BNEF Summit New York 2026, 22 April 2026

Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit New York 2026, 22 April 2026 

Session: Energy Transition in a Multipolar World The Middle Power Perspective

 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: Australia offers a really interesting perspective as a middle power navigating a more fragmented world. We've historically always been a staunch US ally, very tight ties with the United States on security, politically, but China is our largest trading partner. Deepening ties now with India. 
So really sort of stuck in between the two great powers and having to navigate the complexities of that. And also, of course, historic ties with the United Kingdom and the EU. So, when you became Prime Minister back in 2015, Barack Obama was in the White House, the United States was still very much the linchpin of the global rules-based order. 
Now, a lot has happened since then. So what is your diagnosis of the state of the global rules-based order now, and how does it fair for countries like Australia? 


MALCOLM TURNBULL: It's really important that we maintain it. I was Prime Minister, I overlapped with the tail end of Obama and the first half of Trump in his first Presidency. But we are now dealing with a very different administration…Trump 2.0. 
The United States Government, in its official publications, says the international rules based order is “a cloud castle abstraction”. So it's not just what Donald Trump says on Truth Social. The official position, this is from the National Defense Strategy, is to dismiss international law, international rules based order, as essentially B.S. That's what that means. 

Now, this is mind blowing for countries like Australia. I wrote about this in Foreign Affairs last year, and the challenge is what do we do about it? Mark Carney spoke about it very eloquently at Davos. What do the middle powers do? How do you deal in a world where the U.S. now proudly says might is right, and we will pursue our interests - America First - regardless of its impact on others, whether they are friends or adversaries. 

So the answer is, we have to work together. 
We have to try to persuade our American friends that they should moderate or change course, but in the absence of being successful there, we have to work together to maintain the rules based order upon which our sovereignty and security relies. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So what does that look like?  So Mark Carney at Davos talked about pursuing more strategic autonomy. 
So what does that actually look like for middle power? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it means things like what Antoine was just talking about. It means self-reliance. 
It means sovereignty. It means autonomy. It means ensuring that you are not as dependent on the whims and fancies and policy decisions of great powers, as you have been in the past. You can't assume that, for example, the US will be as benign a hegemon as we always thought it was in the past. 
And again, this is not a criticism. This is just a statement of fact. So we're living in a very different world. And a lot of this is in line with what the Administration wants, by the way. JD Vance has said that General de Gaulle was right. He has praised De Gaulle, who infuriated Presidents Johnson and Kennedy in the 60’s because of his insistence on France's independence and sovereignty. Vance had said, no, he was right, Europe should not be permanent vassals of the United States. So we have to be more self-sufficient. 


Oddly enough, Canada has the biggest challenge because over well over 70% of its trade is with the US. A relatively small percentage of our trade is with America, by the way, and the U.S. has a massive surplus with us so that's why I was able to persuade Trump in the first administration not to impose steel and aluminium tariffs on Australia. 
But I think a good example of what middle powers can do is theTrans-Pacific Partnership. This was a 12 nation trade deal, very ambitious trade deal. It was a hallmark of Obama's pivot to Asia. 
And after the 2016 election, Trump pulled out of it. I persuaded Shinzo Abe to keep going with it, and I say we - Lucy and I - Lucy's here, and we persuaded Shinzo over dinner at our house in January 2017 that we should keep going without the United States. I kept on saying “out of the room, out of the deal”. 
Shinzo was a bit cautious about that to begin with, but we kept going, lost one important member - the US, added two irrelevant adjectives - comprehensive and progressive, so it's now the CPTPP. But it kept going, it was ratified, and the UK has joined it, and other countries will too. So that was an example of middle powers, meaning powers other than China and the US, being able to do things together. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So does it also infer that middle powers may strengthen ties with China?
I mean, China has expressed some interest in joining the CTPPP. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: François-Philippe Champagne, who was then the Canadian trade minister, and was in Sydney recently with Carney, and he apologised for insisting on adding those two adjectives. One of those classic negotiations where he proposed it, and everyone said don't be ridiculous, and then finally, at the end he proposed it again they went oh, whatever, OK. And everyone was from everyone who was in that negotiation, I wasn't there naturally. 
It was the trade negotiators, but everyone was there now, wishes they hadn't. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: But so does this push middle powers? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Yeah, well, yeah, well, it does. 
I mean, China, so in Trump 1.0, China sort of emulated Trump in terms of aggression, if you like. You remember the Wolf Warrior diplomacy phase, very forward leaning, aggressive kind of public diplomacy by China that was utterly counterproductive. 
And they worked that out. Whatever you think of their politics, they’re very smart people in Beijing. And this time, China is on a charm offensive. Xi Jinping is giving speeches about the importance of the international rule of law, the importance of maintaining international law. He is literally differentiating from the Trump administration. That is not going to turn Australia from being an American ally to a Chinese ally. 
That's not going to happen. But there are a lot of countries in the middle for whom that will be very appealing. This conference has been focussed on this perhaps almost exclusively, but the consequences of the American Israeli attack or war started with Iran, has a consequence for our region, East Asia and Southeast Asia, as Antoine was just talking about then is a massive, much greater than it is for the US directly. 


KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So what lessons do you think middle powers are taking out of that out of the latest? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it is sovereignty. Self-reliance. You cannot assume the US that we grew up with is the US that we’ve got…it certainly isn't the US we’ve got today or that will be so in the future. Now, again, this is not a criticism. I'm a devoted admirer of the United States and its history, its political achievements and so forth, its values. But, the Trump administration makes it very clear that this is a different administration. So what I'm saying about their different attitude to the rest of the world and international law is not a bug, it's a feature. 
And so we have to live with that. We all have a stake around the world in what happens in Washington, it's just that we don't have a vote, only the Americans do. We have to deal with the American administration we get. And that's what all of that means. So people will be hedging, but self-reliance and working together, and that means cooperating with other middle powers and the CPTPP is probably the best example of that. Mark Carney cites that whenever he talks about this. But we need to do a lot more. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: And on energy strategy for middle powers, what does this changing world order mean? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: It's exactly what Antoine was saying, he has not paid me to say this by the way, but it's exactly what Antoine was saying a moment ago. We have to be more self-reliant. Those countries that are very dependent on imported liquid fuels, as Australia is…we're a net energy exporter because of our gas and coal, but we're very dependent on imported liquid fuels. Electrification is clearly the way to go. 
The remarkable thing about renewables, which I'm very committed to, as you know I'm President, the International Hydropower Association, Lucy and I are renewable energy developers developing hydro, wind and batteries in Australia. So we're very committed to this, and I was in politics. But now more than ever the clean energy transition is absolutely critical to national sovereignty. If you want to be genuinely independent, you need to be economically independent, and energy is vital. You can't have an economy without the sources of energy, and electrification means you can achieve that independence because most of us, most countries, can generate as much solar power and wind as they need. And with the combination of batteries and pumped hydro, you have the storage to turn those intermittent renewables into 24/7 power. 


KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So the US/ Iran war and also the Russia/ Ukraine war, what lesson do you think middle powers will be taking? What does this mean for nuclear proliferation? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I'm really worried about that. 
If there's one thing that keeps me awake at night, that's it. What is the takeout that the Iranians will take from these recent conflicts? They're takeout will be that they should have developed the nuclear weapon already. I guess they've their own nuclear weapon with being able to block the Straits of Hormuz, which they've threatened for 47 years and they've only just done. Maybe that might qualify. 
But look in the region. If countries feel the US nuclear umbrella is not to be relied on, they will seek their own nuclear deterrent. And the countries in our region that could race to that very quickly, if they chose, Japan and South Korea. 
Now, when you say that about Japan given their constitution, their history, it sounds inconceivable, but as one of our great Prime Ministers, Paul Keating always used to say: in the great race of life always backs self interest, because you know it's trying. And so I think if that's what if that's what countries need to do, they will acquire that capability. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: We can see that the political discourse in Japan has been changing. 
I mean, not quite to that extent yet. But there is talk of constitutional reform on self-defence. 
So if we pivot to talk a bit more about climate and energy, so the US obviously has a very checkered history of engagement and participation in the global climate process. We've seen their climate commitments unravel and emissions target, be cancelled. But we haven't seen that happening and spreading to other countries. 
Why do you think that is? Why haven't other countries followed suit taken the United States as lead and said, you know what? We're not interested in decarbonisation. 


MALCOLM TURNBULL: Drill baby drill. When I was Environment Minister in the Australian Government in 2007 back in the halcyon days, when it was bipartisan consensus to support an emissions trading scheme, I might add. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: That didn't last really long. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: That did not last very long, no. 
I'll start to twitch. I've got PTSD from the Climate Wars. When in those days, the argument we were making was to say how much are you prepared to pay to save the planet? 
Because renewables were more expensive. Now, we're in the situation, and your BNEFs excellent LCOE  analyses demonstrate this is true pretty much everywhere in the world, the cheapest form of new generation is solar plus storage, supplemented by wind, supported by gas in some circumstances. This revolution of solar…. solar is getting cheaper and cheaper, it is growing at in excess of 25% per annum. Again, referring to Antoine's presentation, you saw the figures in Pakistan. Pakistan and Australia, quite an interesting contrast because both have got very high penetrations now of solar, of what we'd call rooftop solar. But in Pakistan it hasn't been as well integrated into their grid as it has been in Australia. But I think that, regardless of your views on climate change, renewables are the cheaper solution. 
And that's the way it's going. No one would build, in the energy business in Australia, no one would build a new coalified power station today, even if they thought, as one of my predecessors once said, climate change is crap. Even if they took that view, your solution is variable renewable generation, solar and wind, plus storage. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So in the power sector the economics are very clear, in the transport sector they're become a clearer, still difficult in industry, still difficult in agriculture. If you were Prime Minister today and looking at setting emissions targets, how would you be balancing and thinking about the impact of the US withdrawal and absence from the global climate process? Would it affect your thinking? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, not really. America has decided, the government, the US administration has decided, I suspect to the regret of most people in this room, but certainly to Mike Bloomberg's regrets as we heard yesterday, to basically double down on fossil fuels. And in fact, to even to lean against renewables. Now, you could understand a technology agnostic approach and let everyone deploy whatever you like. 
But leaning against renewables seems to me to be swimming against the inexorable tide. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: Jumping against the frogs. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: We all know electric motors are much more efficient than internal combustion engines. Most of the energy created by burning the petrol in your car is turned into heat, not into propulsion. So, there's a million other reasons too. I think it's a mistake, but, but America has got tonnes of petrol or oil I should say, and hence lots of petrol and diesel. It's got gas, it's got all of these resources, it can afford to do that. 
Other countries can't. And of course, we have a strong view. As you know, Kobad, we're both Australians, we are the land of droughts and flooding rains. Our climate has always been extreme, but it's getting a lot more extreme, so we know what's happening. 


KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: And for other middle powers, do you think that it's the same sort of balance as it is in their interest to continue on the path to decarbonisation? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, absolutely. Some countries that don't have the same access to as much access to solar, for example, as others. I think generally, yes. Look at India. India is focussed on solar deployment, putting huge effort into that, including building panels in India, and a massive government commitment to pump hydro because they don't want to be dependent on imported batteries, or reduce dependence on imported batteries. China’s roll out of renewables is pretty much equal to the rest of the world put together. 
And, of course, they are investing massively in pumped hydro, they're expecting to add about 200 gigawatts of pumped hydro between now and the mid 2030s. And, of course, batteries as well. 
I think the economics of it dictates the direction in Australia. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: So middle powers probably taking more of the Chinese course on climate and energy than the American one.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:  Yeah, for sure. 
Look, can I just say to you, and I used to say this all the time when I was in politics, Kobad’s heard this one thousand times: our energy policy should be determined by engineering and economics, not ideology and idiocy. That is the one message. I think that those countries that focus on engineering and economics will generally pursue decarbonisation. 
Now, the United States might be different because of its incredible endowment and it is exceptional and unique. But my attitude is let the Americans run their country, they don't need advice or lectures from us, but from our point of view, from most of the rest of the world, it is manifestly in our interest to pursue decarbonisation, clean energy, whether it's from an environmental point of view, which is hugely important, or from an economic point of view, which is often easier to sell politically. 

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: Malcolm Turnbull, thank you so much for sharing the middle power perspective with us. 

**ends** 

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