This year Professor Elizabeth Thurbon will be giving a keynote speech at the State of Energy Research Conference

Australia and Brazil bear striking similarities, especially in recent years. It is these similarities, we argue, that make greater cooperation a major diplomatic imperative.

Development banks are always important for governments, especially those with ambitious visions for national progress. But they assume even greater importance in times of uncertainty and instability.

John Mathews, Elizabeth Thurbon, Sung-Young Kim and Hao Tan
have received the REPE annual Best-Paper Award 2022/2023

The UNSW Digital Grid Futures Institute together with the UNSW Energy Institute are delighted to invite you to the launch of the book Developmental Environmentalism, and a lively debate about the need for a more strategic Australian response to global energy policy developments.

Why has East Asia emerged as the global leader in green energy industries but - until recently - lagged on carbon emission reduction? What is new and distinctive about East Asia's approach to the green energy transition?

Join Asia Society-Victoria Distinguished Fellow Mr Tatsuya Terazawa, Chairman and CEO of Institute of Energy Economics, Japan and Prof Elizabeth Thurbon, Professor of International Political Economy, UNSW to assess the potential of Australia-East Asia energy relations. The panel will be moderated by the Australia Japan Business Council of Victoria.

Not every departure from economic liberalism is as ill-advised as its advocates would have us believe. East Asia's experience suggests that if America's latest foray into economic nationalism remains focused on creating a strong, inclusive domestic economy, it will do much good for the rest of the world.

What cause could be more important than the economic, energy, and
environmental security of the nation and the future of the planet?

The Smart Energy Council, the Australian Renewable Industry Package (ARIP) would dwarf the government’s existing commitments.

Australia has now slipped from likely leader to obvious laggard in the green hydrogen race, significantly trailing other OECD countries in terms of the actual implementation of projects. So where have we gone wrong?

Although Australia is generally believed to hold an intermediate ranking position in international society, the idea of Australia as an energy superpower should not seem far-fetched. Arguably, Australia is already an energy superpower - but of the ‘non-renewable’ or ‘fossil-fuel’ variety – being the world’s largest exporter of coal, and one of the largest exporters of gas and uranium.

Labor is framing the transition not just as decarbonisation but as a green economic boom through manufacture of electrolysers, green steel, green cement and green fertiliser. If successful, this will amount to a green industrial revolution.

Offshore wind power (OWP) is emerging as the fastest growing sector in the global race towards renewables, and likely to emerge in just a few years as the largest segment in absolute terms. It has grown from accounting for just 1% of wind power capacity in 2010 to 10% by 2019 and is anticipated to reach 20% early in the 2020s.

Korea’s Green Transformation: Leveraging New Trade Opportunities

Cooperating With China on Climate Change

China and the United States. Together, the superpowers are responsible for more than 40% of global carbon emissions.

We develop a new way of analysing the state’s strategic role in the clean energy shift. We do so by synthesizing Schumpeterian understandings of ‘creative destruction’ and techno-economic change with cutting-edge developmental state theorizing centred on ‘developmental environmentalism’.

The article is on an important issue for energy policy- phasing out the use of coal for power generation. Based on a case study of closures of coal power plants in China’s Guangdong province, the researchers find that under certain circumstances, governments - especially those in the provincial and city levels - can and do act as change agents when it comes to retirement of coal fired power stations.

Australian coal exports to China plummeted last year. While this is due in part to recent trade tensions between Australia and China, our research suggests coal plant closures are a bigger threat to Australia’s export coal in the long term.