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[Episode #235] – China, India and Australia 2024 Update
The energy transition in China is a complex picture. China is both the world's largest annual greenhouse gas emitter and the largest market for electric vehicles. It’s the largest user of coal, and it deploys more wind and solar every year than the rest of the world combined. It’s both the largest worry in terms of rising CO2 concentrations, and the biggest hope for curbing emissions.
But in syndicated media, this complex reality tends to be boiled down to old tropes, generalized and unhelpful characterizations, and correct but irrelevant data, instead of any useful context and synthesis.
So you might be forgiven for not knowing that power sector emissions in China actually fell in the second quarter of 2024, and China’s CO2 emissions could be close to a peak in its CO2 emissions, which means the world probably is too.
The reporting on India and the rest of Southeast Asia is even worse, if not nonexistent.
So we are very pleased to welcome back Australian energy analyst Tim Buckley to the show. We sat down in person in Sydney for an hour and a half conversation about the trends and the data in all of those countries, as well as their trade relationships with Australia. And we begin to explore the potential for Australia to use its abundant and cheap wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen, then use it to upgrade the ores and other materials that it exports to Asia and beyond.
After listening to this episode, we hope you’ll have a much better idea of the reality of the energy transition in Asia and Australia.
Tim Buckley is the Founder and Director of Climate Energy Finance (CEF), a Sydney-based think tank established in 2022 that works pro-bono in the public interest on accelerating decarbonisation in line with the climate science.
Tim has 35 years of financial market experience covering the Australian, Asian and global equity markets and is a influential energy 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.
Tim was previously the Australasian Director of the global Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 2013-2021. Prior to this, Tim was a top-rated equity research analyst, including Head of Equity Research in Singapore at Deutsche Bank, Managing Director, Head of Equity Research at Citigroup for 17 years, and co-Managing Director of Arkx Investment Management P/L, a global listed clean energy investment start-up jointly owned with Westpac.
Tim started his career as a lecturer in Finance and Market Regulation at the University of Technology, Sydney before moving to Macquarie Group in 1988 to work in equity research. Tim has a Bachelor of Business majoring in Accounting and Finance from UTS (1985-87), the US SEC Series 7 (General Securities Representative Qualification Examination) and Series 24 (General Securities Principal Qualification Examination) qualifications.
On the Web: https://climateenergyfinance.org/
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