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Welcome to our news round-up.
25 JUNE 2025
CLIMATE WARS 2.1 | COALITION’S TAXPAYER-FUNDED NUCLEAR CON A ROAD TO RUIN >>>
The Federal Opposition confirmed last week that if it wins the next election, it plans to gouge Australians to bankroll a national buildout of government-owned nuclear reactors across seven locations – because private capital won’t touch nuclear.
CEF director Tim Buckley provided extensive media commentary on the LNP climate denialists’ ridiculous excuse for an energy policy, including on Sky News x3, ABC TV’s The Business, in The Australian, across News Corp mastheads, in The Guardian, on metro and regional radio, in an op ed in Renew Economy and more, with further coverage to come in AFR and elsewhere.
LNP leader Peter Dutton’s fact-free 900 word nuclear press release – the totality of the "policy" announcement – failed to produce costings for what would be a long-term multibillion dollar 'nukebuilder' tax. Our best estimate is that this would be in the order of at least $100bn; our colleagues at the Smart Energy Council peg the cost at between $116bn and $600bn taking into consideration factors including the history of massive cost and timeframe blowouts on nuclear projects across the western world.
It beggars belief that the alternative government now proposes nationalising an uncosted nuclear debt bomb and detonating it at the heart of domestic energy and climate policy.
Dutton and cronies ignore the unequivocal advice of the CSIRO, which warned that nuclear could not be operational until 2040 at the earliest, and the energy generated would be two to four times as expensive as fully firmed renewables. Our national scientific agency says nuclear “won’t be able to make a meaningful contribution to achieving net zero emissions by 2050”.
The international experience is a massive red flag. The Vogtle nuclear plant expansion debacle in Georgia, US, completed seven years late in 2023, is the most expensive public works project in US history at US$35bn, with consumers carrying the can. England’s Hinkley Point C plant – started in 2016, with completion now delayed to 2031 – is a A$88bn millstone around citizens’ necks for the next 60 years.
In Canada, which Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien admiringly cites, the last nuclear plant was approved in 1977 and commissioned 15 years later in 1993, five years late. The original capital cost of C$3.9bn blew out 400% to C$14.4bn including a C$600m refurbishment immediately on commissioning, and it now needs another C$12bn refurbishment.
"The Clean Energy Investor Group, whose membership includes the likes of global investment giant BlackRock, Neoen and Macquarie, has condemned the LNP’s ‘catastrophic’ intervention, saying it puts at imminent risk the influx of private capital investment into Australian decarbonisation, as policy uncertainty destroys investor confidence and makes clean energy proposals uninvestable. This creates sovereign risk as it undermines our energy security." – Tim Buckley
The medium-term energy price implications are horrendous. Prices would skyrocket as private investment in new zero-emissions replacement capacity is crowded out, resulting in undersupply for the next 15-25 years while we wait for the LNP’s nuclear white elephants to lumber into view, locking in higher power bills for consumers crushed by cost of living and for domestic industry, reducing competitiveness.
“The LNP’s nuclear con is an egregious exercise in bad faith, designed to disrupt and delay the firmed renewables rollout and entrench decades more of volatile, hyper-inflated fossil fuel energy for perceived political, donor and electoral advantage, even as the climate crisis escalates.” – Tim Buckley
Meanwhile, investment momentum has been accelerating into firmed renewables, responding to the decarbonisation ambition of the Albanese Government, with Energy Minister Chris Bowen this week announcing 40GW of tenders for firmed renewables under the first tranche of his centrepiece Capacity investment Scheme, nearly seven times the targetted 6GW.
Australia can be a global renewables superpower, playing to our massive natural comparative advantages of superabundant sun, wind and land mass. We have a time-critical opportunity to reindustrialise by deploying firmed renewable energy to value-add our world-leading critical minerals and strategic metals pre-export, and manufacture cleantech supply chain here.
This is the foundation of our future economic prosperity and jobs growth as a zero-emissions trade and investment leader – and the Federal Government’s Future Made in Australia vision.
Dutton and his cronies would trash all this in a breathtakingly cynical and destructive act of intergenerational betrayal, as the planet burns.
It was brilliant to see former NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean, who declined to pursue nuclear as a decarbonisation technology for the state's energy transition based on expert advice, has been appointed to chair the Climate Change Authority, and has confirmed that he will be informed by the evidence from the CSIRO and Australian Energy Market Operator that the cheapest way to transition our national electricity system is by accelerating firmed renewables and storage.
>>>See our media to date here, with more to come.
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SECURING COMMUNITY LICENCE FOR RENEWABLES
Key to the Federal Opposition’s disrupt and delay handbook – entirely aligned with fossil fuel industry tactics – is whipping up community dissent in the regions by spreading disinformation on renewables’ impacts, as explored on ABC's 4Corners recently.
Meanwhile, offshore wind development in NSW took a step forward last week, with Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen announcing Equinor and Oceanex have been preliminarily offered a feasibility licence for the potential 2GW Novocastrian Wind Pty Ltd project.
As offshore wind sector leaders Amy Boersma, Satya Tanner and Naomi Campbell, members of CEF affiliate Climate Capital Forum, explored in their recent Canberra Times op ed (syndicated across Australian Community Media outlets), community acceptance and approval are essential steps for any infrastructure project, and renewable energy projects are no different.
Alongside the opportunistic spoiler tactics of the LNP, there are genuine reasons for resistance that are long-held and complex – rural communities' concerns
about project location, environmental groups' advocacy against habitat clearing, coastal communities worries about marine life and tourism, First Nations' peoples objections to exclusion from active participation in processes and decisions, the slow pace of planning processes, and a perception of unfair or unevenly distributed compensation to landholders.
This is despite the key role of renewables in tackling the climate crisis, which poses an existential threat to communities and environments, and the vital contribution of electricity system decarbonisation to mitigating climate change and ensuring prosperity and energy security.
By being reasonable and responsible, it is possible to find a balance to address many of the concerns that people have, Amy, Satya and Naomi write.
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MEANWHILE IN CHINA >>>
SEC CHINA DELEGATION WITNESSES PHENOMENAL TRANSFORMATION
This month we saw a brilliant summary from Lauri Myllyvirta, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and lead analyst at CREA, of how China could lead the world's response to the climate challenge with a big uplift in emissions reduction ambition via its updated nationally determined contributions (NDC) – aka climate targets – which it will submit to the UN next year as part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement.
China has the potential to materially change the world's climate trajectory by committing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 30% by 2035. This would be a major advance on its current "double carbon targets": to peak emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2060.
Having just spent a week with the Smart Energy Council delegation in Shanghai touring world leading cleantech companies, CEF’s Tim Buckley says that for China to dramatically ratchet up and pull forward its climate targets is entirely feasible. Tim reports:
"China's cleantech leadership is simply staggering, and its investments in scaling up production and in factory automation were brilliant to see first hand.
Relative to current deployment rates, China has massive overcapacity across all decarbonisation technology sectors, meaning domestic installs and exports will continue to boom, driven by increasingly superior technology.
The EU and US' trade war postures fail to grasp that China has already won the technology race in many of these sectors, as exemplified in BYD’s Blade Battery innovation and NIO’s extraordinary EVs, as well as Tesla’s huge Shanghai factory producing a new EV every 36 seconds.
With respect to heavy industrial sectors, a key way to capture emission-reduction opportunities would be to extend China’s CO2 emissions-trading system to all high-emitting industries, and concurrently commit to a China carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), leveraging and building on the EU’s, and providing an effective price signal for embodied decarbonisation in international trade.
A commitment to do so would be aligned with the target set by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council in its 'Beautiful China' environmental policy, issued in December 2023: 'Build a more effective, dynamic and internationally influential carbon market by 2035'.
Our delegation saw massive new Tesla, Tongwei Solar, Sungrow Power Co., NIO, GuofuHee and JA Solar factories and met with Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) management. We attended the SNEC PV POWER and Energy Storage EXPO, along with another 600,000 delegates. We attended functions hosted by Austrade and Australian Consulate-General in Shanghai.
A massive thanks to the SEC's John Grimes, Wayne Smith, Steve Blume, Oliver Yates, Stephanie Bashire, Elvira Pan and Yuan Fang, and to delegation leader, former Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
It was great to travel with my new mates Patrick Mayoh, Daniel Bleakley, Eddie Greco, Robbie Coleman, Carson Lu, Joseph Williams, Rob Ogilvie, Istvan Toth, Jean-Claude Cesario, James Tong, Beth Hunter, Shyamal Pal Jackey and Susmita Chowdhury."
PREMIER LI VISITS AUSTRALIA, STRENGTHENING BILATERAL TIES
As part of the visit of China’s Premier Li Qiang to Australia this month, CEF was delighted to see the Joint Statement on Outcomes of the Australia-China Leaders Meeting, including a reaffirmation of support for the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on its tenth anniversary, a framework for a constructive bilateral relationship. The outcomes also included commitments to recommencing bilateral climate change and energy dialogues, and to hold the Eighth Australia-China Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Change in 2024 in Australia.
Australia and China’s improving diplomatic relationship since the Albanese Government came to power in 2022 presents significant opportunities for green energy collaboration. With China's overcapacity in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, Australia stands to benefit from redirected Chinese investment. By leveraging its abundant renewable resources and enhancing critical mineral processing onshore, Australia is well positioned as a supply chain partner to the great global decarbonisation leader, particularly in the wake of global trade tensions between China and the EU and US.
Partnering with Chinese cleantech firms, which lead in research and development, can advance Australia’s green energy transition, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. While strategic "de-risking" from China is necessary, completely decoupling would be counterproductive. In addition to domestic economic and energy security benefits for both countries, enhanced bilateral trade and energy cooperation between the two nations could significantly boost the global energy transition and regional security.
>>>Read the op ed from CEF’s Xuyang Dong exploring this theme, forthcoming in Pearls and Irritations.
MONTHLY ENERGY UPDATE SHOWS CHINA BEATING TARGETS
Our latest Monthly China Energy Update shows that during the first 4 months of CY2024, China added 80GW of zero-emissions new capacity, accounting for 90% of the net capacity additions.
China will achieve its 2030 target 1,200GW of installed wind and solar capacity 6 years ahead of schedule – as it added 77GW of wind and solar capacity from January to April, bringing the total installed wind and solar capacity to 1,130GW by the end of April 2024.
Our latest update also highlights that in March, China saw its CO2 emissions fall for the first time in the past 14 months, despite the fact that China’s thermal power generation also increased 5.9% y-o-y during the first 4 months of CY2024.
On US President Joe Biden’s 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, we note Chinese EV leaders will renew their focus on other key markets like Brazil and Indonesia. As for the US’s 50% tariff on solar products, this hurts American consumers and slows down the US’ national renewable energy rollout.
SOUTHEAST ASIAN SOLAR CAN SHINE IN FACE OF US TARIFFS
CEF’S Xuyang Dong and Dr. Muyi Yang – Senior Policy Analyst from Ember and senior policy fellow at Asia Society Australia – published an oped in South China Morning Post on the challenges faced by Southeast Asia, now the world’s second-largest solar module producer, from potential US tariffs. With a production capacity of 70 GW by 2022, the region supplies a significant portion of US solar imports, particularly from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Despite geopolitical tensions and increasing protectionism, Southeast Asia can leverage its strong domestic market to maintain growth. The region's GDP was $3.8 trillion in 2023, with projected 4.6% growth in 2024. To achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century, the region needs to expand its solar capacity to over 2,100GW by 2050. By accelerating its clean energy transition, Southeast Asia can not only counter the impact of trade tensions and barriers, but also enhance energy security, attract investment, and promote sustainable economic development.
>>>Read the full op ed in the SCMP.
CHINA PLOUGHS TIDAL WAVE OF INVESTMENT INTO CLEANTECH R&D
As CEF’s Matt Pollard and Xuyang Dong wrote in their op ed this month, China’s world-leading cleantech majors are channelling staggering investment into R&D, which, coupled with the rapid expansion of manufacturing capacity, has catalysed record global supply and price deflation in critical decarbonisation technologies, including wind, solar, batteries, EVs and hydrogen technologies.
An analysis of financial statements revealed the world leaders are investing 5-7% revenue into R&D – ie., pouring more capital into long-term technological development and innovation than into shareholder profits – perfectly demonstrating China's commitment and long-term vision to decarbonise the world.
SEC & BANK OF AMERICA BRIEFED ON CHINA'S CLEANTECH REVOLUTION
Xuyang and Tim presented to Smart Energy Council’s China delegation, including former QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, prior to their trip to China, showcasing China’s current leadership in all fronts renewable energy, including technology, investment, deployment, and supply chain dominance.
Xuyang and Tim also delivered a presentation to the Bank of America and its clients, to introduce China electricity market trends, and CEF’s latest China report – POWER SHIFT: Staggering rise of renewables positions China to end new coal power before 2030. These engagements build on CEF’s outreach on China’s decarbonisation progress, including sharing research insights with other key global energy transition stakeholders.
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PILBARA ELECTRIFICATION AND GREEN IRON REPORTS
CEF has a detailed report forthcoming on the decarbonisation of the Pilbara in WA. The region is the beating heart of Australia’s iron ore industry, our #1 export commodity as the world’s biggest iron ore producer.
As the world energy transition accelerates, and carbon pricing mechanisms are set in place in global trade, the pivot to low-emission steel products will become of paramount importance for both steel-intensive industries decarbonising their supply chain emissions, and for economies looking to reduce domestic emissions from traditional fossil fuel-intensive steelmaking practices. This includes a shift to green iron, processed using firmed renewables. For China alone, this is a 1.8bn tonne per annum carbon emissions reduction opportunity, so Australia’s potential role to jointly deliver this is 100% world scale.
The report will highlight the importance of building common user electricity infrastructure in the Pilbara to transition the iron ore industry from high-emission, imported diesel and methane gas as energy sources, to electrified mining equipment powered by co-located wind, solar, and grid-firming batteries. Expanding renewable penetration of the state’s North West Interconnected System (NWIS) is a critical step in enabling low-emission industries of the future in the Pilbara – green iron, as well as green hydrogen and green ammonia.
We will follow this with an analysis of Australia’s green iron opportunity, showcasing the development to-date of green and low-emission value-added iron projects, and the policies required to accelerate the decarbonisation of the steel industry globally, leveraging a key new forthcoming WWF report on green steel.
The sunset of our metallurgical coal export earnings is approaching as global steelmakers decarbonise their operations and transition into electric, low-emission steelmaking, scrap recycling and green hydrogen, with a global investment race emerging in establishing green iron supply chains. Inaction by Australia on this opportunity is an immense risk to our iron ore and coal exports, as global leaders restructure value chains and orient them to jurisdictions that are investing in the future.
Green iron is the number one low-emissions industry opportunity of the future for Australia, and our report will take a deep dive into how this opportunity can be leveraged in the national interest to build our economic prosperity as the world approaches net zero.
Watch this space!
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QUEENSLAND BUDGET SHOWS SUNSHINE STATE STREAKING AHEAD
This month, the QLD Government released its latest budget, Premier Steven Miles’ first. It included the largest state investment package for renewable energy to-date in Australia.
CEF’s Matt Pollard published a detailed analysis of budget commitments into renewable energy and associated infrastructure, highlighting Queensland’s rapid transformation from a decarbonisation laggard to the nation’s leading state for future-facing energy and industries.
The QLD Government is deploying significant capital at speed and scale into renewable energy generation, large-scale batteries, cleantech manufacturing and decarbonising energy-intensive industries, key recommendations of CEF’s Queensland transformation report of February 2024.
The budget perfectly complements the Federal Government’s Future Made in Austria (FMIA) initiative, aimed at onshoring clean energy manufacturing and strategic metals and critical mineral refining using firmed renewables. Building on the work of former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Energy Minister Mick de Brenni’s transformational Energy and Jobs Plan, and deploying capital generated by Treasurer Cameron Dick’s brilliant progressive coal royalties scheme, Queensland’s budget was a bold and ambitious blueprint for Australia’s other energy and fossil fuel-intensive states to follow.
It was also great to see NSW Energy and Climate Minister Penny Sharpe and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey deliver a $3.5bn climate investment boost in the NSW 2024/25 budget, including $1bn to seed the creation of the Energy Security Corporation which will accelerate private sector investments in clean energy projects, with a likely focus on pumped hydro. Definitely a very good step forward, despite the fiscal constraints our state is in.
>>>Read Matt’s full analysis of the Queensland Budget.
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CEF TEAM UPDATE
CEF’s Matt Pollard – lead author of many of our key reports on critical minerals and metals, decarbonisation and electricity transformation – is now our Net Zero Transformation Analyst, with his role having transitioned beyond its original designation as EV Supply Chain Analyst.
Nishtha Aggarwal has moved on from her role as CEF’s Financed Emissions Analyst. We thank Nishtha for her contributions over her 21 months with CEF and wish her all the very best for her future endeavours.
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Annemarie for Tim, Paul, Nishtha, Matt, Xuyang and Amanda (see more on our team here).
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