2 JULY 2026

Welcome to our news round-up. See previous issues here.

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PLANET CHINA: MIND-BLOWING ONE DAY, ASTONISHING THE NEXT 

CEF joined an Australian delegation to China last week, jointly led by Austrade, Renewable Energy Council Asia-Pacific (RECAP) and the Smart Energy Council (SEC), starting at the Fourth China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE). 

The new 2026 Lowy Institute Poll also released last week was timely. It shows that a clear majority of Australians see China as more of an economic partner than a security threat, marking a significant shift in sentiment toward the Asian superpower, even as the US’s standing collapses under Trump. Only 31% of Australians trust Washington to act responsibly in the world, a new low. A real time geopolitical re-alignment towards Australia’s #1 trade partner.

Below, Tim reports on some highlights of the trip, during which he witnessed the extraordinary cleantech revolution sweeping the world’s decarbonisation leader.

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It was a brilliant week last week to see ‘China Speed, China Scale’ first hand with our partners in the delegation.  I arrived in the capital – where I had an excellent opportunity to play spot the (soon to be endangered) ICE vehicle, as green number plates abound – after a two-stage Very Fast Train trip from HK, via Chongqing. Nothing better than travelling 12 hours at >300kph across the length of that amazing country to orient myself and see some of the landscape. 

Our trip included meetings with cleantech leaders ranging from XCMG to BYD Trucks, China State Grid, Xiaomi and Sigenergy. All reported a concerted focus on ‘Going Global’ as a top priority, both via cleantech exports and by establishing overseas manufacturing bases to reduce geopolitical risks to exports, as CEF has been tracking in its reports including Green Capital Tsunami and Rising Tide. For May 2026, EMBER reports China’s monthly cleantech exports (solar, batteries, EVs) have surged 25% since the start of the year to US$25bn per month post Trump’s war on Iran.

In Xuzhou, we visited XCMG Group’s mind-blowing factory.  XCMG is the #1 original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in mining and construction equipment in China, with a 2025 share of 33% in domestic mining excavators and #3 globally, targeting #1 globally in new energy mining equipment as soon as 2030. 

I have no doubt they will achieve this. XCMG has already deployed 500 autonomous trucks globally, mostly hybrid or EV. June 2025 saw it deploy 100 autonomous EV trucks with a 6 minutes recharge time at an Inner Mongolia open cut coal mine. It has a MoU for cooperation with Rio Tinto and is already delivering mining EV equipment to Rio Tinto’s partner at the giant Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea. It’s working closely with Vale and has a Brazilian factory now employing 1,600 workers. Wouldn't it be great if Australia’s FMIA involved building Australian jobs at this scale in collaboration with our key trade partner!

Adjacent to the mining OEM facility is the XCMG and BYD battery joint venture factory which targets 100GWh pa capacity, with Phase 1 of 30GWh already in operation, having been built in just 12 months, and phase 2 of 70GWh in preparation. This factory produces the Blade battery pack with a long life of >7,000 cycles!

The visit was an eye opener, as Australia’s mining giant laggards (led by BHP & Rio Tinto) actively obstruct a cap on the massive subsidy they receive for the diesel fuel that powers their operations, predominantly diesel haulage trucks. We will shout it from the rooftops for as long as it takes: It’s time Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher reformed the $4.5bn annual imported diesel fuel subsidy to the mining sector. This refund is the #1 disincentive for our world-leading mining industry to decarbonise and electrify, building energy independence for Australia even as we collaborate and partner with our #1 export customer. We again urge PM Anthony Albanese and Industry Minister Tim Ayres to ignore the usual MCA lobbyist threats for the greater good, and in their own interests. Their flagship legacy program, FMIA, can only work if it is powered by domestic clean energy, not expensive high-emissions, increasingly hard to come by imported diesel.

There are green shoots emerging: Fortescue, which supports capping the diesel rebate, has got the memo. XCMG will deliver its first 240T payload EV to Fortescue in early 2027 with the full US$1bn order due for commercial delivery commencing 2028. And XCMG Australia has doubled to >70 staff across 2 offices, with a third in Queensland planned. Our leaders now need to turbocharge this momentum with a $50m pa per firm cap on the insane diesel refund. Not a single farmer or tourist operator would be affected - not withstanding the disinformation being spread by the MCA.

It was also great to meet with State Grid Corporation’s China Electric Power Research Institute team and discuss energy system transformation trends in China, and how they match and differ from Australia. There is huge potential for collaboration. Brilliant to hear China plans to expand variable renewable energy (VRE) capacity from 1.84TW as of December 2025 to ~3.0TW installed capacity by 2030. China sees up to 50TW of onshore and offshore wind + utility scale and rooftop solar potential. 

Another highlight was our meeting and Nantong factory tour with battery maker Sigenergy, a case study in both ‘China speed, China scale’ and ‘Going Global’ in real time. Sigenergy has grown revenues 150x in two years from US$8m in 2023 to US$1.25bn in 2025, generating 90% of revenues from 114 countries, and is the #1 Battery supplier in Sweden, Ireland and South Africa and #2 in Australia. The Nantong factory produces 300,000 units a year and was built in 12 months; a first overseas factory is expected to be announced within the year. Its new SigenMate balcony battery could be a game changer for Australian renters and apartment dwellers, assuming the necessary regulatory reform.

Meanwhile, at the Opening Ceremony of the Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, we saw Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng speak to the importance for China of global supply chain stability and security for mutual benefit and win-win cooperation even as other nations create geopolitical challenges.

RECAP CEO John Grimes and I had the opportunity to do a double act with Qian Zhengyang of Ming Yang Smart Energy, discussing China-Australia clean energy cooperation and the role of green supply chains in the global energy transition. As reported in CGTN: “Can the energy transition succeed without China? At the Fourth China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE), Australian energy leaders said the answer is no. China-Australia clean energy cooperation is critical to accelerating success, and global green supply chains will play a key role in the global energy transition.”

>>> View the full video interview with Tim and delegation partners on CGTN here.

>>> View Tim’s Linked In post detailing some of the other highlights of the trip, including some great pics such as an autonomous flying EV taxi and the nightly Chongqing drone and laser show.

>>> See CEF’s recent op ed in China Daily: China’s exports offer cost-effective path to energy security

>>> View our China Monthly Energy Update released yesterday:

• While variable renewable energy generation is up 10.8% yoy YTD in 2026, total power generation in the same time frame was up +5.7% yoy (reflective of a still very robust Chinese economy), driving a +3.6% yoy increase in thermal power generation. 

• After an all-time high in May 2025, which reflected a surge as old renewables policy support ended, renewable energy capacity adds were down 88% year-on-year (yoy) in May 2026.

• Solar generation is now the #2 fuel source at 12.8% of China’s total YTD 2026, up 21.8% yoy YTD, ahead of wind at 12.2% share at #3 (generation flat yoy YTD 2026). Coal power generation still dominated at 55.1% share YTD 2026, and given total demand growth is still exceptionally strong, coal power generation is +3.6% yoy YTD.

• China targets increasing the installed capacity of battery storage to 180GW by 2027, very conservative given installed capacity has doubled annually in recent years to 140GW by 2025.

• ICE car sales are –20% yoy YTD 2026, having peaked back in 2017. Annual ICE car sales halved in the 8 years to 2025: China saw Trump’s oil attack coming and prepared strategically.

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EMBER REPORT: ELECTRIC ASIA

An excellent new Ember report – "Electric Asia: How Asia is leading the electric age, powering its rise and reshaping the global order" – tracks the rapid electrification of the region, which generates more than half the world's electricity and accounts for three quarters of global electricity demand growth since 2000. Asia overtook the West on electrification in 2016 and is electrifying five times faster.

While China leads, Southeast Asia leapfrogged the US in electrification in 2023 and EV share in 2024 (even before the US went into reverse gear in 2025), and South Asia leapfrogged the US in solar share in 2022. Meanwhile Asia, excluding China, is the second largest producer in the world of both solar panels and battery components.

Asia lacks fossil fuels, holding just 4% of global oil and gas reserves, meaning it  imports US$1.1 trillion of fossil fuels every year, accounting for 31% of its primary energy demand. As a result, Asia makes up 62% of global fossil imports. But the region which is home to half the world’s people is an electrotech superpower accounting for three quarters of global electrotech production. Asia manufactures over 95% of solar panels, 85% of batteries and 75% of wind turbines. It also has enough solar and wind resources to supply at least 14 times its total energy demand and 100 times its oil and gas production.

If this is to be the Asian century, and it is increasingly looking that way,  its path will be electric.

The obvious lesson for Australia in this report is that, as the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, we need to be aware that some of our key export markets are doubling down on clean energy alternatives and electrification. We need to pivot to value-added green metal exports like green aluminium or green steel and critical minerals as an alternative, or risk being left behind.

There is also an opportunity in exporting Australia's world-leading know-how in how to install distributed energy resources, like rooftop solar and home batteries, at speed and scale – most recently thanks to Energy Minister Chris Bowen's home battery rebate scheme. This is something many of our Asian neighbours desperately need, to get off their reliance on imported diesel.

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STATE BUDGETS: RENEWABLES FORGE AHEAD IN NSW, WHILE QLD REVERTS TO ‘COAL KEEPER’

The New South Wales and Queensland state budgets released last week were a picture in contrasts.

NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey was unequivocal on the central role of energy transition in economic growth and prosperity. Mookhey emphasised that the renewables transition is a top driver of investment into the state, with renewable energy infrastructure a significant contributor to the 20% surge in investment over the year to the March quarter 2026.

Mookhey noted that clean energy transformation is ‘not merely an environmental cause, but an economic strategy’, and that to campaign against renewables, as his counterparts elsewhere and in previous governments have done, is to campaign against investment and jobs.

A centrepiece of the 2026-27 NSW budget was the $557m Home Energy Saver program to households with interest-free loans of up to $15,000 over ten years to install energy-saving and cost-cutting upgrades, plus $4,000 grants for low income households. The program is expected to benefit more than 32,000 households across the state by making it easier for more households to install rooftop solar, household batteries, insulation, reverse-cycle air conditioning, switchboard upgrades, and draught-proofing. 

This is a significant boost for NSW consumers that further turbocharges the massively successful Cheaper Home Batteries program of the federal government, providing a 30% discount to the upfront cost of installing home battery systems. More than 430,000 homes have now deployed batteries under the scheme in less than a year, adding 12.5GWh of distributed, dispatchable energy to the grid. 

Building on the $52m provided to four projects across agriculture, transport and electricity decarbonisation streams in $480m Net Zero Manufacturing Initiative, the budget confirmed $225m across three grant streams to support the development of low-emissions technologies, support local manufacturing capacity of low-carbon products, and stimulate local manufacturing of renewable generation, storage and transmission components.

There was also a contingency fund allocation of $1.1bn for yet to be determined policies - we’d hope this will be used in support of the Federal government proposal to ensure internationally competitive costed zero emissions new electricity supply for Tomago Aluminium.

CEF applauds these measures, which are vital to realising a vision that places NSW at the centre of a prosperous domestic zero-emissions future.

In contrast, the Queensland budget missed the mark completely on energy, ignoring the enduring social and economic benefits of an accelerated transition to renewables.

Instead, the Crisafulli government shows a clear emphasis on the importance of intergenerational investments into infrastructure such as transport. This is also key, but not at the expense of the former.

The budget lays out just $490m for renewable energy generation and storage – a fraction of the subsidies going into trying to sustain fossil fuels.  It includes $5.1bn to upgrade and sustain the state’s ageing coal-fired power stations and build out new transmission infrastructure. This includes $1.8bn over the next five years (up from previous estimates of $1.6 bn) allocated to maintain existing power generators. The “electricity maintenance guarantee” will include $520m in 2026-27 for upgrades to Stanwell, Tarong, and Kogan Creek coal-fired clunkers and the Wivenhoe pumped hydro station. A massive payback to the fossil fuel vested interests who “donated” to the LNP election campaign. A true undermining of Australia’s democracy.

Treasurer Janetzki spuriously claimed the state’s five-year energy plan – which scrapped renewable energy targets and extended the life of coal and gas-fired generators – was already delivering for Queenslanders through lower energy prices. This is despite the fact that the Australian Energy Regulator attributed the 2-14% drop in wholesale energy prices in the 2026-27 Default Market Offer (DMO) across the national electricity market to increased output from wind and batteries and less dependence on gas and hydro in evening peaks.

>>> Read our full op ed in Renew Economy A tale of two budgets: A win for cheaper, cleaner energy in one state, more “coal-keeper” in the other

>>> Read Matt Pollard’s commentary in The Energy and Discovery Alert

>>> Read our media statements on the NSW and QLD Budgets

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AEMO INTEGRATED SYSTEM PLAN

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) 2026 Integrated System Plan (ISP) released last week reaffirms definitively that renewable energy, firmed with storage, connected by transmission and distribution and with a rapidly declining back-up role for gas, presents the least-cost, optimal development pathway to supply secure and reliable electricity through to 2050, as coal plants retire. Nearly 40% of the coal fleet has retired, and renewables are fast approaching the milestone of delivering half the annual electricity needs of NEM consumers. 

CEO Daniel Westerman noted that “Over the forecast period, Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations will close while electricity consumption is forecast to nearly double. At the same time, consumers are continuing to invest in rooftop solar and home batteries, which benefits all consumers by reducing the need for grid-scale investment.”

• Key changes since the 2024 ISP reflect falling solar and battery costs, higher costs for transmission and wind, and stronger growth in consumer energy resources. 

• Already, 36% of suitable dwellings in the NEM have rooftop solar, and about 600,000 households have installed batteries (430,000 in just the last 12 months). 

• The plan involves around $106bn in capital investment to 2050 (in today’s dollars). Around $6bn of this is for transmission. AEMO states this provides a saving to consumers of $30bn in avoided capital, operating and fuel costs compared to a firmed renewables plus transmission pathway.

• AEMO highlights the imperative that transmission should be delivered without delay. In a future in which the delivery of generation and transmission takes longer than planned, costs rise and national 2030 policy targets would be compromised. The analysis underscores the need to prioritise progress of planned transmission projects.

• The plan notes that 34GW of grid-scale renewables and batteries were operating in the NEM at the start of 2026, and another 67GW of projects are now progressing through the connections process. Of the progressing projects, 45GW are grid-scale batteries, which absorb more and more renewable energy during the day, releasing it during evening peaks to help moderate prices during high-demand periods.

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MORE BS FROM GAS CARTEL ON ‘SHORTAGE’ & ‘RISK’ AS IT LOOKS TO KILL OFF RESERVATION POLICY

The hot air continues to flow from the shameless multinational gas cartel, which has been consistently, deliberately and dramatically inflating domestic methane gas demand forecasts to create a misconception that East Australia faces a critical gas shortage “risk”.

This sham shortage has been consistently and erroneously highlighted by AEMO in their Gas Statement of Opportunities (GSOO). AEMO needs to do a lot better in serving Australia's national interests. The gas cartel is corrupting its important work. In reality, domestic gas demand has been eaten by the rapid rollout of utility-scale  and behind-the-meter batteries. Gas is simply too expensive. Who would have guessed?

The result? Having long parroted the looming domestic gas crisis that never eventuated, AFR now writes that AEMO's "Gas power forecasts drop 39% amid battery boom". But the Australian Fossil Fuel Review just can’t help itself, also shilling for Japanese corporations like Inpex and their captured government officials as they make massive war war profits from re-exporting Australian LNG to Asia, in competition with Australia. 

The government needs to withstand claims by vested interests like gas industry peak lobby group Australian Energy Producers, that a gas reservation scheme will “send a concerning signal to key trade and investment partners, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore” and create sovereign risk. Regulatory and policy failure by the federal government is what does the latter.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen, Assistant Minister Josh Wilson, Resources Minister Madeleine King: bring on an effective domestic gas reservation scheme for East Australia to protect downstream industry and Australian consumers from the cartel, with volume and price controls. Gas sold here at export price parity and beyond is not a solution. No other major LNG export nation allows the foreign gas cartel to gouge domestic industry. Not Qatar. Not the US. Not even Western Australia. 

Cartel war profits should be restricted to the 80% of the east coast Australian methane gas production that is exported.

>>> Read Tim’s commentary in The Straits Times on the government's domestic gas reservation policy.

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CER PIPELINE REPORT TRACKS LARGE-SCALE RENEWABLES SURGE

The Clean Energy Regulator has released its updated large-scale renewable energy pipeline tracker – a big step up in probable proposals to 32.3GW with the May 2026 capacity investment scheme awards.

As Renew Economy detailed, May 2026 saw the CIS Tender 7 award 7.8GW of new capacity with Australia’s biggest wind project and 8 battery hybrids among 19 winners of the Scheme’s largest ever renewable auction. CIS Tender 8 for 4GW/16GWh of NEM Dispatchable Capacity and Tender 9 targeting 5GW of renewable energy generation capacity are in progress, but yet to be added to the CER tally.

The challenge is to now get new renewable generation capacity beyond FID and into construction and then energised.

Putting aside the hot issue of who should wear the massive grid capex cost blowouts, it is key that Transgrid has confirmed that Project EnergyConnect, is now being fully energised following completion of construction on its NSW section.

And really interesting to see consumer energy resources are booming not only in the home battery scheme, reaching 430,000 houses totalling 12.5GWh so far, but also rooftop solar installs are likewise getting a big boost, such that the CER's Carl Binning suggests we are on track for potentially a new record of 4GW of new rooftop solar adds in 2026, an excellent leverage of the existing grid T&D, lowering electricity costs for all.

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DATA CENTRES:  EXPECTATIONS NEED TO EVOLVE INTO BINDING REQUIREMENTS FOR PROPONENTS 

With Australia the #2 investment destination globally for data centres, it is absolutely key we ensure that this investment boom unlock new firmed renewables investment, and cover the grid transmission and distribution costs required, so they build rather than destroy social licence. This month Dr Andrew Charlton, Assistant Minister for the Digital Economy, gave an excellent speech on this topic, outlining the government’s approach – a cause for optimism that appropriate regulation will follow. Time to move beyond a Statement of Expectations to a Binding Requirement on approval.

>>> See our op ed in PV Magazine, Data Centres must bring new green power and public benefit as binding conditions of approval

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