Spark Club Podcast

Spark Club brings leaders and entrepreneurs in the energy field together with a common objective, to build energy businesses. We draw on each others experience to support, learn and grow cleantech energy businesses. The podcasts are hosted by Grant McDowell and are recordings of our Fireside chats and podcasts with leaders in the global energy transformation.

Al Gore says stop Australia's diesel fuel subsidy - Tim Buckley Ep62 11/02/2025

Al Gore says stop Australia's diesel fuel subsidy - Tim Buckley Ep62 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. /episode/index/show/sparkclub/id/38884170

Time to Act on Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 - Killian Daly Ep61 10/12/2025

Emissions targets are a thing. Tim Buckley Ep60 10/05/2025

Emissions targets are a thing. Tim Buckley Ep60 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 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 . Australia’s move was supported by a 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. EnergyLab Announcement Join the 2025 EnergyLab Scaleup Showcase, an exclusive online event celebrating the groundbreaking startups shaping the future of clean energy. 📅 Date & Time Wednesday, 15 October 2025 10:00 – 11:00 AEDT 📍 Location Zoom Webinar – /episode/index/show/sparkclub/id/38469995

Is Australia a Petro State or an Electro State? Tim Buckley Ep59 09/14/2025

Is Australia a Petro State or an Electro State? Tim Buckley Ep59 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%. /episode/index/show/sparkclub/id/38211065