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.
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 – Register here
