Employment

A report from Australia’s Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre which analysed the development of battery hubs in the U.S., Germany and Japan, has found that co-location and cooperation between industry and government were key to hub success. For Australia to play the same game, it will have to leverage its wealth of resources, and clean up its act along the way.

President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michele O’Neil, says renewables industries have fallen short in their treatment of workers and urgently need to do more to provide quality jobs which are secure and fairly paid.

The Queensland government has approved a new “state-of-the-art” renewable energy skills centre in Brisbane, which will provide training to prospective and current electrical workers to enter clean energy industries.

Deakin University has received funding for two multi-million dollar facilities, one devoted to advanced battery research and the second for the development of hydrogen technology. The projects’ aims will be to overcome hydrogen’s hurdles and, for batteries, to improve existing technologies while also investigating sustainable alternatives like sodium batteries.

In the world of renewable energy, the past carries charge. It can be an anchor, a learning curve, a hurdle. In Bundaberg, it’s quite literally the fuel for the future. And that green future is being energised by an unusual crew: its local government.

ARENA and green-thumb Angus Taylor have launched a project to demonstrate that renewable energy can be cost competitive compared to fossil-fuel use in the processing of alumina — providing an incentive for one of Australia’s biggest industries to adopt this technology and offer low-carbon alumina to the world market.

French renewables developer Neoen is pushing ahead with plans to construct a 157 MW wind farm and 100 MW battery project in Queensland’s far north just weeks after federal resources minister Keith Pitt blocked public funding for the project.

More than 100 Australian businesses, including some of the country’s largest, have banded together to put pressure on government to commit at least 1% of GDP to a green energy recovery in the May budget and to ensure a more equitable transition to renewables for marginalised Australians.

Let’s not give Australia’s Prime Minister any more space on the topic of climate change. Scott who? Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency encapsulated the Summit and where we’re at coolly, concisely and cogently.

AGL’s Managing Director and CEO, Brett Redman, has left the company after he told its board he believed “he could not make a long-term commitment” as the energy giant moves to split into two separate entities.