CEFC’s Debelle says Trump energy moves leave Australia well placed to lure US clean tech investment

Australia is becoming a more attractive home for green technology capital as uncertainty clouds the investment climate in the world’s biggest economy, Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) director Guy Debelle says.

The former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia said Japan and South Korea were becoming evermore relevant for Australia in an evolving political climate.

“You see a lot of the big Japanese and Korean industrial conglomerates looking for opportunities in Australia,” he told AAP.

Dr Debelle was appointed to the CEFC board in December.

Dr Debelle is due to speak at Climate Action Week on Wednesday at one of the 250-plus community events set to be held in Sydney.

Under the Biden administration, the US began subsidising climate and clean energy technologies under the multibillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act, turbocharging international competition for investment and innovation in the process.

Dr Debelle said it was hard to see momentum disappearing from US green industries entirely even with the Trump administration’s moves to freeze funding under the incentive scheme.

“A fair chunk of the IRA money has already been deployed,” he said.

“And it’s disproportionately in (Republican) districts, and historically congressman don’t like repealing funding which is generating jobs in their own districts.”

Certain technologies were potentially safer than others, such as batteries, in the interests of energy self-sufficiency.

“Despite the rhetoric, I think they want as much energy capacity as they’ve got, whatever form it comes in,” Dr Debelle said.

“It’ll be more drilling, for sure, but it doesn’t mean they necessarily going to stop everything else.”

In addition, California and other states pursuing green industries and clean tech investment would most likely continue to do so.

Overall, the US was becoming less attractive for new or additional investment in green technology.

“Which may make it more attractive for places like us,” Dr Debelle concluded.

“Because to the extent the IRA had been diverting or attracting capital, in the financial sense, from everywhere else in the world, which it had been for the last three years, now that’s no longer the case.”

Other prominent voices due to speak at events throughout Climate Action Week include Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean, National Reconstruction Fund chair Martijn Wilder and Climate200 founder Simon Holmes a Court.

Australia has just recorded second-hottest summer on record and been slammed by another extreme weather event, Tropical Cyclone Alfred, that follows a summer marred by torrential rain, fires and heatwaves.

Source: AAP