The Smart Energy Council has hailed today’s announcement of NSW Labor’s policy to drive 7 GW of renewable energy into the National Energy Market by 2030 as “the biggest rollout of renewable energy in Australia’s history”.

In the likely last full fortnight of Parliament before the Australian Federal election, the Clean Energy Council has thrown all political parties a lifeline in the form of 10 policy recommendations to grow renewable energy, as a low-cost source of electricity, a planet-saving emissions-reduction strategy and as a sustainable industry.

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has released its 2019 Economic and Political Overview, calling for “durable policy in energy and climate change” in a year it says will be wracked by economic uncertainties.

Australia’s more than 1,300 golf clubs can each spend upwards of $100,000 a year on electricity bills in the process of managing their greens and running their clubhouses. Today AEES Group announced an exclusive partnership with Golf Management Australia, to provide customised energy-efficiency audits and solar solutions that can reduce Australian clubs’ carbon footprint, and their grid-derived energy by up to 60%.

Call them aspiring sun gods: In the lead up to the 2019 New South Wales election on 23 March, Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change Adam Searle and the NSW Liberal & National Government Energy Minister Don Harwin have both announced solar policies that support NSW householders to install rooftop solar-PV systems and thereby reduce their energy bills.

Supplier of solar inverters SMA has announced two new service offerings – plant engineering, and operations and maintenance – designed to de-risk new project investment, streamline grid connection, and drive greater ongoing performance from utility-scale solar farms.

Australian retail landlord, Vicinity Centres, has remodelled the northern entry of one of its shopping centres with an energy-generating glass atrium in a world-first commercial application of technology developed by Perth-based company ClearVue PV.

The OECD Environmental Performance review of Australia, released yesterday, comes at a critical time in the lead-up to Federal elections in May. Three formerly Liberal-aligned candidates are standing as independents in opposition to longstanding Liberal members of parliament, on the basis that the Liberal National Party, in power since 2013 has failed to adequately address climate change and its many challenges, including environmental degradation. The OECD review agrees with them.

Chemical manufacturing accounts for around 10% of global energy consumption and 7% of industrial greenhouse emissions. Researchers at RMIT University have developed a material that can capture 99% of light and directly apply it to power chemical reactions thereby slashing emissions and improving the efficiencies of current processes.

Late 2018 saw the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Community Power Agency publish a comprehensive plan to power New South Wales and Victorian high schools with 100% renewable energy. Tomorrow, Australian high-school students in most states return to their classrooms with extreme summer weather fresh in their memories. Many will have climate change and energy transition on their minds.