Markets

The Australian government will pump almost $25 million into a national solar panel recycling program in a bid to reduce landfill and recover valuable metals and minerals that can support the renewable energy transition.

Fortescue’s plans to build one of Australia’s largest solar farms have cleared another regulatory hurdle with the federal government’s environmental watchdog providing the tick of approval for the 644 MW project planned for Western Australia.

Renewable energy platform Anza Power has launched in the Australian and New Zealand markets with the acquisition of a 1.4 GW pipeline of solar developments and more than 3.4 GWh of battery energy storage projects from developer Bison Energy.

Synergy’s plans to build a 2 GW solar, wind and battery project in Western Australia’s Mid West have cleared a major regulatory hurdle with the state’s environment watchdog waving the project through.

The International Renewable Energy Agency’s annual review into employment finds solar held more than 43% of global jobs in the renewable energy sector in 2024.

Wood Mackenzie’s 2026 market outlook for hydrogen expects non-biological origin hydrogen to gain momentum and ammonia crackers to reach commercial scale but predicts the Middle Eastern market to retreat and the European Union to abandon its industrial hydrogen mandates.

Renewable energy developer and retailer Zen Energy is up for sale with the Australian firm’s expanding portfolio of solar and energy storage projects and offtake agreements attracting interested from both local and international investors.

A new Perspectives research study on the future of the global PV supply chain outlines how module prices, performance, and lifetimes could evolve over the next 25 years. The work reflects a collaboration among leading solar research institutions worldwide. One of the study’s authors, the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, told pv magazine that solar module and cell efficiencies could exceed 35% by 2050, with panel prices expected to drop by a factor of two.

Plans to develop a 90 MW solar farm and a six-hour battery energy storage system to help power the Western Australian town of Broome have joined the queue for federal environmental assessment.

New UNSW research found that about 20% of solar modules in large PV plants degrade much faster than expected. The researchers recommend holistic strategies such as robust materials, advanced designs, and proactive monitoring to decouple degradation pathways and prevent cascading failures.