Markets & Policy

The 2022 pv magazine Roundtables Europe focused on decarbonization throughout the continent. Linking sustainability to financial performance is a big part of this goal, as the second session, “Sustainability in action, raising the corporate bar,” attested to. During the panel discussion, four experts discussed end of life, circularity, material supply, project development, and the social community, as we approach terawatt solar scale.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has declared skyrocketing power prices and unprecedented market disruptions have confirmed the “urgent” need for the nation to fast-track its transition from a coal-dominated system to renewables, including wind and solar PV backed by batteries and other energy storage technologies.

The introduction of the Federal Government’s climate change bill to parliament has been welcomed with business and industry groups predicting the legislation will unlock hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of export opportunities and investments in renewable energy, transmission and storage across Australia.

Solar manufacturer Maxeon Solar Technologies has teamed with Adelaide-headquartered solar panel collection and recycling company Reclaim PV Recycling to recover and recycle SunPower branded solar panels in Australia.

Australia is setting out to become a global hydrogen superpower – but the standards we’re applying to classify ‘green’ renewable hydrogen are falling well behind our global peers and the expectations of future customers. The heart of the problem is “we’ve separated the characteristics of energy from the energy itself,” Steve Hoy, founder and CEO of power tracing technology company Enosi, tells pv magazine Australia.

Melbourne’s Monash University will conduct a $1.18 million study into alternative market designs which better support energy storage technologies and drive clearer investment signals.

Energy efficient homes, like those with solar panels, fetch, on average, a premium of over 17% in Australia – though that figure grows to 28.9% in Queensland and 24% in Victoria, according to a report from real estate company Domain.

Rooftop solar installations may now be conducted by multiple installers, the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) announced today. The rule change will afford companies more flexibility as CER continues tightening its surveillance of the rooftop industry.

While curtailing solar and wind energy production can be viewed as a lost opportunity, NREL argues that it may be an important feature in the future energy grid dominated by low-cost renewable energy.

Australian renewable energy and storage developer Genex Power has confirmed it is the target of a takeover bid having received an unsolicited offer of more than $300 million from a consortium of private equity firms led by Australian technology billionaire Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital.