Opinion & Analysis

It’s 2020, and there has been a shift in the balance of power. Not in the Senate, but between the federal government and the states. All last summer during the bushfires – while the Prime Minister was infamously not holding a hose – it was the premiers and chief ministers who were right beside emergency services leaders, working to keep people safe and informed.

The regular cleaning of solar modules results is optimized power output and protects installations against costly failures. There are multiple approaches to module cleaning, both low-and-high tech. Pol Duthoit from SolarCleano sets out the need and the options.

Batteries are coming to a grid near you, if they’re not there already. Little ones in households and big ones like in Hornsdale, South Australia are being deployed in support of the clean energy revolution. But what are they doing there? What can batteries do?

Several Australian states are going it alone on the the energy transition. The policies adopted by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and others represent major departures from the existing national approach, and run counter to the neoliberal principles underpinning the current system.

Australia’s failure to set a firm political course to net zero emissions is a profoundly backward act of economic and environmental self-harm. It’s in the national interest that we equip ourselves with not just the political will, but the practical tools required to harness the popular appetite for affordable renewable energy in the absence of a political solution.

The development process for ground-mounted utility scale solar projects in Vietnam is laborious, time-consuming, expensive and still largely difficult to navigate for foreign developers without entering a strategic partnership, in whatever form, with a local Vietnamese counterpart.

‘Dual circulation’ has one thing in common with many other major Chinese policy initiatives in that it’s not immediately apparent from its name as to what it means. First raised during a Politburo meeting in May, President Xi introduced this new strategy at the annual ‘Two Sessions’ later that month. It is clear that China’s leadership intends dual circulation to become an important part not only of China’s policy agenda for the next 12 months but to also feature prominently in the upcoming 14th five-year plan (2021-2025).  

San Francisco has now joined other US cities in banning natural gas in new homes. The move is in stark contrast to the direction of energy policy in Australia, where the Morrison government seems stuck in reverse: spruiking a gas-led economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s been a busy couple of months in global energy and climate policy. Australia’s largest trading partners – China, South Korea and Japan – have all announced they will reach net-zero emissions by about mid-century. In the United States, the incoming Biden administration has committed to decarbonising its electricity system by 2035.

Soaring fossil fuel prices have caused the scaling back or closure of Australian mines, resulting in production and job losses at a massive scale. More recently with the added consideration of carbon emissions, energy represents both a risk and an opportunity for this sector.