About this episode

The episode discusses Australia's potential leadership in green steel production amidst significant developments in battery energy storage systems and global energy markets.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Grant McDowell

Guest: Tim Buckley

Topics covered

• Green Steel
• BESS deployments
• Energy markets
• Coal exports
• Renewable energy
• Australia
• China

Keywords

• Green Steel
• BESS
• Australia
• China
• COP30
• renewable energy
• coal exports
• energy markets
• Tim Buckley
• Grant McDowell

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Powering Past Coal Alliance

Places: Australia, China

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