Adelaide-based energy storage specialist 1414 Degrees has announced plans to acquire SolarReserve Australia II, which owns the Aurora Solar Energy Project in South Australia and two solar sites in New South Wales. The company proposes to use the Aurora site to build a massive 400 MW solar farm with progressive thermal storage capacity to several thousand MWh.

Western Australia’s South West has attracted the interest of Melbourne-based developer South Energy, which has proposed two utility-scale solar projects for the region. One has already secured development approval, while the other one will be discussed next week.

A survey run by the Clean Energy Council shows confidence in new clean energy investment continued to weaken over the past six months. While a big majority of industry representatives expect to hire more staff in the next 12 months, the biggest challenges to developing new projects remain unchanged with grid connection process and technical requirements and policy uncertainty at the top of their list of concerns.

In a matter of weeks, Brisbane’s Calamvale Central will become the first facility in Retail First’s privately-owned shopping centre portfolio to be powered by rooftop PV. More installations are expected to follow.

The bank has become the latest Australian signatory of The Climate Group’s RE100 initiative, joining a growing pool of businesses in the global transition to a zero-carbon grid.

Under the business-as-usual scenario, Western Australia could use up its Paris-Agreement 1.5°C compatible carbon budget within 12 years but a massive ramping up of renewable energy capacity would unlock significant economic opportunities for the state, finds a report by Berlin-based science and policy institute Climate Analytics.

The University of Wollongong’s Sustainable Buildings Research Centre has become the first building in Australia to achieve full marks under the world’s toughest sustainability standard for buildings, the Living Building Challenge. With 468 solar panels to support net-zero energy, an onsite rainwater system to enable net-zero water performance, and use of environmentally safe and reused building materials, the building is a demonstration of the value of the research the SBRC team carries out. 

South Australia has won this year’s state and territory renewables race, with the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania hot on its heels. As the state governments continue to step up action on climate change, the Federal Government is acting as an obstacle to investment, finds the Climate Council.

A group of Melbourne’s prominent universities and businesses are combining their purchasing power to source their electricity from a large scale renewable energy project in Victoria.

State and federal energy ministers have given a tick of approval to the National Hydrogen Strategy prepared by chief scientist Alan Finkel and voiced support for a $370 million fund for green hydrogen projects. Against high expectations of the country’s hydrogen export potential, a report finds that Australia has overhyped the potential demand for hydrogen exports by a factor of up to 11.