Policy

A University of New South Wales (UNSW) community survey has found majority support for the proposed Australian Carbon Dividend Plan, a plan to tax the biggest carbon emitters and redistribute to the Australian taxpayers.

Three NSW government facilities for aquatic and agricultural research and development are reducing their grid-dependence by utilising solar PV.

Australia has an undisputed competitive advantage when it comes to renewable energy, and many believe we can become a clean energy exportation superpower, but we have to reindustrialise ourselves first.

A survey run by the Clean Energy Council shows confidence in new clean energy investment continued to weaken over the past six months. While a big majority of industry representatives expect to hire more staff in the next 12 months, the biggest challenges to developing new projects remain unchanged with grid connection process and technical requirements and policy uncertainty at the top of their list of concerns.

Stand-alone power systems (SPS) have reaffirmed its lead amongst technologies racing to transform energy in rural Western Australia.

In a scandal that has Energy Minister Angus Taylor on the ropes and looking like a Labor Party punching bag to anyone with access to common sense and basic arithmetic, the NSW Police have launched an investigation into allegations a City of Sydney document was altered by Taylor’s office and supplied to News Corp.

The Kidston solar-pumped hydro project is back on its feet after Japanese utility J-Power and Genex Power renegotiated their deal with the extension of funding provided by the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Board earlier this month. The project had been thrown off-course after a shock decision by EnergyAustralia not to finalise a purchase agreement.

To have any hope of restricting global heating to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the renewables success story which saw 108 GW of solar deployed last year needs to be cranked up to the next level – and fast.

Under the business-as-usual scenario, Western Australia could use up its Paris-Agreement 1.5°C compatible carbon budget within 12 years but a massive ramping up of renewable energy capacity would unlock significant economic opportunities for the state, finds a report by Berlin-based science and policy institute Climate Analytics.

The University of Wollongong’s Sustainable Buildings Research Centre has become the first building in Australia to achieve full marks under the world’s toughest sustainability standard for buildings, the Living Building Challenge. With 468 solar panels to support net-zero energy, an onsite rainwater system to enable net-zero water performance, and use of environmentally safe and reused building materials, the building is a demonstration of the value of the research the SBRC team carries out.