Media

Tim Buckley on the Energy Transition Show podcast on China’s stunning transition and decarbonisation progress in Australia and India: Read more

The flaws in the Adani Godda power plant agreement have been widely documented in international media as well. Tim Buckley, a leading energy expert, told The Washington Post in 2022 that Bangladesh would pay over five times the country’s average wholesale electricity price for power from Adani’s plant. Even if coal prices revert to pre-Ukraine war levels, Bangladesh would still be paying 33 percent more for Adani’s electricity compared to its domestic coal-based power plants. Buckley described this contract as “an absolute gouge” and questioned how any reasonable person could have signed such a detrimental deal on behalf of Bangladesh. Read more

[Starts at 37:46] Tim Buckely told Bloomberg that Adani’s renewable energy aspirations are entirely feasible, and it is in lockstep with the Indian government. Surging power demand will complicate India’s energy transition efforts. Read more

The Modi-led “Make in India” campaign “has been an own goal for the Indian people”, Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance (CEF) tells Carbon Brief, pointing out that both solar module and battery costs have halved globally over the past year. He says trade barriers have made solar more expensive to install and that India risks “being left behind” in the renewable energy race. He adds: “India has failed to understand the magnitude of the tech advances involved led by China; putting up trade barriers has deprived India. Modi has regularly talked about India building 50GW of solar in a year, but has averaged less than a third of that and has fail[ed] to deliver on it five years in a row.” Read more

Tim Buckley, director of Energy Finance Studies of the US-based think tank Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), said, “Adani Power is the largest producer of renewable energy in India, which is now the cheapest among all other power generating sources of the country. They even acknowledged that solar energy price will drop by 99 percent in the next four decades.” “If Bangladesh really needs electricity from Adani, it should ask for cheap renewable energy. Otherwise, people in Bangladesh have to pay a much higher price for electricity from Adani Godda coal-fired power plant,” he added. Read more

“[Gautam] Adani continues to walk both sides of the street,” said Tim Buckley, director of Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance. The Adani Group is not only one of the largest developers and operators of coal mines in India, but also operates the controversial Carmichael Coal Mine in Australia, which has faced fierce opposition from climate change campaigners who say it is a “death sentence” for the Great Barrier Reef. “Rather than ploughing billions into new fossil fuel projects, India would be far better served if Adani put 100% of its efforts and resources into developing low-cost zero emissions technologies,” Buckley added. Read more

“Investing in green bonds issued by a group that is one of the largest private fossil fuel developers in the world is total greenwash, a perfect example of investor fraud. I think it’s very telling that this bond raise excludes the US. [The US is] the best-regulated market in the world, in my view, in terms of financial markets, and this bond is excluded from that for very clear reasons that were raised by Hindenburg… and which are still outstanding, in my mind, today.” Read more

India’s richest men, including Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, are investing billions into clean energy, even though they made their empire on the backs of fossil fuels. “There has probably never been a better time than now for India to grow more sustainably,” said Tim Buckley director of Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance. That’s because of two main reasons: the world is seeing unprecedented levels of investment in clean technologies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and solar energy is getting significantly cheaper, he explained. Read more

Not making any new commitments to coal is good news, says Tim Buckley, the director of the think thank Climate Energy Finance, but there’s a downside for those affected by existing operations: “’No new coal’ means you rush to complete all the mines that are already there,” he said. Read more

“These reports detail a multitude of new allegations and report hard evidence that a web of now named associates of the Adani Group has engaged in deliberate stock price manipulation and thin capitalisation,” Tim Buckley, director of Australian-based independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, wrote on LinkedIn. Read more

At the beginning of June, the Toxic Bonds initiative collected evidence that confirms that funding into Adani Green Energy is being redirected, through collateralisation and related party transactions, to other Adani Group entities directly responsible for coal expansion projects. “Any so-called green investment in Adani Green directly supports the wider Adani Group to be the world’s largest private coal mine and coal power plant developer,” says Tim Buckley. Read more

Tim Buckley says the new US-Australia Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact agreed by US President Biden and PM Albanese provides a landmark policy statement of strategic intent, formalising collaboration and coordination of policies and investments to expand and diversify the clean energy and critical minerals supply chains that underpin global decarbonisation. Read more