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Buckley of Climate Energy Finance pointed out Australia could also have an opportunity when it comes to heavy haulage electric trucks, since as a nation we command much of the market via our mining industry. “In heavy haulage vehicles, Australia is number two,” he said. Read more

With the world racing ahead with huge subsidies attracting massive capital inflows, the $500m commitment in the new federal Critical Minerals Strategy released this week is a drop in the ocean, and fails to take advantage of Australia’s unique position in the energy transition as a potential critical minerals value-adding superpower. Read more

Australia has the potential to secure its position as a world leader in value-added critical minerals supply that underpins the energy transition. However, while the new Australian Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030 released by the federal government this week rightly foregrounds leveraging international supply and value chain partnerships, the new funding of $500m to NAIF fails to invest in Australia’s minerals boom at a scale commensurate with the opportunity – and is an inadequate response to the capital investments of our partners and competitors in the global decarbonisation race, such as the US IRA. Read more

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

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

Janaline Oh of Diplomats for Climate Action and Tim Buckley argue that to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by Australia’s wealth of renewable energy and critical minerals, we must mobilise our own considerable domestic public financial capital to support national decarbonisation objectives, so as to de-risk and “crowd in” private investment, presenting 5 key reforms to do this. Read more

Speaking at the Renewables and Critical Minerals Superpower webinar hosted by the Smart Energy Council on Tuesday, Tim Buckley outlined the fierce competition flooding into the clean energy space, especially around manufacturing. Read more

“We have been a dig and ship country for 50 years,” says Tim Buckley. “Fifty per cent of the entire world’s lithium supply came from Australia last year. We have the opportunity to play at world scale, as we do in iron ore, as we do in gold, and as we do in thermal coal” but we must do more to value-add by processing onshore. 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 described the US-Australia Climate and Energy Compact announced this week as a critically-important development in the context of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is turbocharging the energy transformation in the US with upwards of $800 billion of federal investment in clean energy initiatives and attracting a massive influx of global capital to the US, opening up huge investment opportunities for Australian companies. Read more

Tim Buckley shares his insights on the new US-Australia Climate Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact. He views this as a geopolitical statement of global significance for Australia, demonstrating strategic intent to collaborate on critical minerals, climate, and clean energy., also emphasising the importance of Congress ratifying President Biden’s commitment for the agreement to be realised. Read more