Securing Energy Independence

Going electric improves exports and increases resilience

Right now we are experiencing how vital it is for Australia to have a resilient energy system. Australia has world-beating renewables resources. Dr Monique Ryan MP along with financial analyst Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance to outline pathways forward towards greater energy independence for Australia.

• Check out Tim Buckley’s presentation here – chapter point links below in bold
• You can download the slideset here
• Watch the meeting again on YouTube Live here – chapter point links below in bold

The global clean energy transition

How does Australia pivot towards energy self-sufficiency in our transport, agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries and minimise our dependence on fragile fossil fuel supply chains? Can the effects of the US / Israel Iran war be the impetus for Australia to rapidly electrify everything?

Given the current war with Iran, energy security and independence has been a hot topic in our community. The war has highlighted how vulnerable we are to energy shocks caused by world events we have no control over. The obvious answer is to build our own capabilities to the extent possible.

Tim Buckley

Tim Buckley is an expert in green energy finance, markets, and risk with thirty years of financial market experience, covering the Australian, Asian and global equity markets, and is a highly influential finance commentator. He has written more than 100 reports on the global energy transition and the roles of finance and policy in accelerating critical decarbonisation trends.

The world is rapidly moving to affordable clean energy, EVs, batteries and electrotech, and well over 50% this is driven by China. Analyst and financier Tim Buckley details the pace of this change with implications for Australia’s own transition, exports and carbon pricing.

Climate Energy Finance  is a think tank established in 2022 that works probono in the public interest to accelerate decarbonisation: “We conduct public interest financial analysis on the most profound economic transformation since the industrial revolution: the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.”

 

The global picture

Targeting the clean energy transition – Tim Buckley reminds us that the world is heating due to fossil fuel combustion: “And at the end of the day, the smartest actuaries in the world stand by what the scientists are telling us, and that is that we’ve now had 12 of the 12 hottest years on record.”

“At the end of the day, the climate science is clear. It is a climate crisis, but we do have the solutions at the scale and at the costs and at the technology readiness to solve for the climate science. We just need other countries to emulate what China’s already doing.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

 

Global investment in energy is huge, however renewables are outspending fossil fuels 2:1.  

“According to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 2.3 trillion USD was invested in decarbonization, electrification of our energy system around the world. 2.3 trillion is a lot of money.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

Tim Buckley cites Bloomberg – to meet global net zero globally renewables spend needs to treble. Bloomberg’s New Energy Outlook report makes that the case that increasing renewables will substantially improve energy security: “The transition to new energy technologies improves resilience to fossil-fuel price shocks” – NEO 2026

“Now Bloomberg estimates that if we are to solve for climate science, the world needs to double or triple the amount of annual investment. So we need to be spending five, six, 7 trillion USD each and every year. The money is absolutely there. I’m from finance, so if you have the right price signal, if you have the right incentives, finance can solve for this.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

China is driving the change

China leads the pivot to renewables with two thirds of global additions in 2025.

“China led the world 20 years ago and have exceeded their goals repeatedly. ​China has clarity of action for the next 5 to ten years due to medium term planning.”

Robert Pettit, Lighter Footprints Committee

 

“When it comes to wind and solar, it is unbelievable the scale of what China is doing and the only way you can do it is actually go and see it firsthand. I’d love all of our politicians at the federal level to go to China and actually see it, because it’s the only way you can really believe it, that it is absolutely a national mission for China to dominate every zero emissions industry of the future.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

 

The electric vehicle transition is led by China – half or more of global production,. China also leads in critical materials, R&D, and domestic sales – China is not just the world’s biggest EV producer but also the world’s biggest consumer.

 

Battery installations are accelerating and are turbocharging solar. China dominates installations, the supply chain and does 80% of global battery recycling. ” But China is forecast to be 50% of the world’s battery in stores each and every year, and they’re going to grow 50% per annum each and every year.”

“Trump cheered the day we invaded Iran because he pushed up the price of oil, and Exxon Mobil and Chevron made a huge amount of extra profits, like triple the profits overnight thanks to Trump’s invasion. It wasn’t very well thought through. But China is the biggest beneficiary.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

China is the biggest beneficiary of the Middle East conflict, with huge rises in electrotech exports including EVs.

“China is now exporting 25 billion USD a month of battery solar and EVs. China EV sales. BYD’s EV sales in May were up 80% year on year. The top four EV exporters in China were up 52 – 80% year on year in the month of May, and this is solar and batteries combined.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

What about Australia?

Australia, as a key fossil exporter, has a mixed record on the clean energy transition, but is leading in some areas

“Australia led the world with the Tesla Hornsdale battery reserve down in South Australia. That was only eight years ago. That was the biggest battery in the world by a mile, a 100 megawatt hours. That’s a rounding error compared to the ten biggest batteries Australia is building concurrently right now, which are all in the gigawatt hours.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

Australia is showing global leadership on battery storage, first with Hornsdale and now batteries are getting larger, GW scale with longer storage – 2hr to 8hrs

 

Australia’s home battery scheme is wildly successful with 11.4 GW installed in 11 months. Even the AFR admits that  helping to lower electricity prices, even in the middle of a second global conflict centred around fossil fuels, buffered by increasing amounts of clean energy generation and battery storage.

“Our home battery scheme. In 11 months we’ve done 11.4GW hours. This is beyond anything even Minister Bowen thought was possible. Australians are voting with their own dollars.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Tim Buckley emphasised the need to solve for renters – the home battery scheme has been great for home owners and has very much reduced pressure on the grid, even in the middle of a second fossil oriented global crisis.

Electricity prices spiked much more in 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but less so now, in large part due to a higher penetration of solar and batteries. Even “the AFR had to recognize that record batteries are today driving down power prices materially” – where even renters are benefitting from this price deflation, shown by the lower prices flowing through into the default market offer.

“In 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine. Coal prices went through the roof, gas prices went through the roof, oil prices went through the roof. Australian energy prices went through the roof, Australian electricity prices went through the roof. Fast forward four years. Our electricity prices, our gas prices are down. We are actually getting there and the difference is renewable energy and batteries.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

“We’ve got the safeguard mechanism review. Australia 12 years ago had the right policy. We led the world. We had a big carbon price. Tony Abbott rejoiced about removing it. We have a carbon price by stealth. It’s called the Safeguard Mechanism.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism is up for review in 2026 – this is an important opportunity to start to align our energy policies with major trading partners as China expands its carbon price coverage by 50% next year, in response to Europe’s carbon border pricing. Tim Buckley emphasised the need to align with our major trading partners: “We need a price on carbon domestically so that we can prepare when China implements a price on carbon in either China or Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand jump on board and it becomes an Asian price on carbon.”

Tim Buckley emphasised, that although Safeguard Mechanism is a “fourth best solution”, it is still a key policy initiative. “We’ve got to give the government more spine”. We have to “make sure that we lift the quality of the emissions trading scheme we’ve got”.

 

“It was interesting to hear Tim Buckely’s focus on China’s vision and drive towards renewables and electrification. They make a plan and then execute it unwaveringly. This contrasts with Monique Ryan’s comments about the recent budget which had very little in it for climate and the environment.”

Lynn Frankes, Lighter Footprints Committee

 

Monique Ryan

Dr Monique Ryan is an Australian politician and former paediatric neurologist who has served as the independent Member for Kooyong since May 2022.

The Budget

“Many of you will know that the budget was handed down three weeks ago and there was very little actually in it around climate or the environment in particular, a startlingly small amount on environment and on biodiversity and all the things that we might have thought a couple of years ago that we would be talking about in 2026.”

Dr Monique Ryan MP

The current crisis in the Middle East not only highlights the fragility of fossil supply lines, increasing our motivation to go electric, but unfortunately has made it harder to tax fossil exports: “We haven’t been talking about the need to tax oil and gas, as more than 3 million Australians told the government they wanted it to do prior to the budget, because that’s just not something that the government is able or willing to come to grips with right now.”

 

Dr Ryan noted that the climate wars are clearly not over in Australia and highlighted that efforts to hold the government to account and appropriately tax the oil and gas sector will continue: “I think that there will be movement on it before this term of Parliament ends, but it’s going to be a struggle and it’s going to be something that independents and members of parties like the Greens are going to have to continue to fight for.”

​”The Government. has no intention of reining in the $4.7 billion diesel excise tax that benefits the biggest 20 miners. Total cost is $11 billion per annum.”

Robert Pettit, Lighter Footprints Committee

Lynn Frankes, Lighter Footprints Committee said that Dr Ryan suggested that the failure to effectively tax oil and gas companies on the profits they make from our resources while at the same time saying that we don’t have the funds to support Australians in need tells us a great deal about our current government’s priorities and the extent to which we are all being taken advantage of by multinationals.

Electric vehicles provisions in the Budget include retaining the fringe benefits EV tax exemption, accelerating EV infrastructure provision especially on long haul routes, and increasing active transport provisions from $100m to $500m over the next four years. “It was possibly the worst possible time for us to look at removing supports for electric vehicles. And, it was certainly something that I was advocating for pretty strongly” Dr Ryan said.

“My team and our community has been advocating pretty strongly for some of that funding to go towards the Hawthorn to Box Hill Active Transport Trail, which is something which has been on the horizon for our community for a long, long time.”

Dr Monique Ryan MP

 

PRRT – not fit for purpose

There was no change in the petroleum resource rent tax: “Just reminding you, as many of you will know, that it will generate half of the revenue of, excise from beer by the end of this decade.”  DR Ryan noted that  that the government has continued to fund the diesel fuel rebate “which is funding our biggest, some of our biggest fossil fuel polluters to a total of $11 billion.”

“Almost $4.7bn of that goes to the 20 big mining companies, per year”. The government has signalled that it has no intention of unwinding that rebate. “That is an ongoing struggle that I think could be fertile territory in the next couple of years, certainly leading up to the next federal election.”

“It’s paradoxical that we continue to subsidize the mining industry and some of the big fossil fuel companies to use fossil fuels. It’s insane.”

Dr Monique Ryan MP

 

The home battery scheme has been extended: “1 in 25 Australian homes has got a battery in the last 12 months, just from that scheme itself, 415,000 homes since July 2025″.

 

When it comes to issues of energy equity Dr Ryan highlighted the lack of provisions for renters: “The other thing that was missing from the budget this year, really, were really strong signals to help with electrification of rental homes”

“​The Government is. reluctant to grow support for insulation. LNP seeks to reduce energy efficiency levels for homes.”

Robert Pettit, Lighter Footprints Committee

Dr Ryan noted that are some concerns about the integrity of the three hour free electricity program “and the extent to which decreases in home electricity prices are being passed on to consumers.” Dr Ryan and the other Independents have been working with Solar Citizens on trying for incentives for landlords for solar and batteries, plus looking at insulation and energy efficiency.

 

The Safeguard Mechanism and Polluter Pays

Australia is up for a review of  the Safeguard Mechanism: “we have this mandatory review, in the second half of this year, it’s probably going to be announced next month.

“So when we think of that as being the federal government’s most significant initiative for cutting industrial emissions, it’s a really important piece. The question is whether it can be extended in an effective way or whether we should remove it with another alternative means of, decreasing emissions.”

Dr Monique Ryan MP

 

It would be worth considering something like Rod Simms’ polluter pays mechanism, an alternative means of pricing carbon “decreasing emissions and capturing smaller emitters which aren’t currently captured under the Safeguard Mechanism.”

 

Super El-Nino, leaving no-one behind

Finally, Dr Ryan asked us to remember the context this year – a looming super El-Nino, a time of great anxiety where people feel besieged.

“It is an ongoing struggle to bring climate and environment to the forefront in the middle of a cost of living crisis, crisis of home affordability and availability, young people dealing with intergenerational inequity, a tax system that stacked against them, HECS debt and then climate.”

Dr Monique Ryan MP

 

In Conversation

 

Decarbonising transport

How do we achieve self sufficiency in transport? How do we get off fossil fuels which are 20% of our emissions?

Tim Buckley pointed to the stupidity of continuing to subsidise fossil fuels with diesel rebate. “At the end of the day, we need to decarbonize our mining sector, our freight sector, and we need to decarbonize, have transport, passenger vehicle sector. As a nation we waste $50 billion a year buying oil and diesel and aviation fuel from the Middle East. Now it might come via Singapore, Malaysia or Japan, but it’s coming from the Middle East.”

China is decarbonising transport, primarily for national security reasons.

“We’ve got to get off that addiction. Let’s do what China is doing. They are doing it for national self-interest. It’s to get off their addiction to imported oil because they know America can cut their sea lanes. They’ve known that for decades.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

$50bn could be spent on investment on jobs in regional Australia: “Solar on every building, solar on every warehouse, electric vehicles”.

Tim Buckley agreed that the budget was all about cost of living. “And the inflationary impacts of our addiction to imported oil. That’s one of the reasons they couldn’t act on some of the initiatives that you and I wanted, that you spoke to, because ultimately they were worried about the inflationary impact.”

Freight diesel costs have gone up 50%, fertiliser 30%. We need to decarbonise freight and simplify the plethora of transport regulations. Pressure is needed on the mining sector, but the Minerals Council and BHP threatened high budget campaigns against Labor if they taxed fossil exports.

“They threaten our prime minister with a $25 million advertising campaign if he touched the diesel fuel rebate. That is why Albo backed down, because the last time the Minerals Council threatened the Prime Minister, they got rid of the Prime Minister.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Dr Ryan commented on the huge pressure of fossil advertising spend at Canberra airport: “everywhere you look there’s ads for fossil fuel. Apparently it’s natural gas, so that’s fine. It’s actually quite dystopian all around our nation’s capital.”

 

Transmission versus Storage

Dr Ryan asked about transmission infrastructure, which is struggling with social licence. “What can we do? Because that does seem to be something that’s really holding up progress quite significantly.”

Tim Buckley noted that electricity transmission and offshore wind have become politicised.

“Do farmers want to lose big tracts of their land to transmission towers? Well, if they’re compensated fairly, I think they probably would if they were consulted, if they had the right to say no. But if if the federal government want to put an expressway through, they wouldn’t have any say. They just nationalise the land.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Offshore wind needs multiple projects to develop efficient supply chains: “You can’t build one offshore wind. You’ve got to build five of them.” Unlike in Europe, offshore wind is probably dead in Australia, and we are building big batteries instead of transmission – transmission costs have gone up, and battery prices have more than halved in the last five years.

“We probably need half the transmission we thought we needed five years ago, according to the AEMO Integrated System plan. And we’ll probably have half that number again because we just can’t get it built. And if we build it, it’s so expensive it’s not worth having.

 

We do need to have interstate transmission. We do need to have pumped hydro storage. But we need a lot less than we thought we did five years ago, even with EVs and data centers. So at the end of the day, economics have changed.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

So it’s worth looking at a lot more rooftop solar and community energy resources, especially as consumers are willing to pay tens of thousands for self generation and storage.

“My brother in law has gone from having none to having a roof full of solar, because he suddenly realized they can get his electricity prices down. And now he’s one of those people looking, constantly checking his phone app and showing off about how much is generating.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Data Centres

Dr Ryan asked about data centres: “the electricity that we may require for data centers, which seem to be going up at a rate of knots in the capital cities is not sufficiently regulated as yet. “I know people are looking at the water requirements, but the energy requirements are really significant. If you got any thoughts about that.”

Tim Buckley talked about the need for a national data centre policy, building behind the meter solar and using spare capacity like quarries or industrial wastelands.

“The Industry Minister is has said he is going to subscribe to a national data centre policy. Now he’s got to convince his state counterparts to do it because ultimately they’re the ones approving it.

 

We’ve got New South Wales being played by the data centres. The operators are all big global players with trillions of dollars in capital, and it’s a gold rush. And so New South Wales premier is fighting with the Victorian Premier. We need a national convention. We need to make sure that they’re in the regions. We need to make sure that there is sharing in the benefit and that the data centres are part of the solution.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Data centres could drive accelerated decarbonisation if they can become part of the solution: “Data center owners have trillions of dollars in capital. I’m not making that up. Trillions of dollars in capital. If you ask them to spend $2 billion to power with therm to renewable energy, their data centre as a condition of their approval, they’ll do it tomorrow” if our governments hold firm against the very powerful financial vested interests. “If someone walks in with $1 trillion in their pocket and talks to one of our ministers, I think the minister is going to cave.”

Dr Ryan mentioned that much of the approvals were being driven by Councils, for instance in Western Sydney.

 

The Capacity Investment Scheme

Dr Ryan asked about the capacity investment scheme. “It’s one of the government’s federal government’s biggest pieces for expediting large scale energy projects. How well do you think it’s working at this point in time?”

Tim Buckley mentioned a panel he hosted recently with five finance experts, some from big funds and the reaction was the jury’s still out: “We still haven’t got any projects or almost any projects in the capacity investment scheme to final investment decision”.

“It’s Minister Bowen’s flagship scheme. He’s still very optimistic. But I follow the money, not what politicians say. And I would give it a C minus if I was being nice. You probably hear that David Leach might be, more F minus.

 

And I’ll be fair, they’re trying to do 5 or 6 things in one go. They’re trying to look after First Nations. They’re trying to do local content. They’re trying to say, do you have great access? They’re trying to work out the lowest cost to consumers, because the higher the price, the more we all pay for electricity.”

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

 

 

 

Resources

• Listen to Tim Buckley again with clear slides in this highlights video here.
• China tech, manufacturing and exports is dominating the future of energy – Australia has many advantages and we need to catch up with this electric future – download Tim Buckley’s slideset here
• Listen to energy finance expert Tim Buckley and Dr Monique Ryan MP on YouTube Live here
• Renewables got to 51% Q4 2025 – find out more about the advantages of the clean energy transition here
• Event pics, expert links and quotes in our Facebook album here
• You are welcome to download the Agenda here including informative links​.