Épisodes

  • Al Gore says stop Australia's diesel fuel subsidy - Tim Buckley Ep62

    Al Gore says stop Australia's diesel fuel subsidy - Tim Buckley Ep62
    Nov 2 2025
    Spark Club Podcast recorded on 31 October 2025 Highlights BESS deployments booming in Australia Batteries are the biggest disruptive force in global energy markets in 2025. Australia becomes world's third-largest utility battery market.Australia has overtaken the UK to rank behind China and the US in utility-scale battery capacity, with 14GW/37GWh of projects at or nearing financial close.Rystad Energy estimates the Australian pipeline of battery projects jumped 45GW in one year from 109GW in August 2024 to 154GW now.Meanwhile Minister Bowen is rightly crowing about the >100,000 home battery installs so far.Worth noting the world's largest hybrid BESS by MASDAR in the UAE, a 5GW solar and 19GWh BESS designed to provide 1GW of 24/7 power supply commenced construction this week.And AEMO's new 3Q2025 Quarterly Energy Dynamics report reveals that average wholesale electricity prices across the National Electricity Market, fell to $87/MWh, down 27% on the same quarter last year. AEMO says the surge in battery storage – up an average 461MW in the evening peaks – clearly had an impact on other peaking generation sources, with gas fired generation down 11%. All of these factors also helped the renewable share hit a new 3Q high of 42.7%, nearly 10% higher than the Q3 average of 39.3% last year. You'd never know this reading the mainstream climate science denialist media!AEMO's Quarterly Energy dynamics report had great news for Minister Bowen. China The September 2025 electricity generation statistics for China show a ⬇️ 5.4% yoy decline in coal and gas generation for the September month, and a ⬇️ 1.2% yoy decline in the first nine months.And with cement production volumes -5.2% yoy YTD 2025, and crude steel volumes -2.9% yoy YTD 2025, that is consistent with Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)'s suggestion that China's national emissions peaked back in March 2024.Rho Motion reports China's EV sales in the first nine months of 2025 are 9.0m, +24% yoy, largely in line with the global rate of +26% yoy (given China is 61% of global EV sales in 2025 YTD), while China's EV exports are booming. Lowlights Sanjeev Gupta strikes Australia again, and again, this time InfraBuild InfraBuild reported a net loss of $250m in FY2025 and is likely trading while insolvent, thanks to Gupta have borrowed $1.07bn of really expensive debt against it.Beyond time ASIC acted against directors. Tomago Closure Threats Rio Tinto is threatening to close Tomago aluminium smelter due to their inability to access cheap coal power beyond 2028.Oliver Yates has proposed a simple government intervention to ensure low cost zero emissions firmed #RE to permanently solve this problem.We cant afford to have every multinational corporate lining up for $100-1000m subsidies, blackmailing the Federal Government trying valiantly to implement their FMIA, 82% RE by 2030 and Green Metal Exports policies. The Methane Gas lobby is out in force The NSW and SA governments are out lobbying on behalf of SANTOS, trying to force Narrabri gas development through again, and again.Meanwhile the SA government announced another $17m taxpayer subsidy for new methane gas developments in SA.BlueScope is leading a manufacturing lobby group calling for more gas development.The obvious solution is to accelerate electrification of everything so we permanently remove our addiction to fossil fuels. Main Story – Fossil fuel subsidies It was Tim's pleasure to met former US Vice President Al Gore at the IGCC annual investor conference, and then for a follow up private session hosted by Wollemi and SEC with Australia's largest Asset Owners.Al Gore had Tim when he demanded governments should stop giving fossil fuel companies subsidies!Al Gore stamina and determination is seriously impressive, he spoke for over an hour at IGCC then gave a lunch presentation and then another afternoon presentation.CEF continues to advocate for the Federal Government to reform the diesel fuel rebate, a $12bn annual subsidy for expensive high emissions imported diesel.It was brilliant to have Matt Kean, Chair of the CCA repeatedly call out this massive $12bn annual subsidy by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the 15th largest budget expense item, and promote CEF's Transition Tax Incentive idea to instead incentivise the mining majors to invest in electrification and decarbonisation.CEF will be working with a growing coalition of aligned voices from CANA, LEAN, ACTU and Fortescue et al to push for this long overdue reform, particularly given it would be perfect announceable for Minister Bowen if and when Australia gets the COP31 presidency! What's coming up? Next week Tim is joining the ACBC for a full day discussion on Australia-China Energy Transition Dialogue then 2 days with the Climate Capital Forum in its third Parliament House delegation this year to discuss key issues in cleantech – YFYS, diesel fuel rebate and getting public capital deployments accelerated.Then in ...
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    45 min
  • Time to Act on Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 - Killian Daly Ep61

    Time to Act on Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 - Killian Daly Ep61
    Oct 12 2025

    We invited Killian Daly, CEO of Energy Tag, on to the Spark Club podcast on the 10th October. We recorded the podcast in London at an industry event.

    The reason for having Killian on is it's an important time for ensuring the policy settings are right for updating the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 Guidance. The discussion paper will be released next week, with a two month public consultation period.

    It's a great conversation about a common sense approach, grounded in the physics of energy, and how we need to make it accessible to everyone, even my Mum and Killian's Dad.

    Everyone in the cleantech industry in Australia, and around the globe, is advised to follow this important update to GHG Protocal Scope 2. The changes will deterime how future large corporate emissions will be reported. The accounting standards need to be updated to meet the needs of ongoing deployment of wind, solar and batteries into the 2030's and beyond.

    You can follow Killian Daly on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/killianpdaly/

    EnergyTag link - https://energytag.org/

    GHG Protocol Scope 2 link - https://ghgprotocol.org/scope-2-guidance

    Please share this episode with your network. Thanks

    The team at Spark Club.

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    28 min
  • Emissions targets are a thing. Tim Buckley Ep60

    Emissions targets are a thing. Tim Buckley Ep60
    Oct 5 2025
    Spark Club Podcast recorded on the 3rd October 2025 Highlights China's Envision announces a green passport for wind turbines Envision Energy, announced this week that its main wind turbine has been internationally certified via the Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) platform. 🔹 85–90% recyclability, maximizing circular economy potential 🔹 Supply chains on track for 100% green electricity by 2028 🔹 Transparent, internationally recognized carbon accounting China's cleantech leaders are embracing an international alignment to build collaboration and a race to the top on climate, even as the US abrogates their global leadership daily. Fortescue keeps powering towards Real Zero FMG this week announced significant new MoUs for international collaboration with global cleantech leaders to deploy world leading zero emissions technologies in Australia, and in the Pilbara.Dressed up as a global announcement mentioning a Spainish wind technology and repeating details on FMG's alliance with Germany's Leibherr BEV mining equipment, the names in these MoUs that stand out to me were CATL, BYD, LONGi, Envision Energy and XCMG. If you haven't guessed, the common aspect of these firms is that they are all Chinese cleantech leaders. Battery announcements in Australia are coming thick and fast Australia's operating BESS capacity hit 6.5GWh this week, and we have had new BESS developments literally ever day across Australia in recent months.Minister Bowen's Home Battery subsidy program has continued at 1000 new installs per day, with >72k since 1 July 2025 – widely successful and really building momentum – speed and scale to boost confidence that DER and CER are going to play a much larger role than any models showed even a few years ago, and reminding everyone that batteries on wheels means V2G is only to going to accelerate the grids ability to absorb ever higher VRE penetrations. Lowlights BHP keeps walking back its decarbonisation ambitions Reflective of the climate luddite board and CEO, and lowering of climate ambitions from key US investors thanks to Trump, BHP has walked back its decarbonisation investments.And even as Chinese mining EV and truck technologies are taking off in 2025 like passenger vehicle EVs did in the last 2 years, BHP's allegiance to the climate luddites at Caterpillar US means they are pretending to be blind to the opportunities emerging in their #1 export destination i.e. China.But China has given BHP a rather large kick this past week -putting an open ended ban on BHP sourced iron ore imports to China. A timely reminder that we ignore our #1 trade partner at our own peril! Main Story – Australia's 62-70% Emissions target for 2035 & Lifting Capital deployments Minister Bowen announced a 62-70% emissions reduction by 2035 target, supported by the CCA 's Matt Kean as requiring a halving of emissions in just one decade, a more than doubling of the current run-rate of reductions achieved over the last decade.This requires a whole of economy approach to emissions reduction, a far wider approach than we have seen to-date, which has relied primarily on electricity sector decarbonisation.The Government's DCCEEW has released 6 key sector plans to guide the approach covering electricity and energy, ag and land use, the built environment, industry, resources and transport.The government has also stepped up public capital allocations to support FOAK deployments of new technologies and de-risk supply chains and crowd in private capital. A new $1.1bn low emissions liquid fuels funding was announced, plus an additional $2bn equity top-up to CEFC, and a re-assignment of $5bn of NRF's $15bn allocation (95% un-used to-date) into a Net Zero Fund.CEF has been tracking government funding – both on-budget and capital allocations e.g. to CEFC, NRF, EFA and NAIF, and we have tracked $76bn of Federal allocations since the start of 2023, and another $6bn of state allocations. But positively, we have tracked some $16bn of deployments since December 2024, and there is a noticeable lift in activity and efforts to get the money Chalmers has put on the table out the door and working.ARENA has 4 major tenders under way, Bowen has 4 CIS tenders underway (2 WA and 2 NEM), and EFA / DFAT have 3 allocations totalling $400m in the last 3 months from the $2bn Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility PM Albanese established last year.Certainly CEF's engagement via the ARIA with various Federal Government ministries and departments over recent weeks confirms a strong elevation of efforts to get decarbonisation, electrification, green exports and FMIA actions underway.We also saw In an address to the UN General Assembly Chinese President Xi Jinping announce China's target to reduce carbon emissions by 7-10% from their peak by 2035.Australia's move was supported by a Progress report on China's national carbon market (2025) by China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment that stressed the strong ...
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    41 min
  • Is Australia a Petro State or an Electro State? Tim Buckley Ep59

    Is Australia a Petro State or an Electro State? Tim Buckley Ep59
    Sep 14 2025

    Highlights
    China Cleantech Exports Boom

    • Lauri Myllyvirta @CREA notes value of China's exports of clean energy technologies hit a new all-time record in July, passing the previous high from March 2023. China exported $18.4bn worth of solar and wind power equipment, EVs and batteries during the month.


    Australia Brazil Chamber of Commence Forum

    • ABCC business forum in the lead up to COP30, Organised by the wonderful Mara Bun.
    • We also head about Brazil looking to develop world leading green iron projects.


    Lowlights
    Qld LNP State Government Capture by the Fossil fuel Industry looks complete

    • Climate science deniers in the State LNP have stopped Queensland's powerful progress towards energy transition and decarbonisation, taking heart at the stupidity of Trump in the US to replicate his corruption of democracy
    • Last week's decision to pull legislation enabling the development of Westwind's 1.2GW Forest Wind project in a state pine forest – a monoculture with low biodiversity – creates massive investor uncertainty.
    • Meanwhile, building on Adani's success in winning a 7 year royalty holiday for their Galilee coal mine from the LNP. Rumours that the development of the Galilee Coal Basin is back on the agenda, most likely led by climate science denying Gina and her sidekick billionaire mate, Clive.

    Bowden Lead Mine progressing in NSW

    • Environmental Solicitor Elaine Jonston is working with the local community of Mudgee to protect them against a proposed lead-zinc-silver mine development 2km from a school.

    BHP defers decarbonisation

    • Really disappointing to hear BHP has walked back their decarbonisation investments, cancelling solar and BESS in the Pilbara even as they say mining EV technologies are not commercially viable as yet.


    Main Story
    EU Delegation to WA re Green Hydrogen and Iron

    • Tim attended and spoke at a Green Hydrogen and Iron forum in Perth organised by the Danish and German Governments to develop EU-Australia strategic agreements in decarbonisation of industry.
    • The 30 strong delegation from the EU spent 3 days touring the Pilbara and Midwest WA, the two major areas of iron ore mining, and the locations for potential DRI and green iron refineries. A follow-on private meeting with the WA Premier was set for this week to try to seal inter-government cooperation for this geopolitically important FOA deal in green iron for Australia to proceed toward FEED and FID and then into construction.
    • Tim's hope is Minister Bowen gets to announce 3 lighthouse green iron deals as president of COP31, leveraging public-private bilateral / trilateral deals with Germany, China and Korea/Japan


    Coming up

    • Hopefully this month we will see if Adelaide is to host COP30 next November 2026, in partnership with the Pacific. The process remains opaque and tortuous, and bizarrely if Australia cant convince Turkey to pull out, we both lose and Germany gets to host it.
    • We also have the National Risk Assessment for Climate report pending, its sitting on Minister Bowen's desk, alongside Dr Frank Jotzo's final carbon leakage review report, and the 2035 NDC for Australia. Lets hope Bowen listens to the climate science and sets our target at 75% rather than the BCA's total lack of ambition going for more like 60%.
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    41 min
  • Australia's diesel addiction problem - Tim Buckley Ep58

    Australia's diesel addiction problem - Tim Buckley Ep58
    Aug 23 2025
    Highlights Adelaide Green iron conference
    • Tim attends and presents at the WEF / Greenhouse green iron event, with almost 200 people from government, industry, think tanks and finance talking about the opportunities for green iron projects.
    • A key need is for Australia to get a couple of proposals to FID and into construction, and this is a key opportunity should Australia win #COP31 – to announce bilateral agreements and public-private support for a German-Australia, a China-Australia and a Japan-Korea-Australia trilateral deal into FID.
    China's emissions down -

    Clean-energy growth helped China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fall by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024.

    Lowlights Canberra - Not getting allocated funds off the table and out the door

    Energy Renaissance goes into receivership

    BHP

    BHP Results this past week shows a distinct lack of pressure for BHP to show any serious climate effort, claiming EV technologies aren't ready, and BHP has deferred any material investment till next decade!

    Main Story - Diesel Fuel Rebate subsidy reform
    • CEF's new report on Diesel Fuel Rebate subsidy reform "Transition Tax Incentive: Reforming Fuel Tax Credits into a Decarbonisation Tailwind"
    • A policy proposal to phase-out the fuel tax credit scheme for its largest beneficiaries with a transition tax incentive scheme to accelerate electrification and decarbonisation.
    • Since the Fuel Tax Act 2006 (starting FY07), the FTC Scheme has provided $123bn in diesel subsidies to FY25. Beyond this, by FY30, it will have provided $184bn in subsidies.
    What's coming up?

    A Green Hydrogen and Iron conference in Perth 4-5 Sept 2025, building momentum towards a German-Austral ia bilateral green iron agreement.
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    37 min
  • Will Europe Deploy, Deploy, Deploy? - Linda Romanovska Ep57

    Will Europe Deploy, Deploy, Deploy? - Linda Romanovska Ep57
    Aug 20 2025

    Spark Club - Linda Romanovska
    Introduction to Linda to provide context for the conversation

    Highlights
    Recent trip to Canberra with Climate Capital Forum
    International Court of Justice Opinion and the visit of Simon Stiell to Australia

    Lowlights
    The confusion and unproductive distraction cause by the "Omnibus" process – formally aimed at "simplification", but realistically is "deregulation" of corporate sustainability.

    Main Story
    Europe
    Repeated, and unrelenting commitment to the EU Green Deal Objectives re-enforced on key recent policy documents, such as the "Competitiveness Compass". It sets the new direction of the EU organised under 3 pillars:
    Pillar I: Closing the innovation gap
    Pillar II: A joint roadmap for decarbonisation and competitiveness – Clean Industrial Act
    Pillar II: Reducing excessive dependencies and increasing security.

    What's coming up?
    Finalisation of the 2040 target - amending the Climate Law to include a legally binding target of net 90% GHG emissions reduction by 2040 (in time for COP 30)
    Probably joint climate ambition announcements with China
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    45 min
  • Australia's Energy Transformation Progress - Tim Buckley Ep56

    Australia's Energy Transformation Progress - Tim Buckley Ep56
    Aug 3 2025

    Highlights

    • Australia's Federal Senate Disinformation inquiry
    • ARENA award to Calix $45m
    • Allegra Spender Productivity and Tax Roundtable

    Lowlights

    • Lithium Hydroxide Refinery Write-off by IGO

    Main Story The Race to 82% Renewables

    • AEMO's Quarterly Energy Dynamics 2QCY2025
    • Methane gas generation plays an important but small and progressively declining role
    • 25% upscaling of the CIS
    • Big BESS News

    What's coming up?

    • CEF hoping Minister Bowen will go the top end of the CCA's 65-75% reduction target.
    • Australia is yet to win the presidency of #COP31, if we do, that will be a key priority for CEF's Caroline Wang over the coming 15 months.

    End
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    45 min
  • China's wind & solar deployment surges - Tim Buckley Ep55

    China's wind & solar deployment surges - Tim Buckley Ep55
    Jul 13 2025
    Highlights

    Our first highlight - the Capacity Investment Scheme.

    South Australia's high RE % record

    Green Steel subsidies from South Korea

    US invests MP Materials a US Rare Earths materials

    Lowlights

    Labor can't seem to kick the fossil fuel habit

    heat pump numbers in NSW

    Main Story – China

    China's State Grid Energy Research Institute expects amazing deployment numbers

    EU is shifting on China

    Govt intervention on disorderly low-price competition

    Prime Minister Albanese's official visit to China from July 12 to 18, at the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Qiang.

    What's coming up?

    Climate Capital Forum to Federal Parliament 28-29th July.

    And milestone coming up for Nicolette Boele, MP for Bradfield.

    Enjoy the podcast.

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    47 min