This long Australia Day weekend, Australians may be considering what it takes to survive on their continent. One company based in arid Arizona has partnered with ARENA to demonstrate how solar PV can combine with other technologies to solve some of the country’s biggest problems — take a sip of Renewables 2.0. 

It’s a minor concern compared to the tragic loss of life, livelihoods and biodiversity caused by the bushfires still ravaging parts of Australia, but reduced output by PV systems due to smoke haze is an unwelcome bi-product of blazes that have burned at a scale and ferocity never seen before.

As the world strives to arrest the climate crisis and increases its investment in solar energy, the industry must address its own sustainability. A new report produced by Arup in Australia looks at how to apply principles of the circular economy to current and future PV waste management.

Cleaning contractors, EPCs and O&M firms are the prospective customers of SolarCleano, a robotic solar-panel cleaner designed and developed in Luxembourg and kicking up a storm of dust and debris worldwide.

The Australian EV passenger fleet may be just a twinkle in the eye of green futurists, but Brisbane-based Tritium, a leader in fast-charging technology, is also rolling out its R&D, manufacturing and enabling infrastructure across more advanced markets in Europe and the US. After posting a more than $47 million loss in 2019, CEO, David Finn talks about Tritium’s outlook for 2020 and beyond.

This cataclysmic bushfire season demonstrates the risk that climate change poses to Australia’s economic and social prosperity. Stanford’s international roadmap to freedom from fossil fuels by 2050 says Australia needs another 280 GW of solar PV and tens of billions of dollars of investment to turn down the heat.

“With bushfires raging across the country, AGM season in full swing and increasing pressure on big business to clean up their act in the light of the climate crisis,” Greenpeace says the moment is right to encourage corporate commitment to 100% renewables.

With the number of electric vehicles on Australian roads probably just scraping 6,000, Infrastructure Partners Australia says now is the perfect time to apply a road-use charge to EVs, to ensure all drivers are pulling their weight and the quality of Australian roads can be maintained.

NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean stands as an example of what you can gain by playing nice with the Feds, and the country’s electricity reliability standard becomes the focus of national next steps in Australia’s energy transition…

There’s no shortage of action in the New South Wales renewable-energy scene, with some 19.4 GW of large-scale renewable energy projects approved or progressing through the planning system, and around 2.5 GW of grid-scale solar under construction. Plus there’s 2 GW of generation and 175 hours of storage planned for the pumped-hydro project known as Snowy 2.0 – and that’s just what’s happening at the big end of town.