Media

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

Tim Buckley told AusBiz that CEF calls for a new $100bn new capital and direct budget investment in renewables and energy transition over the next decade, as a response to Biden’s IRA, with half to focus on domestic electrification and decarbonisation, another half to focus on value-added energy transition materials exports. Part of this could be funded by a cap on the diesel rebate to mining. Read more

At the Australian Renewables Industry summit in Canberra on Monday unions, the renewable energy sector, community and investor groups will call for the package to respond to massive investment overseas including the US’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Climate Energy Finance’s founder, Tim Buckley, said, “we need a far more integrated and ‘big picture’ approach to encourage greater investment, commensurate with the scale of this massive renewables and critical minerals and metals embodied decarbonisation export opportunity for Australia”. Read more

Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley told The Australian Financial Review an integrated approach to investment was needed, to benefit local communities, Indigenous Australians and future workers. “To leave it to the free market is just, in my view, to be deluded,” he said. “The IRA has stimulated a massive, massive manufacturing boom. The amount of money going into manufacturing in America in the last 12 months is four times the highest level of any previous year in American history.” He said the strict rules of funding attached to programs meant a rethink was needed in Australia. Read more

On the first anniversary of the game-changing US Inflation Reduction that has turbocharged energy transition there and triggered a global race to the top, Tim Buckley and Blair Palese review its top 5 impacts and the top 5 actions Australia should take to respond. Read more

Tim Buckley speaks at the Australian National Manufacturing Summit noting that while the federal government has plans to value add to get more out of the country’s rich endowment of in-demand minerals, “Australia’s critical minerals strategy has lovely words but $500 million doesn’t cut it,” in the context of massive accelerating public capital commitments to energy transition by our trade partners and competitors. Read more

The Productivity Commission report is a misreading of the implications for Australia of a profound global geopolitical shift already underway: unprecedented government intervention by the United States, European Union, Canada, South Korea, Japan and a growing list of other economies to reposition themselves in the accelerating global energy transition, rebuild manufacturing onshore, and secure clean-tech supply chains against China’s decade-long head start. Read more

A new Productivity Commission report misses the mark by arguing against public capital investment in cleantech. As Tim Buckley writes, At this inflection point, Australia can ill-afford an approach to industry policy that will further hollow out our manufacturing sector and consign us to the zero value-add, dig-and-ship mentality of yesterday’s fossil-fuel dominated mining behemoth. We must seize the once-in-a-century opportunity to leverage our natural advantages and position ourselves as a value-adding clean industry and export superpower. And as other economies have recognised, this requires government investment. Read more

“Fast forward 10 years when there’s a global price on carbon emissions, and Australia could be exporting decarbonization,” says Tim Buckley who would like to see A$100 billion of Australian capital, including super, hived off for critical minerals investment. Read more

“Australia must now, as a key strategic priority, work constructively with South Korea to ensure both economies are dealt into the North American value-added cleantech opportunity, and to leverage our combined world-leading capacity and skill sets,” authors Matt Pollard and Tim Buckley state in CEF’s new report. Read more

“China is moving faster than anyone,” on the clean energy race”, Tim Buckley said. Meanwhile, Australia’s efforts are more modest. In June the federal government gave its Northern Australia Investment Fund an additional $500 million to support critical mineral projects. Buckley called for government support proportional to the size of the opportunity. “Five hundred million dollars is one step, we need 100 steps,” he said. The opportunity for Australia is to move from the dig and ship model of coal and iron ore to creating more value by processing the mineral here. Read more

Climate Energy Finance Director Tim Buckley says Australia needs more strategic partners like South Korea to tackle the climate crisis. “South Korea is the number one investor into the American battery market, they are moving at an unbelievable speed,” he told Sky News Australia. Read more