Australian Delegation Witnesses China Speed, China Scale - Tim Buckley - Ep71

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Sparklab podcast. I'm your host, Grant McDowell. I'm recording this podcast from London and here during London Climate Week. And, uh, it's been an extraordinary week, which I'll share, but, uh, let's welcome Tim Buckley. How are you, Tim? Great to see you again.

Speaker B: G', day, Grant. Um, unlike you, I'm back in Sydney as of yesterday after an amazing week and a half in China. But we'll get to that shortly.

Speaker A: Well, let's start. How was the weather in China?

Speaker B: Uh, we got off lightly. It was not too bad. I was expecting 30 degrees plus every day and, and high humidity. But, uh, no, we weathered it pretty well and managed, uh, to avoid any rain. It rained every night. But, uh, no, we, we had a lovely trip and um, yeah, just many, many highlights. Too many to share, but we'll try and get through them in, uh, in this podcast.

Speaker A: Well, I think what we should do this week is maybe is wrap our highlights and main story into one and maybe touch on a low light, which is my experience of the extreme heat here in London. So it just so happened to coincide with the London Climate Week. But the Met Office, for the first time here, has, uh, issued a, uh, red warning of extreme heat for the third day in the row last week, which was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I was on the Tube, I was on the trains and experiencing that firsthand, but also was lucky enough to attend on Wednesday a climate event hosted by Clover Hogan and the London Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Mete Corbyn. It was a great event, but the low light of the day was an event that was titled on Wednesday titled Extreme Heat Improving Governance and Strengthening Action around the World, which unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the extreme heat. So it was not lost to me or any of our community that we are experiencing these extremes. And these extremes are having real world consequences. Where trains don't run on time, people can't necessarily cope with the heat everywhere I go. Certainly in public transport here, people have little fans to try and cool themselves. Uh, so we're moving into an unprecedented time in climate. So the work that we're doing is certainly a very topical tip. So that was my lowlight. Before we get on to your highlights and main story.

Speaker B: Yes, it's yet again a rude reminder as to, uh, the fact that this is not theoretical, it is very real and, um, it's locked in to a large degree. But that's why we're all working on the work we're doing. It is a global imperative. And, uh, that's partly why this podcast is so important. Uh, in the face of the climate science, we know the consequences are going to be externalized on everyone. Um, but also it's um, having the hope that there is China speed, China scale and China going global as two key themes that gives me a huge amount of hope that we uh, can actually solve for the worst of the climate science before it's locked in. And uh, yeah, the rest of the world is starting to really embrace the massive, massive opportunity investment, employment, export, import, replacement opportunities relating to the transformation to zero emissions industries of the future, leveraging, partnering and benefiting from China's global leadership which uh, has never been more important and profound than in 2026.

Speaker A: Agreed. Although you did have a China low light, which is very interesting. Would you share that with us, Tim?

Speaker B: Yes, the, the other low light, apart from the weather in Europe that you're experiencing firsthand, we got the installment data, the installation data for China for the month of May, uh, late last week and uh, we'll have a note on it coming out in the next couple of days. But it is a low light in absolute terms and it's worth having that context because obviously I'm going to be talking up everything I saw in the last two weeks in China.

Speaker A: I.

Speaker B: But after the absolute all time record high installations of wind and solar uh, in China in calendar 2025, the first five months of this year have been, um, down dramatically when it comes to installations year on year growth in installations and uh, unless we see a sharp reversal in the next seven months, the trend to date is that solar installations in China are down 20, 30, 40% year on year. Um, bearing in mind May last year blew my mind the month we saw, I think 90 gigawatts of solar installed in just one month. And so, but let's, let's call a spade a spade. Installations in solar in the month of May 2026 were 8.7 gigawatts. Now that's more than Australia does every year. In fact, it's what we do every two years. They did it in one month, but it's down 90% year on year. And so that's a month. And that's lapping the biggest month in world history for any country ever. Um, a number that no one, including me, forecast. But uh, obviously when you're lapping 90 gigawatts in a single month and I don't know, 150, 200 gigawatts in the first five months and year to date, China's installed just 60 gigawatts of solar in five months. So a run rate of uh, about 12 gigs a month. And that's down from them installing 30 gigs a month last year. So it's down dramatically. It's a big number. Particularly when you look at, in the first five months of this year, China also installed and commissioned another 32 gigawatts of new coal fired power plants. And so you put those two numbers in extreme, they're still building two new coal plants every week. So in isolation that looks absolutely extreme, horrible and counterproductive, counterintuitive when I'm talking about how good they are in zero emissions industries of the future. But we did get a new energy policy statement for the next five years, uh, by China last week and it says coal consumption in China is going to continue to grow until the NDC commitment of 2030. We'd hope that it's already peaked in 2024, 2025, it could still have, but uh, the Chinese government likes to massively overachieve and they're in D.C. talks about peaked emissions before 2030. They're still working on the basis that national security, energy independence, energy security are all the most important priority. And Trump's war on Iran has made it even more of a priority. I think we touched on in our last podcast the horrible boom in colder liquids, colder chemicals that's going on in China at the moment. And, uh, China's by far the largest colder chemicals, colder liquids producer in the world. And they're doubling down and putting hundreds of millions of dollars investment in that. So that if Trump really cuts China's supp supply chains, international supply chains for fossil fuels, they'll be able to unfortunately produce oil and diesel and petrochemicals in China from their coal reserves. And so unfortunately we're hearing from China, they're happy to be a global leader on clean tech, but uh, energy security, national security and economic growth are the top imperatives for China. And so I'm still sitting there looking at the numbers like China Solar installs down 40% year on year, year to date. It's a pretty ugly bloody number, particularly at the same time. They're not slowing their development new coal. But I could then quote that in the last five months they've commissioned 25 gigawatts of wind. Now Australia has been doing 1 gigawatt per uh, year and they've done 25 gigs in just five months. It's down maybe 10% year on year. But last year China was about 70% of the world's wind installs. Both on and offshore. And they're actually 80% of offshore offshore wind installs. Um, but they're still going for wind. And there's a really important lesson for Australia. Bowen's really grappling with the problem that we're not building enough new utility scale generation. In particular we're not building enough wind. Um, we need wind and solar because they're complementary. Wind is mostly at night, solar is obviously only during the day. There's only so much solar and batteries you can do. You need wind as a complementary resource. And China has recognized that. So they made that an absolutely key commitment in their five year plan. And uh, last year China, as I said, was 2/3 of the world's installs like China. I'm used to being 50% of the world's everything but in wind, 70% 2/3 and 80% of offshore wind. But uh, at the end of the day, unfortunately last year was an all time record high for solar. And so if China continues for the next seven months, anywhere near the trend we've seen in the first five months, solar installs both in China and as a result globally will be down for the first time in 20 years in 2026. So I thought it was important to give that imperative that they are uh, absolutely still committed to decarbonization. But there is definitely a pause that China's putting energy security, energy independence absolute top priority. And they've seemed to have really slowed their deployment of solar. And I think part of that is because they've doubled their battery installs and they've realized like Australia is doing, there's no point building utility solar um, because the grid can't handle it. You need to build hybrid solar battery storage and that's what they're doing. So much as their solar installs have slowed materially, their battery installs are still all time record high. They're 50% of the world's battery installs year to date. In 2026 they've just upgraded yet again. They're pumped hydro storage targets from I think by 20 they're 66 gigs of pumped hydro today. Their target originally was 100 gigawatts. I think I read in their latest energy plan last week they're now talking 166 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage by 2030. Like we can't build two Snowy's two. Their commitments to add 100 gigawatts in the next four years, it's just mind blowing in China. But what they're saying is there's no point building Solar, uh, that occurs concurrently across the whole bloody country without building grid transmission and without building the storage capacity. And I'll pause on that point because that's a long winded um, low light. But uh, one of the meetings we had was with China State Grid. So I'll uh, I'll actually talk about what China Grid talked us about which was massive, massive HVDC hydro, high voltage direct current cable so that they can take solar from the Middle east and take it into eastern China and therefore time shift and avoid the fact that the sun goes down at dusk. But uh, dusk in Beijing is about four hours ahead of dusk in Africa and uh, Uzbekistan. And that's what we're hearing about. But I'll come back to that.

Speaker A: Well, let's um, get into your trip then. I think probably for the listener it might be easier to listen to your trip in terms of the, the order of where you went. Before we get there we should mention the context. How did it come about who was on the delegation and might be a better place for us to start.

Speaker B: No, absolutely. And so a shout out. It was um, actually co sponsored, co hosted by Austrade, which was brilliant. And they actually joined us on the delegation. So it was Austrade working with the Smart Energy Council and working with recap. Now you're going to hear a lot more about recap, both in this podcast and in future. Recap is the Renewable Energy Council Asia Pacific, founded by John Grimes and Scott Hamilton of um, ex Smart Energy Council. So John Grimes led the Smart Energy Council for the last 18 years and he has resigned as that in order to bring in fresh blood in the form of David McElroy at Smart Energy Council, but also just to get a new breath of fresh air into internationalization of uh, the work that he's been doing for the last 18 years. And it was brilliant to see and we'll come back to that in one of the highlights. But uh, so John Grimes, Scott Hamilton and his team, uh, Zoe, uh, who organized the whole delegation along with Johan from the Smart Energy Council. But There were about 25 of us who give uh, or take and it was uh, a little bit uh, um, we lost five people there, we gained five or ten people here um, over the week or so that we're um, on this delegation. So There are about 25 Australia Australians up there as well as five locals, five or 10 locals that we caught up with at the Expo. And then Austrade joined us for five brilliant site visits. So we'll come to each of those in Turn. But that was the delegation. And so about 25 Australians met in Beijing. And then we traveled by fast train down the east coast, uh, stopping off at three or four cities and uh, ending up in Shanghai. Uh, so it was a brilliant trip. But, uh, yeah, hat tip to Austrade, who are now doing another delegation up, uh, with uh, recap and Smart Energy Council to Vietnam in a couple of weeks. And they're sponsoring a whole lot of these sort of delegations over the next 12 months to build collaboration, to emphasize that Australia is all in on, uh, green industries of the future, and to align with future made in Australia under the Albanese government.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So, uh, great to see Austrade stepping up.

Speaker A: Excellent. I have to say I'm very envious and I'm sure the audience are dying to hear about your trip. Where did you start?

Speaker B: I mean, I actually started with a little three day holiday. Uh, a mate of mine, uh, from, uh, Mount Gambia came up. We met in Hong Kong, we went up to Shenzhen. We then caught a fast train to Chongqing. Um, because I m made this stupid comment that I'd never heard of Chongqing until he mentioned it to me. And he goes, oh, you've got to go and see it. It's the biggest city in China, probably the biggest city in the world. And most people never heard of it, including me. So we caught a six hour fast train from Shenzhen to, uh, Chongqing, uh, and we spent two days wandering around Chongqing, had hot pots. And then we caught a fast train from Chongqing up to Beijing. That was another seven hour trip. And uh, I mean, it might sound, if you're having to put up with seven hours on a train in Australia, it's like, that's uh, murderous. But, uh, in China it was just luxury. Now, admittedly we did go, uh, in business class. But the fast trains, we're sitting and talking about traveling for six or seven hours straight at 300 kilometers an hour. So literally, we travel 1500 kilometers into the middle of China and then another 1500 kilometers from the middle of China to the east northeast coast of China. And then we caught fast trains in two or three hour blocks from Beijing down the east east coast down to Shanghai, uh, like just mind blowing. And people go, oh, but how do you know China's not faking it? And they're fast trains. Like, we pull into like Chongqing. Like someone said to me, oh, did you know that's the biggest railway in the world? Railway station in the world. And we get there and we go, no, it's not they got four of the four biggest railway stations in the world, not one, because they got a north, an east, a west and a south railway station. Each of them are the four biggest in the world and each of them have 20 fast train tracks. So like literally we were one of 20. And they're uh, all lined up like 20 fast trains all being loaded and unloaded and they left on time. What I'm getting at was like the tunnels, the bridges, the speed and then you look out the window and uh, you see more fast train tracks being laid above ground so they don't undermine the farming communities. And um, like this China speed, China scale. And the fast trains are probably a little bit outside of the clean tech space we would talk about. But at the end of the day like we decided it was better, more enjoyable, faster and cleaner and cheaper to go by fast train than by internal um, airlines across a uh, country as vast as China. And uh, the bridges, the tunneling is just unbelievable. And the connectivity, sorry, I worked as you'd expect me to do for probably two or three hours and my Internet was better than sitting in the middle of the Sydney. Even if we're in a massive tunnel a kilometer underground, these fast trains, the track doesn't deviate, it just goes straight line and it just goes straight through any tunnel. Uh, we did see one train line, I'll finish my rant here, but it went straight through a suburban apartment building. And we went, and there were hundreds of people uh, fanboying this train that goes literally straight through a building. And um, we went on that and went and did a bit of sightseeing. But uh, anyway that was my first bit and it was just to remind ourselves, look, China is absolutely a first world country. The, the infrastructure there, like Americans, if they even knew about it, would die for it. Like Australia wanting to have one fast train maybe in, I don't know, a thousand years time. Like China's got them going literally everywhere and uh, and they operate like clockwork. And uh, what I'm looking forward in probably a year or two's time when I said they're upgrading the, they're building brand new train lines, their target is for those trains to go 450km hour, not the 300 to 350 we were doing in 2026. And like the average Australian Sydney train goes about 20km an hour. It's just staggering.

Speaker A: It is staggering. And to finish off your on the train piece before we get on to your first visit, I'm here in the UK and There isn't aircon or WI fi. Those two problems haven't been solved here, let alone high, um, speed. So let's move on to your first visit.

Speaker B: No, before we do. You're dead right. They not only tell you what the, what the speed of the train was but like they're bragging about it and so they bloody should. They go, oh, it's 23 degrees inside and it's 31 degrees outside. So when you get off, know that you're going to be sweating like a pig if you're me, um, within two minutes of getting off the train. But then you're not because you walk into the railway station and it's air conditioned and uh.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then you walk from the railway station underground to your hotel. Yeah. 31 degrees and humid outside, 23 and pleasant inside with perfect connectivity for six hours straight. Like just mind blowing.

Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. Now, now let's move on to your first visit. Where did you go, Tim? Yeah.

Speaker B: So the genesis of the trip, Austrade and Smart Energy Council and recap were um, we started in Beijing at the China International Supply Chain Expo. And uh, that was a two or three day expo. Uh, the opening ceremony there probably is only a small group, there are only about 600 of us there, um, all having dinner and um, it's just mind blowing like thousands and thousands of people. But 600 people at the opening. Australia, country of um, honor. Um, admittedly they did do region of honour and then they do company of honour and then they're blah blah, blah, you get it. Australia was one of the five main people, um, highlighted. Uh, we had the Australia Consulate General Dominic Trindad spoke as did John Grimes. I mentioned John, I'll give him another shout out. So he was up on stage, he got to speak with the Chinese Vice Premier, he Li Fing, um, who spoke and welcomed us all at the opening. So uh, whether he's the third or sixth most powerful man in China, he was President Xi's chief of staff I think it was, uh, and now he's uh, um, vice president Premier in his own right, but shows how important it was. And probably I think they, they told us that the expo, 35% of the people at the Expo were non Chinese. So very Chinese centric. But yeah, like hundreds of companies from, I uh, don't know, 30 or 40 different countries around the world there for three days talking about global supply chain stability. And uh, certainly the Vice Premier of China talked about the absolute importance for China of global supply chain stability and security. And he really really emphasized mutual benefit. Win Win cooperation. And, uh, notwithstanding the geopolitical challenges, like, they didn't dump, um, on America. I do that all the time. But they didn't. They just said, notwithstanding the global geopolitical challenges, trade is critically important for China. Win Win is critically important for China. Collaboration is so really important. So it's great to have Austrade there in numbers. Like they probably had 10 staff up there and, uh, they've got two or three or four offices around China and they recognize the importance of China, um, as our number one trade partner. But, uh, yeah, it was great to have as there'd probably 25 Australian delegates there as well as all the Australian, um, locals who live in Beijing there. And, uh, a really good opportunity. Don Farrell wasn't there, the Trade Minister, but he was, um, video conferencing because he was too busy somewhere else in China at a, uh, uh, conference with the other parts of the Chinese government. Uh, but he was highlighted, so it was great. Australia, country guest of honour. And, uh, just two days of hearing about how China's going global, China's working with other nations and most importantly talking about Win Win rather than Win Lose, which is obviously a bit more of the emphasis of the. My version of the Belt Road initiative we saw maybe a decade ago, but that version is out the door and they've got a new one and it's China going global and, uh, really emphasizing the importance of collaboration and foreign investment and cooperation. Uh, plenty of opportunity for Australia to step up.

Speaker A: Fantastic. And was anybody from DFAT there? Because these messages are very important at Austrade, but also very important for dfat. Tim, anybody in your delegation or in the Trade Minister's delegation from dfat, did you notice? No.

Speaker B: But Austrade is a department. I'll probably get it wrong. I'm not a politician, but I think they're a department of dfat and they've certainly got DFAT in their email address and, uh, the fact that Don Farrell at least spoke there. Um, but no, not overtly evident that DFAT was there. And certainly my key takeaway to there, to Austro, was next time see if you can get a couple of federal MPs from any side of the fence on these delegations because they're so important. But I think it was actually announced at the, um, the Expo that this was the biggest delegation Australia has ever sent to China. But, uh, it was really obvious we need some Australian MPs and senators to go up there and see firsthand. Um, like, we did have the privilege of the head of green industry for Austrade. Come on. The entire delegation with us, Jane. It was great to, uh, spend a week traveling and getting to know her and seeing the, uh, and seeing her. Her eyes just open as. All of our eyes opened as we walked after the biggest factory in the world for EV trucks, the biggest ev, uh, passenger vehicle company, the biggest battery company. It was just like every factory we saw was just bloody enormous and brand new and normally built within 12 months. Like just the speed of operation. Like, they'd have a picture of, well, here's a plot of dirt. And then here, 11 and a half months later, here's the factory operating. And, um, yeah, just something Australia would die for. And then we did actually a lot of the discussions and we'll get into this, but a lot of the discussions was the level of robotics. Now, as you and I have talked about, one of the things I think Australia's got to learn from is the robots in China. And they were just mind blowing. Like, I actually, I didn't get a ride in it, but I got to sit in an autonomous flying EV taxi, uh, that China's rolling out. There was another one where you had a, uh, uh, it was like a bloody Hummer. I don't know what brand it was. They got so many EV brands, I don't know them. But, uh, anyway, and then I speak like a Hummer. And, and the back half of it is literally a drone that can carry two people. And you land the drone on the back of it, uh, the landing skid, like the drone weighs half a ton or something. And then you just push a button and the drone folds its wings and goes in the back of the truck. And you can get five people in the front of the truck. I'm calling it a truck. But it was, it was like a, an suv. And it was literally, um, they were rolling them out. You can buy your own SUV that's got a drone in the back that can then fly you wherever you're going. They're actually putting in rules about drones can only go halfway, um, through. They can't go into the. Where airplanes go. But they're actually designing the rules of operation. Um, it's just mind blowing. You're watching the, um, future firsthand. Live in China, the robots. But the other side of it, like, we went into BYD Trucks factory, and I mean just the biggest truck factory in the world. 100,000 trucks per year. And yet they had, they admitted, and they were very proud of it. They had 1600 staff in one factory. And we go, what? And we're walking around and there are robots everywhere, but there were a lot of workers. And they go, yeah, yeah. We're just trying to get it right because the second factory which we're about to build will be effectively far, far more automated. But because it's our first truck factory of this size, we wanted to do it right and we wanted to learn. And so combination like there are robots everywhere, but lots and lots of workers. So, um, I was surprised, I think you and I talked about the uh, my visit to the Nio EV factory the day after I saw Tesla's factory and there were probably a quarter of the workers in Neo's factory to Tesla two years later on, there are probably more workers in these factories. Um, we did see one or two. Not dark, but literally we spotted two workers in the entire factory. And it was like it took us an hour to walk through the factory. It was so bloody big, so it wasn't dark like there were lights on. Because the uh, two quality control, they've got to know when to the robots break down. But most of the factories had a couple hundred staff in them. That was quite interesting. Uh, they're not ready to yet do dark factories. They're still learning and changing and uh, working out how to do it. But uh, we did cause a chaos in the BYD factory. I know that was the Z factory, sorry, the Xiaomi. I'm m probably totally destroying the pronunciation there, but we literally had four buses so big, like we went through four, five factories all linked. And uh, anyway, we stopped the trucks, the buses in the middle of the factory and by the uh, by. We came back to the buses five minutes later and there are about 15 different robots that were stacked up one by one, all the lights flashing. There's a traffic jam, we can't get out because all these bloody buses are parked in the middle of the factory and they couldn't go around us. Anyway, it was quite funny watching when they just push one button and all the robots turn around, around, reverse and piss off one at a time and go find some other route. But uh, we managed to screw up their brilliant supply chain logistics. But the Japanese 30, 40 years ago did kanban, which was just in time inventory management. So every single component in Chinese factories has a basket. And there's a robot that goes and gets the basket, comes to the place where puts the basket straight under the robot. The robot empties the basket and then the, the robot comes back, collects the empty basket and goes and immediately replaces it with A new full basket. So they're doing Kanban just in time. It's just bloody staggering how many robots there are.

Speaker A: So let's for the audience, take us on that whistle stop tour from Beijing then in order of your trip, you've started with the big conference, that big delegation. Where was your first site visit?

Speaker B: Yeah, the first one was in um, Beijing. We went and saw State Grid Corporation of China's um, one of their 28 research campuses. So we, I'll um, give you the name. It's a mouthful. The China Electrical Power Research Institute to its friends it's called Rec, uh, there you uh, go. Anyway, the China Electric Power Research Institute is one of 28 research campuses and by the way it was an entire like five different buildings and a couple of factories and all sorts of uh, monitors and control systems. It was the uh, weather forecasting office for China State Grid and how they're trying to do instantaneous one day ahead, one week ahead, one month ahead, forecasting of weather patterns, extreme weather events. And so it was uh, four uh, hours all about how they're forecasting the weather because the weather obviously has a massive impact on wind, on solar, on hydro, on grid transmission, on storage and uh, grid reliability. And so they're really, and they're talking about one day ahead, 97% accuracy, uh, one week ahead, 93% accuracy at the province level and how their knowledge of AI and their knowledge of all the data, all the back testing and all their forecasting, it's happening real time. And then we got a massive, to our presentation from three or four of their experts about how they're doing that forecasting and what their ambitions are for renewables. And obviously the more you pile, I don't know, a couple hundred gigawatts of new renewables into the system each and every year and you do that for five years, you end up with a mind blowingly big number of solar, ah, and wind and pump and battery energy storage. And they're doing 1 hour, 2 hour ah, 4 hour, 8 hour battery storage and they're doing vanadium with. So they're doing all of that and then how they're orchestrating it and they're using coal as the balancing to all of this intermittent but uh, largely predictable renewable energy. And so yeah, the emphasis was yes, coal will continue to come off in absolute terms over time but coal gives grid reliability. So it's what we use, what we used to use five years ago, peaking gas to balance wind and solar. We now use batteries they didn't and it was interesting. They got a whole different research team on batteries and we were saying to them look, you probably actually need to merge these two divisions together because why you're so focused on forecasting the weather. But the reality is most of what you're forecasting could be solved by just doing battery solar hybrids, wind solar. By the way, they're doing all of that. They're doing it even bigger than Australia is um, number one pumped hydro storage company country in the world, number one utility scale storage country in the world, but not the number one home battery storage company. That's Australia. We got one flag but we're their largest battery export nation. Let me just finish with a couple of numbers. They are uh, aiming to go from 1.84 terawatt of renewal variable renewable energy capacity as at the end of last year. So 1840 gigawatts of variable renewable energy installed as of last year. They're aiming to get to 3 terawatts installed by 2030. And they said don't worry about that because uh, we're planning to actually that we see the maximum variable renewable energy capacity across the whole of China at 50 terawatts. So we'll get to 3 terawatts by 2030 and we can then do it again for the next, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years. Because all up there's 50 terawatts now solar, uh, like Australia could have a bloody big number as well because we've got more landing and poker stick out. But uh, I'll say it again, 50 terawatts of wind and solar capacity across the whole of China and their target is to grow by 60% by 2030 to 3 terawatts of installed variable renewable energy capacity in wind. They then broke it down and said in onshore wind we aim to have 3.4 terawatts total capacity and they're doing 120 gigawatts a year. So that's enough for the next 30 years. And then they said oh by the way, and then we found another 500 gigawatts of low speed wind. So another 0.5 terawatts of low speed wind. So that's 3.9 terawatts of wind. And then offshore wind we see 400 gigawatts of deep sea wind out to 50 kilometers at 100 meters hilt height of turbo of the the tower and then another 0.36 terawatts. So 360 gigawatts of nearshore wind. Anyway, just mind blowing Numbers, they're all too big to even fathom. But bottom line there's enough for China to keep doing what they're doing all faster for the next 30, 40 years. They've mapped it all out and they're doing all of the AI, all of the grid integration, um, to actually, actually accommodate that. So they've got plans to keep growing, I don't know, 2, 3, 400 gigawatts a year of wind and solar for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

Speaker A: And that's important in terms of what the load is Tim, because it sounds to me that they're going to go past 100% renewable and go as we've been talking about Australia becoming electro state and perhaps have 200 or 300% renewable, 400% renewable. This is something Dr. Alan, um, Finkel had talked about. Is there with this huge, huge terawatt hour capacity, is that uh, getting past 100% renewable and into 150, maybe 200% renewable. Did that stat come up by comparison?

Speaker B: It didn't. And um, that's where you might, you'll know this but for listeners. Minister Bowen has set along with Turkey the objective of lifting the world's electrification of total usable energy, uh, from 20% today to 35%. Um, by uh, 2035 I think it was China's already at 30% and China's got a target to get to 35 already in their five year plan. I think it is where we could easily go. As you said, Darren Miller's 700% renewables target, Dr. Finkel's 500% renewables target, Australia will export a lot of that if we actually deliver on those sort of aspirations. And they're mind blowing in their implication. I don't think China's thinking of going beyond 100% renewables but they absolutely firmly committed to going to near zero coal by 2060. I know that's too far for the climate science but they are pushing ahead with things like ccs. But they're saying well we'll still keep using a little bit of coal in 2060 but only if CCF ever is commercialized. But yeah, they've got a long way to go. And remember their electricity grid is just profoundly big. It's, it's two and a half times the size of America's electricity grid. Um, and they're all in on this electric progressive electrification of everything. It's hard to get your mind around the numbers in China because they are going very big in data center centers, but they're doing it for Their own domestic demand. Um, China State Grid talked about, well, hang on, we can't build enough renewable grid transmission to get it from the far north northwest of China and the southwest of China to get it to the demand load in the east and southeast. So we're just picking up the factories and building them in the northwest. So, uh, we're taking the industrial demand, the data center demand to where the renewables is to avoid building too much high voltage direct current cables. They are talking about electricity demand at the moment. It's growing at six and a half percent in the first five months of 2026. So GDP is growing at 5%. Electricity growth in China in the last five months is 6.5%. And when you. 6.5% of the biggest grid in the world. And by the way, China state grid operates 80% of that grid. So one company operates by far, it's the biggest machine in the world. We had the privilege of spending four or five hours talking to the management of that grid, but the numbers just enormous and China's grid is likely to double in the next 20 years. So yeah, that's where Australia's still got a very, very key role. If we can do some of the heavy lifting by doing green aluminium and green iron to help China decarbonize their heavy industry. Uh, let's recognize China's half the world's coal consumption. Half the world's coal production. They got a lot of internal demand. They've got to replace all of their oil. They'll do that in the next 10, 20, 30 years. But they've got to replace all of their petrochemical industries like they are the petrochemical factories of the world. So there's more than enough room for Australia to work collaboratively to help decarbonize the Chinese economy. They're not aiming for more than 100% zero emissions energy.

Speaker A: Okay, on to the next whistle stop tour. What was your next factory visit, Tim?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, I'll just touch. We touched on it already. But the high voltage direct currents, uh, there was one chart I was talking to someone at uh, the expo and they said, oh, we've already got 40 high voltage direct current cables. You walk into China state grid.

Speaker A: Oh, no, no.

Speaker B: We've now got 46 high voltage direct current cable grid transmission lines in operation. Now these, they talk about high voltage direct current at sort of. I'll get the numbers wrong. David Leach will correct me because he knows it. But they're two or three times the size of the high voltage that we're building. In Australia and the scale is just mind blowingly big and the length is mind blowing, like it's 1500 kilometers of high voltage direct current cables and they've got 46 of them. There are probably only two high voltage direct current cable systems in the world. One's in Brazil and one's in India and the Brazilian one was built by China state grid. Anyway, so of the 48 in the world that are operating, China has got 46 of them and they've got another five or 10 of them under construction right now. So where they were saying was we don't want to keep doing that. Like we want to make sure that we use pumped hydro storage and batteries to maximize 24,7 delivery of it. So they're doing renewable energy zones as Australia is doing, but they do them at sort of 20, 30 gigawatt scale, whereas we do them at uh, 5 or 10 gigs. Australia is pretty big, but China's, everything's bigger in China. But they're saying we're better off doing all the data centers. But do them in the west, do them in the northwest, do them in the southwest, do them where there's hydro already that can be complemented with wind and solar and we can firm them up and effectively modulate the demand, but move the demand to where the generation is rather than keep building more and more high voltage direct current cable systems. They've. And again, anyone who uh, worries about social license to operate, there are grid transmission cables absolutely everywhere in China. It is, I mean I obviously enjoy uh, looking at them, but most people wouldn't. They are everywhere. They don't have to worry about social license to operate. The government just says you will do it and they do it. I'm in two months time going back to China. I'm going to go and see the second biggest Alabama aluminium refinery in the world. I think you and I have talked about it before. They literally um, two years ago picked it up from one province, moved it west and moved to a province which is uh, 60% hydro. And now they've built a gigawatt of wind and two gigs of solar behind the meter. So that's 100% renewable powered already in 2026. So I'm going to go and visit it with Matt and uh, see it firsthand. That's about moving the production to where the renewable energy is. And by the way, when you, I thought it was all purely altruistic, but then you find out the retail, the cost of electricity in the new province is half what it was in the old Province. So the economics drive it. As they should.

Speaker A: As they should indeed. Now, where, where are we geographically? Help me again. So you started in Beijing and you went to Shanghai. Where was the next stop?

Speaker B: The next factory we saw was Sig Energy, uh, somewhere halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. A couple hours, fast train trip. Most people in Australia has heard of Sig Energy. The company barely existed five years ago. It was only formed in 2017, um, and now in 2026, it's the biggest, um, owned battery manufacturer in the world. They export 90% of their product out of China. So they are the perfect example of going global. 90%. Their revenue, like staggering numbers. They went from something like 200 million to 600 million to US$1.7 billion of sales per year in the last three years. So I'll say it again. 200 to 600 to 1.7. And then they go, our budget for this year, and we're already halfway through this year, is to get to 3 billion US of sales this year. And uh, you know, and you've only got one factory. Oh, yeah, yeah. We're about to build another factory alongside the first one. We took 11 months to build the first one. Our ambition, and we're talking to the head of, um, all plant in China for this Sig Energy. He goes, our ambition is to build the next factory in six to seven months. That's my KPI. And uh, I imagine there'll be probably double or treble the number of robots in that second plant. And then we asked them about going global. Are you just going to export? Oh, no, no, no. We can't tell you where, but we're about to build another factory somewhere offshore as part of our going global. And I said, well, why are you doing that? And they said, well, geopolitics, uh, trade barriers, we've got to invest in countries to avoid export tariffs against Chinese product. So no, I would guess it's either going to be in Mexico or Europe. Unfortunately, it's not Australia. And so then we raised with them, uh, like if Australia had a mandate for the home battery subsidy, which has made the Australia the number one home battery market in the world and sea Energy's got 30% share of it. Well, if we'd actually mandated local content on it. Now we did discuss that with them and I think the answer was Bowen didn't want to slow down the rollout by waiting for the factory to be built, which is fair enough. But now we saw a brilliant product like John Grimes, uh, did an immediate podcast on the back of it but it was a brand new product that Sig Energy just launched in Europe last week at the European uh, Solar Expo. And it is a 3.5, I'll probably get the numbers wrong. 3.5 kilowatt hour balcony storage device. And we go, oh, can you use Balcony Solar? Of course you can. We've got five ports at the back. You can plug your solar modules, your Balcony solar straight into the battery and then you can plug your vacuum cleaner or your washing machine or just plug it into the PowerPoint with a normal. Um, but of course you're not allowed to do that in Australia. That's illegal. It invalidates your insurance. So uh, in other words, this is the perfect product that Minister Bowen needs to roll out and subsidize. Subsidize next to actually make sure all of our children, all of the renters, all of the apartment dwellers can do this and have a three and a half kilowatt battery. And by the way, when I say renters, it is portable. Like even I could lift it up and carry it off and take it to my next apartment if I was renting. So it's the perfect uh, addendum. Europe, Germany, China's rolling out Balcony Solar. Uh, so should Australia. But we need to actually change the rules to actually accommodate these brand new products that are being developed before our very eyes. And before I finish, that was Sig Energy. But I do note there's an Australian company proposing to build exactly the same sort of product here in Sydney, um, to solve this. But they can't do it until they get the regulatory uh, change of rules to actually make it legal in Australia. You do need a little bit of a battery operating system so that when you plug your battery in you, if you go off grid because there's a blackout, you're little apartment would still be operating because you'd be using your battery through your existing network. So you need a smart meter and that sort of thing. But that's simple to fix. Australia's got a mandate to be 100% smart meters by 2030. And um, we're well on the way. And this uh, would be, to me this should be like maybe a, did a good report two weeks ago talking about CNI Commercial Industrial, the missing middle for rooftop solar in industrial warehouses in Australia. We need Minister Bowen to do that and then we need him to also concurrently do Balcony Solar and balcony uh, storage. So that was Sig Energy, just a um, mind blowing visit to a company that uh, I think it's market cap's now $10 billion. It didn't exist seven years ago.

Speaker A: It's an incredible China speed and scale and I think you know, some of the rigs that we've seen have been hugely limiting. And I personally had uh, a balcony solar company called Sunkit over a decade ago which I tried to get off the ground. And we realized that after 18 months there was no way we were ever going to change the rules and regs and had to let that go. And now seeing the success of that in Europe and uh, in other jurisdictions. But yeah, we need to evolve with the market. From an electrical point of view it's all safe but these rules and regs sometimes slow us down. Where was your next factory and what did you get up to, Tim?

Speaker B: Yeah, we then went to BYD truck factory. Um, so we went to byd, caught another train, then went to Shuzo, went uh, to xcmg. But I won't dwell on the, I'm not into freight the way uh, the next energy transport team were. They were all over the truck factories like Sani, uh, Windrose, BYD Trucks etc and xcmg. It was interesting to go and see the biggest truck factory in the world. But um, I got really excited by getting to go and see and talk with the XCMG management that is China's number one mining um, and construction original equipment manufacturer in China they're the number three player in the world when it comes to uh, mining and construction equipment. They do diesel and they do hybrid and they do electric vehicles. They were number one with, with a 30 odd percent market share in China last year. They're the ones you've heard me talk about with regard to Fortescue. So their single biggest export contract in the world is a billion US dollars contract with Fortescue to supply 200, maybe going to 400 um, of the biggest electric trucks in the world. 240 ton trucks in the world. Um, they barely exist today. So bear check. HB did a big fanfare with Rio with the WA Premier last week in the Pilbara trialling. Two Caterpillar, um, 240 tonne trucks. XCMG is yet to deliver their first one that's coming early next year. And then the intent Is to supply 200 of them in 2028, 2029 to Fortescue, their first customer. In the meantime they're delivering slightly smaller trucks to uh, Rio Tinto's partners in Chinese partners in the Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea. So they're rolling out electric vehicle and hybrid trucks over there with Rio's partner not in Rio. There are four different mining pits. Two that Rio's got a stake in, two that Rio doesn't in the other ones, um, they're doing electric vehicles already but I think they're only uh, in inverted commas. 100 tons payload per truck. So the technology is evolving. The key point here is it might not be ready to day, but it's going to be ready within 12 or 24 months without any doubt. Like XCMG's target is for 50% of all vehicles that they sell by 2030. Um, to be electric vehicle within four years. There is no doubt like the, the scale they, they actually make it really clear. The yellow one of the ugly diesel trucks, the green ones were all of the uh, EV trucks. And um, and then the white ones were the autonomous EV trucks. So uh, there's pictures on my LinkedIn of those three. Look at the colors. Like there's a picture of me with the biggest truck in the world or all of us, we all went in like the wheel is twice my height and Its payload is 363 tons. Like this truck is just ginormous. As I said, in two months time I'm going to Mongolia to go and see 300 of these 100 ton payload autonomous EV trucks, the white ones in operation in open cut coal mining in Mongolia. So they're moving at enormous speed but 50% of all of their sales will be EVs. By 2030 they're forecasting a trebling of their sales. By 2030 they're forecasting they're going to be the number one global EV mining equipment supplier. And I have no doubt they will exceed that target, deliver on that target. And then they talked about uh, that little moron from America, um, talked about the Gigafactory a couple years ago. I won't name him but a gigawatt 1 gigawatt. The factory we saw in 2026 produces 30 gigawatt hours of batteries. And they're building a second factory next door and it produces 70 gigawatt hours. And that battery factory is um, a joint venture between BYD and X CMG. So they own it. 50 50. So they're one of the biggest battery factories in the world which they've built obviously in the last two, three years. Right next door to their OEM truck manufacturing facility which is dedicated solely to uh, um, mining equipment. They've got another factory down the road which is dedicated to construction equipment and it's a hole in the wall. So they literally get these uh, batteries coming through the wall and they go straight into the trucks which is just as well because the battery batteries weigh tons and tons, like 10, 20, 30 tons each. It's just ridiculous how the scale and the volume. But uh, yeah a 30 gigawatt was phase one and their aim is to get to 100 gigawatts at this one site in, in the next year or two. And uh, yeah, just mind blowing the numbers.

Speaker A: Does that bring confidence to your belief that Fortescue's real zero ambitions can be realized and if this, if you're seeing on the ground this kind of scale to electric mining equipment?

Speaker B: Yeah, it does, absolutely. And last time I was up in China and we talked about it, I had the privilege of meeting Twiggy Forest and meeting the chairman of XCMG and Twiggy said very overtly we intend to bring forward we can deliver earlier than 2030 on all of that target. Now his management got very nervous about that. Uh, but uh, yeah, they have every expectation that they will exceed their target targets as China generally does. Twiggy is obviously more ambitious but everything I saw said this is there is zero doubt XCMG is going to make this work. And I mean they even showed us and they let us film some of the um, um slides of their presentation that showed the um, not trolley assist which is the overhead charging but side assist charging. Like they've got a um, charger that comes out the side of the truck, drops down, goes into this channel. So you're going up the hill, you drop it in and you get a massive charge as you go up the hill and it's on a sort of trolley. But this massive instantaneous megawatt m charging system that they're building in house remotely. Now Caterpillar is trying to build the same thing they're doing it in in Latin America. Uh, Lieber here and BHP are trialing trolley assist which is the overhead cantilevers. But the problem with trolley assisted it CMG M talked about was the fact you get stuck on one route. Whereas obviously as the mine continues to move you've got to move the charging infrastructure. And so they're still trying to work all through that. I would have no doubt within six months or 12 months we're going to see mines open cut mines, commercial mines in China. With that technology deployed, we'll see it in Latin America and hopefully with Fortescue we'll see it in Australia. And uh, um, I'll talk out of school here but Rio had uh, a big delegation going up to the factory. Uh this Week we were there last week. So the management were all excited. They got a Rio delegation. So an austrade had been there before. And bottom line, uh, I think people are really seeing firsthand that this technology is being built and you literally only have to walk around the factory and realize every second tractor, every second. So they call trucks tractors. In China, every second truck is, is green or white. So the future is here, it's there, it's available real time in China and it's moving at speed, faster than I thought possible. So uh, I think BHP and Rio are going to have to stop greenwashing and they're going to actually have to start embracing the technology. And um, the only way they do that, if they don't wait a decade for catapult to get ready, is to partner with the world leaders, whether it's SANY or xcmg. Uh, yeah, it's in China. The future is there.

Speaker A: Well, the diesel fuel rebate might not be around for very long, Tim. So uh, good to hear that everyone's starting to kind of make site visits and uh, gen up on electric vehicle alternatives.

Speaker B: Don't get me started. But yes, we've got a massive policy headwind. We've got to reform that. Notwithstanding the bush coming from the Minerals Council, hiding behind our farmers, our fisher folk, all the rest of that crap. We're talking about reforming the mining sector. The people that get the four and a half billion dollars of subsidies not to get off our addiction to imported diesel. We've got to win that fight. We've got to get the uh, Albanese government to realize this is a massive, massive, multi, tens of billions of dollar investment opportunity in Australia. And if we don't do it, China and Brazil, Vale is going to. Yeah, Vale. Get me started on it. XCMG had a, uh, part of their formal corporate presentation was about Fortescue, as you expect, the number one company in the world embracing their technology. They had another one with Rio. They've been working very hand in glove with Rio for two or three years and they took us through all the milestones. There was a sort of placeholder for BHP and then they pivoted to Vale and you. Brazil, the fourth biggest mining company in the world. Biggest, fourth biggest iron ore company, third biggest in the world. And um, yeah, how they've got a massive partnership for XCMG. And so when I talked about those 1600 workers in the uh, Brazilian OEM equipment aftermarket service supply and original equipment manufacturing facility that was built for Vale and so they've got a Massive partnership there with, um, Vale. So if BHP wants to get with the, I don't know, the climate science with the need, with what their number one trade partner is doing, then, um, yeah, we've got to get the federal government to stop giving BHP $620 million a year subsidies to keep them addicted to fossil fuel. If we're going to get them to pivot to the good stuff, we need policy support.

Speaker A: I agree. Now, on to the next stop. How many more stops are there? And uh, where was next?

Speaker B: No, fortunately, listeners will be delighted to hear xcmg. I probably missed one. We went into the uh, um, Xiaomi factory and we got to go in a sports car. We went from, uh, admittedly it was only up to 80km an hour, but in 1.9 seconds, so all of us got to have a ride in a race car. They had the little track around one of the factories. But yeah, the Xiaomi factory was unbelievable as well. But um, that's an EV factory. We know that. We know the Chinese have, have hundreds of EV brands and they're literally. We were playing Spot the uh, Spot the blue number plate. Blue was, Green is internal, is uh, electric vehicles and blue was the uh, the old ice. And we're playing in Beijing. Spot the ice vehicle. In Chongqing, there were some ice vehicles. It's not as penetrated as uh, Shanghai and Beijing, but it's certainly coming. And like 10 o' clock at night my, uh, my mad friend, uh, took me, uh, I thought we're going to a pub or a bar, but instead he took me to four EV showrooms. 10 o' clock on a Sunday night and they're all open. And we spent an hour looking at all these beautiful EV cars. Um, I'd love to own one of them, but, uh, they're all just beautiful. And then he spent the rest of the trip bagging me out for not owning one of them. So I will definitely own one before the end of this year. I'm just waiting for the new byd, uh, blade tube battery, which I believe is coming in September of this year.

Speaker A: Very exciting. Well, thank you very much, Tim. It's fantastic to hear about your trip in all this detail and to get, as you say, a postcard from the future and to get a sense of scale when government gets behind things and really is determined to accelerate the energy transition. And uh, I think that that for me gives me a lot of confidence around the scale is there, the engine is being built in terms of this alternative. We hear the little highlights about ice vehicle sales Being threatened. That's another real indicator of what's coming. And, um, you've given us, uh, some confidence that it's not just a temporary thing. In fact, it is the future at this kind of scale. And China's all in.

Speaker B: Yeah, the future is now. And even just as you were talking, if I know you're talking about the global passenger vehicle market, but it's worth bearing in mind the internal combustion engine passenger vehicle market in China peaked in 2017 and it's down 50% in 2025 versus 2017. So it's already down 50%. We talk about the fact that EVs are now half the new car sales, but new car sales of internal combustion engine cars in China in the last, last eight years, down 50%. This year they're down 20% year to date, year on year, another 20%. Uh, the internal combustion engine is going to be literally a collector's item by the end of this decade in China, and EVs will have run the race. So, uh, it's not like we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The future's been very, very clear for China for a decade or two. And when you talk to all of these companies, we talked about those that existed listed a decade ago, Most of them didn't, but those that did, like, they've been working on this for 20 years. So the idea that America's woken up and China's somehow stolen a march on them, I mean, it's been in plain sight for 10 or 20 years what China's doing. And it's. And whether it's in copper or rare earth or lithium or iron ore or aluminum or, you know, you name it. Batteries, wind, solar, hydro, everything we talk about. China is literally more than half the world's production of refining or manufacturing or exports of all of the above. And 50% is the minimum. Like I saw one stat saying that China produced 98% of all solar modules in the world in the last five years. 98% global dominance. And, uh, that's in the last five years. It's just staggering how far they are in advance and how important. Australia has to collaborate and partner with these Chinese clean tech leaders because they are the future and the future is now. And thank God for that, because the climate sciences you're seeing every day sitting in England is horrific and we need to make it stop, ensure that it doesn't get too much worse before, uh, we cap the carbon pollution the world's allowing each and every day. And, uh, yeah, so China's no saint. We talked about that. How many coal plants they're building. But. But, my God, they're building the future before our eyes at a scale that is just beautiful to see.

Speaker A: Well, thank you for taking the extra time this week to share that good news with us, Tim. We really appreciate it. Um, I'm here in the. In the UK until, uh, mid July, so we'll catch up at the back end of July for our next conversation. And I look forward to it.

Speaker B: Stay hydrated.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Ryan. Bye, Sa.