Grant McDowell is in London and Tim Buckley is in Sydney recording the Spark Club Podcast on the 23rd March 2026 Highlights – Draft AER Default Market Offer Brilliant to see the Australian Energy Regulator has today flagged draft default market offer (DMO) electricity pricing down ⬇️ 1% to ⏬ 10% for residential consumers, and between ⬇️ 8% to ⏬ 21% for small business consumers The DMO sets an efficiently priced safety-net for households and small businesses on standing offer electricity plans and acts as a reference price to help consumers compare market offers. This is the draft ruling, with the final ruling released May 2026 for effect for the 12 months starting 1 July 2026. This is consistent with Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)'s quarterly energy dynamics highlighting Australia hit a record high 51% RenewableEnergy share in the 4QCY2025, and wholesale electricity prices fell by >40% yoy as a result. Highlights – PRRT reform - Petroleum Resource Rent Tax - Dodge The ACTU this week is calling for a flat 25% tax on Australian LNG to replace the entirely failing PRRT, to capture the wind fall war-profits being generated, and to then use the massive tax revenues of up to $40bn to fund energy poverty relief across Australia. Highlights – CATL CY2025 results highlight their global leadership and scale Nothing short of staggering to watch the rise and rise of China's CATL to supremacy in battery manufacturing. Their speed & scale of technology innovation is amazing to see. 🔋 a ⏫ 42% yoy jump in net profit to Rmb72.2bn (US$10.4bn) before one-off items, on sales ⏫ 17% yoy to Rmb424bn. 🔋 a ⏫ 39% yoy lift in sales volume of lithium-ion batteries to 661GWh 🔋 CATL has a massive home market advantage. China is the world's largest EV & BESS market. China's EV industry continued to grow sales nearly 30% yoy to >16 million units. 🔋 CATL sold 541GWh of power batteries, ⏫ 41.9% yoy, propelling the company to a new all-time high in global market share. 🔋 CATL employs >23,000 R&D personnel, investing Rmb22bn in CY2025, +19% yoy (5.2% of sales). CATL stands as the sole battery industry firm selected for the "Top 100 Global Innovators." Total number of domestic & foreign patents owned and applied for by CATL reached 54,538. Lowlights

• The AFR is running a Minerals Council of Australia line that the Albanese government will ignore their super majority and leave the $11bn annual subsidy for high emissions super expensive imported diesel fuels in place. Claiming now is not the time. Tim disagrees. We need to learn from the current crisis and put in place

Main Story – NEW CEF REPORT: CHINA'S $120bn INVESTMENT BLITZ INTO GLOBAL CRITICAL MINERALS LEAVES AUSTRALIA EXPOSED Climate Energy Finance report warns Australia's dig-and-ship economy faces a clear and present threat as China systematically diversifies away from Australian supply across lithium, iron ore and critical minerals New report released 19th March – Raw Power: China locks-in global dominance of critical minerals and metals with $120bn outbound investment surge – finds that China's accelerating outbound resource investment program is reducing China's supply chain risks and locking-in its global dominance of key materials as it diversifies away from its dependence on Australian exports. This presents a clear and present economic risk to Australia, particularly as we have yet to find a structure to allow our world leading mining sector to move meaningfully beyond "dig-and-ship". CEF's report finds that:

• Australia holds world-significant reserves of the critical minerals and strategic metals that underpin the zero-emissions economy – bauxite, copper, nickel, rare earths – and is the world's #1 exporter of both lithium and iron ore, with China the overwhelmingly dominant destination for both. Yet Australia fails to process onshore, as a result ranking 105th of 145 countries on Harvard's Atlas of Economic Complexity, behind Botswana and Côte d'Ivoire, with manufacturing accounting for just 6% of GDP.
• CEF has tracked China investing more than US$120bn around the globe into mining and upstream processing since 2023 – building lithium supply chains across Africa and South America, anchoring the US$23 billion Simandou iron ore project in Guinea, and increasingly developing in-country processing capacity across partner nations. This is starkly illustrated by Simandou, which delivered its first shipment to China in January. Once fully ramped up by 2029, it will make Guinea the world's third largest iron ore exporter, producing high grade ore suitable for green steel. It is the centrepiece of China's explicit strategy to reduce its 80% reliance on Australian and Brazilian iron ore supply, directly threatening Australia's long dominance.
• In lithium mining, China's own domestic production now outstrips Australia's, where as recently as 2023 Australia had a 50% global market share. The absence of new Chinese investment into Australian lithium is a direct reflection of China's strategic diversification, and the February 2026 closure of Albemarle's lithium hydroxide plant in WA after just four years is a stark consequence of China's capacity expansions,both on- and offshore, and the critical need for a public interest response by Australia's governments to protect our base industrial capacities on national interest grounds. A string of threatened closures across alumina, aluminium, nickel, copper, lead, zinc and steel signals our mining value-add sector is under existential pressure.
• KPMG tracks that Chinese outbound foreign direct investment (OFDI) into Australia has collapsed by 85% since 2018, in 2024 making up just 1.5% of total inbound OFDI, and at just US$882m, a fraction of the peak of US$16bn in 2008 – even as two-way Australia-China trade reached an all-time record of A$300bn in 2025.
• CEF notes the geopolitical move by Japan's JOGMEC in March 2026 to collaborate with Australia's Lynas Rare Earths to secure rare earth supply long term at an agreed and mutually beneficial price. This is the sort of strategic investment required to enhance global supply chain resilience and underwrite surety of supply. Far more effective and lasting than blunt import tariffs on everyone and threats.
• Australia's green industrial program – the Future Made in Australia (FMIA) initiative, backed by more than A$81bn in federal capital support since 2023, plus A$6bn from state governments – is directionally correct and strategically important, particularly in the absence of a sufficient carbon pollution price signal to mobilise private capital. However, FMIA must accelerate in both ambition and execution, and be leveraged to attract value-adding FOAK investment. We should carefully and selectively engage in partnership opportunities with China, the world's cleantech leader, before its diversification away from Australian supply becomes more pronounced.

We make a number of recommendations including balancing policy support for foreign investment with targeted anti-dumping tariffs, local content mandates and onshore processing as a condition of new partnerships; accelerating public capital deployment to crowd-in private investment to value-adding industries; prioritising carbon pricing to value renewables-powered commodity value-adding; developing Green Energy Statecraft for national security, including an Australia-China Green Transition Cooperation Framework; and reforming Australia's foreign investment review regime to create a fast-track pathway for strategically aligned green projects. What's coming up? Tim is off to Hainan province in China next week for the Boao Forum business forum between Australia and China.

Grant McDowell & Tim Buckley– Spark Club Podcast 19 Feb 2026 - Hi and welcome to Spark Club podcast. I'm your host Grant McDowell. We are recording this podcast on the Garigal lands of the Eora nation and pay our respects to elders past and present. Welcome. And welcome Tim Buckley. Highlights Domestic firmed RE deployment The Clean Energy Council's 4Q2025 Investment Report demonstrates a rebound in large-scale renewable energy and storage investment across Australia. The quarter delivered record commissioning outcomes across generation and batteries, strong financial close activity. Five renewable generation projects (1.2 GW) and 5 storage projects (1.1 GW) reached FID during 4Q2025, with total capex >$4 billion across generation, storage and hybrid assets. newly commissioned renewable and storage projects. Nine generation projects were completed totalling 2.1GW of new. 4 storage projects (1.9 GW / 4.9 GWh) became operational, beating records broken in Q3 2025, reinforcing Australia's accelerating energy transition. The forward pipeline remains robust. There are currently 81 generation projects (13GW) and 75 storage projects (13 GW / 35GWh) either financially committed or under construction. This month started with NSW awarding contracts to six huge 8-hour battery projects, including one of the biggest in Australia – the 300MW and 3,500 megawatt hour Great Western BESS, All are due to be completed by 2030, and some are supersized above eight hours of storage. 1.2 GW and 12 GWh of long duration storage, massively further undermining the role of methane and PHS. This week also saw NSW announce an extra tender for more firmed renewables capacity to fill looming coal gap under Long-Term Energy Service Agreements (LTESAs) to leverage the fast to deploy BESS and solar leveraging infill opportunities across NSW and importantly, leverage the Battery boom to get more zero emissions generation into the mix. CBAM KEY TO GREEN COMMODITY OPPORTUNITY: JOTZO REVIEW Professor Frank Jotzo's Carbon Leakage Review Report to Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is finally public. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/about/news/carbon-leakage-review-final-report We agree with the review's finding that measures additional to the Safeguard Mechanism "may be required and desirable over time, for specific commodities at high exposure to carbon leakage risk in domestic markets…. A border carbon adjustment would be the most suitable option in these cases… [to] support the emergence of green commodity production in Australia, harnessing this country's opportunities to be a major contributor to global industrial decarbonisation through exports." It is clear that we need a price signal to drive decarbonisation of trade-exposed Australian industries through the extensive buildout of renewables infrastructure at speed and scale. Critical to all of the above is a price on carbon, leveraging and enhancing our domestic actions so as to provide a stronger signal for development of carbon pricing in international trade, and building on the price signal of the EU CBAM with an Asian CBAM, as we argued in our 2025 report. This would help catalyse investment into industrial decarbonisation at a speed and scale commensurate with the climate emergency and the green economy opportunity. GM - I'd like to pick up on minor issue relating to the design of the REGO in Australia replacing the LGC. The calculation mechanism for the Australian REGO is out of sync with the global standard. The REGO certificate is limited to the 1MWh per certificate rather than down to the watt hour per trading period. Sounds trivial but the REGO has a fundamental flaw as it requires the excess to be rolled over into the next trading period. This volume won't be accepted in the EU, meaning there will be small amounts of energy volume which can't be counted for every half hour trading period for the year. This flaw creates numerous problems as a global energy matching standard emerges in a number of forms;

• CBAMs in EU and Asia
• Green product standards - green hyrdogen green steel.
• and likely changes to GHGP Scope 2 in 2027.

This minor flaw is annoying and with a minor change to the REGO now we can save Australian exporters a world of pain for years to come. Middle Powers Highlight As the Middle Powers are a big topic for us this year, was there anything that jumped out to you since our last conversation? EV Buses in India Tim - KKR investment in electric buses in India. EV busses in India are now 30% lower total cost of ownership relative to diesel alternatives. The 30% cost advantage was enough to get KR over the line to put capital into rolling out EV buses in India. Australia risks being wedged. Australia must be open to international trade with all nations and avoid being wedged between China and the US. Lowlights Whyalla The SA Government has shelved their green hydrogen plans last year, and now the SA Treasurer has overtly flagged their intention to double down on the false dreams of a gas led recovery for the Whyalla Steelworks. Meanwhile this week saw the SA Premier provide a joint Federal-State $20m support for the magnetite mining sector is SA to boost 2Mtpa magnetite mining, a move we endorse. As per CEF's report last year, we think the government should support a multiphase redevelopment of the iron ore to green steel sector of SA by expanding magnetite mining and supporting a new greenfield RE-powered EAF to replace the beyond end of life blast furnace, and to ensure steel supply for downstream fabrication. Secondly our governments should use a chunk of the $500m Green iron investment fund to support semi-commercial scale deployments of Australian technologies to produce decarbonised iron and steel, namely a pilot Element Zero electrolyte green iron plant, a second 30ktpa Calix ZESTY magnetite to green iron plant and a 8ktpa BioCarbon plant, plus incentivising scrap steel recycling within state to feed the new EAF, with the majority of the input material imported for the first 5 years of operation. A phase 2 in the early 2030s would be to build a GH2 and RE powered green iron plant once the economics are stronger, and a path towards an Asian CBAM is better established. Main Story – Local content mandate – Ministers Ayres and Bowen are holding a rapid industry consultation about a new Future Made in Australia (FMIA) policy to incentivise local wind tower and transmission tower manufacturing. CEF has worked over the last year with an industry consortium and we pitched this exact policy initiative to the minister in December. Our recommendation was a policy with four pronged policy

1. A 20% national mandate for wind tower local content, leveraging and collaborating with low cost Chinese suppliers
2. A Production Credit to ensure the policy doesn't increase the cost of wind power to consumers
3. A clear long term volume target of 4GW of new wind annually to underpin factory utilisation
4. Capex assistance for the new factories required.

Interesting to see the EU this week do boosting local content mandates, The EU's upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act could signal a pivotal moment for green steel producers in northern Sweden. New "Made in Europe" rules are thought to require at least 25% low-carbon steel in public procurement and subsidy-backed projects. Green hydrogen-based production, electric arc furnaces, and scrap-based methods are, according to Bloomberg, explicitly highlighted as priority technologies. What's coming up? Tim is attending the community engagement in the Hunter Valley this week, to help build social licence, and then over the next couple of weeks attending and speaking at a number of conferences e.g. Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leaders (CISL) Group in Melbourne and Sydney and the Clean Energy Investor Group conference (CEIG) annual investor conference in Melbourne, Climate Action Week in Sydney the following week, then the Sydney Storage conference.

Quick 2025 retrospective We see the Climate Energy Finance's role as to provide a narrative difference to the mainstream media, and to try to leverage global / non-US developments to better inform Australia's understanding of the energy system transformation, the threats and opportunities for Australia.

China BESS - Batteries were likely to surprise, and they certainly did, even CEF's most bullish expectations. Australia's opportunity to go faster with some wins and many frustrations. And Carbon peaked emissions in 2024, flat to down in 2025 – despite 5% GDP growth. Big themes 2026 – From Grant McDowell

• In 2025 we discussed the rise and rise of China. In 2026 I think we'll see the rise and rise of the middle powers.
• New world disorder is opening up opportunities for China to collaborate with the middle powers, and beyond. China has learned from the mistakes of the Belt Road Initiative and seeking to collaborate.
• China's EVs are displacing over one million barrels of oil demand a day. The middle powers are moving from molecules to electrons for clean electricity and transport.
• Middle powers are tired of being lumbered with decades long expensive fossil generators are now leaning into many small and cheap. See Ethiopia's ban on petrol and diesel vehicle imports.
• Carbon trajectory – EU CBAM helps set a new market for world trade and carbon polluting countries. So once again we'll be following the work of Ember and Lauri Myllyirta.
• And our conversations will naturally include Australia. I'll be watching our energy transformation closely as we face a chicken and egg problem. As coal generation is extended investors are reluctant to back utility scale wind and solar projects. Which then allows the coal generation to extend. Utility scale batteries will play a role, however wind generation is key and every effort should be made to deploy, deploy, deploy.

Lets review each of those in turn. - Tim Buckley

1. China's "Small and beautiful", a positive reframing of the BRI to a more win-win-win approach.
   1. Mark Carney's middle powers speech, the India-UK FTA, and countries across Africa et al embracing electrification and energy independence,
   2. Small and beautiful, a reframing of the BRI to a more win-win-win approach.
   3. CEF has tracked >US%210bn of OFDI in cleantech since 2023.
   4. CEF has another major report pending on this, looking at China going global in resources and resource-value-adding over the last 3 years.
2. Carbon trajectory - 100% agree.
   1. China will spend the next 2 years expanding their national ETS by 50% to cover major industrial sectors, and then when ready, they'll starting talking about international alignment with the EU CBAM. Meanwhile, they will get ready.
   2. Japan's GX-ETS strategy includes carbon pricing being launched from April 2026, covering 60% of national emissions, a floor and ceiling price out to 2035, by 2030 A$18=46/t, then doubling again by 2035.
3. Australia electricity generation problems - True
   1. The CIS has to move from a lot of large scale announcements through to delivering projects into FID and construction, at speed and scale. Jury still out.
   2. AEMO 4QCY2025 Scorecard confirms this – strong growth in the pipeline across Australia, but not enough generation getting through FID.
   3. We are making progress. Great to see this week AEMO QED 4QCY2025 talk about RE being >50% for 4QCY2025 and the result was a near halving of electricity prices.
   4. And a lot of the media framing of the heatwaves of the last few weeks in South East Australia was how CER and solar is increasing grid resilience and providing power when most needed. A very positive reframing.

Other CEF priorities in 2026:

1. Fuel Tax Credits
   1. Re FTC - In December 2025, Battery-electric heavy duty trucks crossed 50% of new sales in China. That is profound for accelerating the electrification of everything story (think passenger EV adoption, energy independence, a $50bn pa onshoring on energy supply into Australia) and for CEF's work in diesel fuel rebate reform, give we need to embrace this, rather than keep providing an $11bn imported diesel fuel subsidy headwind to decarbonisation of mining and trucking.
2. Safeguard mechanism review
3. Green metal exports
4. Government capital deployment still too slow

And it wouldn't be a talk with CEF without talking about China, again and again! The new installs out for December 2025 this week are mind-blowing, again.

Spark Club Podcast Ep 63 -21st Nov 2025 Hosted by Grant McDowell and guest this week, Tim Buckley Highlights BESS deployments booming

• Batteries are the biggest disruptive force in global energy markets in 2025. Australia becomes world's third-largest utility battery market.
• Rho Motion reports Grid-scale BESS market saw 12.7GWh of new capacity enter operations globally in October 2025, +29% y-o-y. Meanwhile, global YTD deployments have reached 156GWh, +38% yoy.
• China led new operational capacity with 8.8GWh of utility scale BESS added in the Oct 2025 month – double what Australia will do this year – including one giga-scale vanadium flow battery.

Powering Past Coal Alliance South Korea announces Powering Past Coal Alliance at COP30 in Brazil. Has consequences for Australia's future coal exports. Lowlights China RE capacity installs slow significantly

• China ended a major VRE incentive program in May 2025, which saw a massive pull forward of solar and wind installs, with a world record month of >90GW installed just in the month of May 2025, meaning ytd installs were double in 5MCY2025.
• Fast forward the following 5 months, and new RE installs have been running at just 12GW per month (still a monthly run rate double what Australia will do this year).
• The silver lining is that national emissions in China are still 10 months into 2025 down yoy, having possibly peaked back in March 2024. Steel and cement production in the month of Oct'2025 was down 5-10% yoy, so despite strong electricity demand driving thermal power generation +5% yoy, emissions overall for the month of Oct 2025 were down yoy.

Tomago Closure Threats

• Rio Tinto is threatening to close Tomago aluminium smelter due to their inability to access cheap coal power beyond 2028.
• It is great to hear that the Federal Govt. is closely evaluating a financial intervention that provides a permanent decarbonisation solution that is globally cost competitive – but will, if delivered, represent a major shift away from the "free markets" doctrine of Australia over the last few decades that has guttered our manufacturing and value-add sectors.

What does it mean for Bowen and Adelaide. Main Story – Whyalla steel works

• CEF released our new report A Strategy for Whyalla: Enabling the Transformation and Decarbonisation of the Steelworks
• Leveraging targeted industry and climate policy to support a first-of-a-kind Australian capital deployment into firmed RE to produce GH2 & then green iron.
• Our report discusses the challenges facing SA in terms of energy supply pathways – there is a fork in the road ahead, methane lock-in or going the higher cost, higher risk GH2 route that aligns with the global need to drive decarbonisation and hence in building a commercial deployment to show how this can be done. This comes with all the risks of very slow GH2 deployments globally to-date and the still very high capital costs, and FOAK risks. So we would suggest a cautious evaluation of this, whilst pursuing policies of no regrets now.
• We recommend the SA Govt:
• Build magnetite mining capacities – high quality, low impurity
• Build the enabling RE firming and grid infrastructure ahead of demand
• Build a green steel EAF
• Build downstream steel fabrication capacities for domestic market needs
• Underwrite FOAF semi-commercial technology deployments in the Australian context – Calix ZESTY was one of our picks, but they are going to Kwinana WA thanks to a major new deal this week with Rio Tinto, Element Zero and DryFlow?
• Prepare the ground work for a GH2 powered DRI value-add plant as phase 2 to say reach FID in 5 years time Meanwhile, keep putting bandaids on the end of life steel works to elk out another few years.

All of this gives clarity to the workforce and communities that they wont be left behind, but avoids locking in unproven GH2 till smaller FOAK deployments are proven up e.g. Also, news on Orica's 50MW at Newcastle here in NSW. What's coming up?

• Next WED Tim is in Canberra joining ATSE for a diesel fuel rebate conference in Canberra.
• In early December Tim is joining the NSW Government delegation for a battery forum in Guangdong China – this is a sister state arrangement going for 46 years now.

End

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 December Tim is joining the NSW Government for a battery forum in Guangdong China.

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.

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 progress towards carbon markets applying to all industry in China by 2027, and stressing that China aims to "accelerate the building of a more effective, dynamic & internationally influential carbon market."
• This is critically important for Australia. If Australia is to build green value-added commodity exports at the speed and scale required to offset the expected decline in our fossil fuel exports, we have to move beyond government funding of FOAK projects to private financing, which will require a price on embedded decarbonisation in Asian trade i.e. we need a path to an Asian CBAM to extend and leverage the EU ETS.

What's coming up?

• Lots more conferences and forums coming up – Industry Minister Tim Aryes is hosting a Sydney NRF NZF forum, Mission Possible is hosting a Build Clean Now – Australia workshop (both those are invite only events),
• then we have the IGCC conference in Sydney 16-17th Oct
• then later this month I'm off to Singapore to give a keynote address to an Asian Cleantech investor forum,
• then in December I'm joining the NSW Government for a battery forum in Guangdong China.

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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%.

• 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.

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.

Energy Renaissance goes into receivership

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!

• 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.

A Green Hydrogen and Iron conference in Perth 4-5 Sept 2025, building momentum towards a German-Austral ia bilateral green iron agreement.

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