities from decarbonisation – but also observing the urgent need for further capacity investment to offset exiting fossil fuels. Read more