Media

The Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) is a federal initiative designed to underpin the deployment of dispatchable renewable energy and storage capacity across Australia, offsetting any reliability gaps as the country transitions from fossil-fuel based to clean energy and coal exits the system. It is a central enabler of the federal renewable energy target of 82% by 2030. The CIS explicitly excludes methane gas peaking power plants. Read more

CEF partner and advisory board member, Blair Palese, founder of the Climate Capital Forum, on how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being on the ground at APEC shows that Australia wants to be at the table with the other alliance members as they navigate global decarbonisation, and that we are committed to working with our regional neighbours in the Indo-Pacific Read more

As Tim Buckley asks: What kind of game is AustralianSuper, the country’s biggest super fund, playing with Origin Energy? It is shaping up to scuttle a bid by Canadian fund manager Brookfield et al to acquire Australia’s largest power company, gentailer Origin Energy, and transition it to renewables and storage with a ~$30bn investment – a mammoth capital injection that will be transformative for Australian decarbonisation. What is AustralianSuper offering as its alternative plan? Higher electricity prices, slower decarbonisation and more climate destruction? If it kills the deal, will it step up and guarantee a $30bn commitment to decarbonising Origin? If not, why not? If it has no legitimate answer to these questions, it should get out of the way. Read more

Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned Australia could fail to meet its emissions targets without drastic change, and green refining of minerals before shipping overseas could be part of the solution. Tim Buckley told ABC that we need to get out of the mentality of Australia’s traditional dig-and-ship model. Now is the perfect opportunity to permanently rebuild manufacturing and refining capacity onshore. And we need to move faster with more ambition. We should build out capacity within the coming decade instead of 2050, before other countries have already established their own supply chains, or we will permanently miss out. Read more

Tim Buckley told ABC TV that we need to find alternatives to our dig and ship model, eg. do more value-adding refining of our resources onshore. By doing so, Australia can help our trade partners by exporting embodied decarbonisation. Buckley also said Jim Chalmers’ major address on Australia’s green energy and energy transition materials opportunity was overly cautious, and Australia’s response to the IRA should be tailored by Australia’s context and the huge scale of opportunity we have here to lead the world. Read more

The Albanese government has dumped plans to release a comprehensive US-style green energy industrial policy this year. Instead of meeting a pledge in last May’s budget to develop a plan before Christmas, Labor ministers are now working to a revised timeline that would see a more comprehensive response to Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) around the 2024 budget, in about six months. Tim Buckley told AFR that “they need to provide a policy framework. At the end of the day, when America throws $1 trillion on the table in subsidies, and you’re competing against China, when you leave it to the free market you miss out.”“We need to get more projects off the ground, faster.” “The government is moving in the right direction but not fast enough, and they don’t have the political mandate to act with the courage they really need.” Read more

Our op ed on PM Albanese’s state visit to the US. While the visit was touted as a platform for major announcements on investment into an Australian response to the game-changing Inflation Reduction Act, there was a lot of talk, but only $2bn for Australian critical minerals – entirely insufficient relative to the scale of our opportunity to lead the world in processing of minerals onshore. Read our full analysis. Read more

Tim Buckley wraps PM Albanese’s state visit to the US and the need for a more ambitious strategic public capital commitment to leverage the opportunities of the US IRA, noting the $2bn additional commitment to critical minerals announced is insufficient relative to our massive opportunity as the world’s #1 exporter of lithium and does not adequately respond to the scale and pace of global decarbonisation. Read more

Tim Buckley told ABC News that the $2bn announcement by the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese into the sector through low-interest loans for miners and processors is a token response. The US has put US$1,000bn on the table to drive investment in the decarbonisation. Australian government needs to place $100bn public capital support to crowd in the decarbonisation sector, as we need to respond at the speed and scale to the size of the opportunity. Read more

Tim Buckley, director of independent public interest think tank Climate Energy Finance, said $2 billion was “a mere token response” to the Biden administration’s $US1 trillion ($A1.6 trillion) industrial and energy stimulus – the biggest in US history. “It isn’t even a down payment, it is so lacking in courage, conviction and ambition,” Mr Buckley told AAP. Read more

A profound investment surge in renewables, heat pump, batteries and EV manufacturing capacity globally is underway, with annual global manufacturing capacities of each due to double every 24 months at the current run rate, Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance (CEF) told MWM. Read more

The Biden administration’s package includes generous tax incentives for clean energy and other key technologies and has triggered a global investment race. The alliance – including the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate Energy Finance and the Smart Energy Council – is calling for a $100 billion sum over 10 years. Read more