Highlights

Western Australia’s government says nearly a third of successful applicants in the latest round of the state-backed commodity exploration scheme hopes to discover battery materials. In other news, the state government has established the Energy Transformation Taskforce in response to the energy sector’s transition from coal to renewables and distributed energy resources. 

The Victorian Government has taken the decision to pay rebates, under its Solar Homes package, to some 600 otherwise eligible households who installed solar PV systems but failed to follow the program’s procedure. 

The developers of the 35 MW Brigalow Solar Farm are challenging the new solar installation rules introduced by the Queensland government.

Australian miner GBM Gold is planning to repurpose the Woodvale evaporation ponds near Bendigo in central Victoria and build a utility-scale solar farm. One part of the project will be a floating solar array.

Defying election predictions, the right-wing Liberal-National coalition celebrated a “miracle” victory on Saturday evening. But, the Australian solar sector has little reason to rejoice.

One of the hotly contested issues in the run-up to the Saturday federal election is whether a proactive response to climate change is more expensive than doing nothing. The Australia Institute has examined 22 reports from academics, government agencies and consultants modeling higher emissions reductions by 2030 and found that none of them shows action on climate change is ‘economy wrecking’. Counting the costs of the major parties’ climate change policies, UNSW finds that impacts of inaction on climate change for both Australia’s economy and jobs outweigh the costs of reducing emissions.

As the federal election campaign slowly grinds to a halt, one thing is indisputable: climate change has emerged as the make or break issue in this year’s election. The main parties have come up with a wide range of policies, but some are more supportive of the green energy sector than the others.

A research team from Monash University has introduced an intrinsically stable, ‘self-healing’ catalytic system based on earth abundant elements to promote the water electrolysis process in a strongly acidic environment and elevated temperatures.

The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority is seeking public submissions on the massive Asian Renewable Energy Hub proposed for the Pilbara region.

Canadian company CellCube Energy Storage Systems and Pangea Energy have signalled their intention to install a 50 MW/200 MWh energy storage system in Port Augusta, South Australia.