Markets & Policy

Japanese oil and gas giant Inpex has struck a deal to buy 50% of Italian utilities giant Enel Group’s Australian renewable energy platform, Enel Green Power Australia, handing it joint control of a solar farms portfolio that includes 254 MW of installed capacity and another 170 MW of renewables under construction.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has released a report identifying the key engineering and operational activities it plans to undertake in the next 12 months to help prepare the country’s main grid to operate with 100% instantaneous renewables.

Researchers are proposing to use steel zip ties to attach solar modules to fences in animal farms as a low-cost racking solution for agrivoltaic applications. They found the proposed approach is technically and economically viable, provided careful wind load tests are conducted on the fences.

The New South Wales Hunter region, for decades a hub for coal and steel industries, has been tapped to play a major role in Australia’s decarbonised energy future with the federal government announcing it will invest $70 million (USD 47.58 million) to further the development of a green hydrogen manufacturing hub in the region.

Countrywide Hydrogen said it is progressing towards a final investment decision on three green hydrogen projects planned for Tasmania following the selection of the suppliers to provide the electrolyser systems and storage technology and the appointment of a construction contractor.

Resources giant Rio Tinto will team with Japanese industrial heavyweight Sumitomo Corporation to build a green hydrogen production plant on Queensland’s central coast as part of a $111 million (USD 74.64 million) ‘world first’ project which aims to lower carbon emissions from the alumina refining process.

An international consortium planning to build a 50 GW renewable energy hub in Australia’s southwest has signed an early agreement with Korea’s largest electricity utility to advance the development of what would be one of the world’s largest green hydrogen production facilities.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in America have demonstrated the use of sugar water to improve the performance of flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage.

The Queensland government has identified a dozen regions across the state for renewable energy zones that will form the backbone of its $62 billion (USD 41.5 billion) energy transition plan that calls for an additional 22 GW of new wind and solar projects by 2035.

Discount supermarket giant Aldi plans to add another 34 MWp of PV to its rooftop solar network in Australia within the next 18 months after announcing that its transition to 100% renewable electricity has received the stamp of approval from the federal government’s Clean Energy Regulator.