Sustainability

The SA Government’s standout Home Battery Scheme is now open to new home buyers and new builds. The expanded Scheme is already off to a flying start with the Stoddart Group promising to install 10,000 solar and battery systems over the next four years to create one of the world’s largest VPPs.

Corporations contracted a record amount of wind and solar energy through power purchase agreements in 2019, up more than 40% from the previous year’s record, says a new report from BloombergNEF. The bulk of this purchasing occurred in the U.S. with tech companies and oil and gas majors leading the charge. In Australia, onsite solar projects delivering power to corporations nearly doubled to 1GW.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) is in desperate need of a short-term funding extension as its funds to allocate to new projects is set to dry up by mid-2020. The Australia Institute has published a discussion paper urging the Morrison Government to legislate.

A new report from Hydrogen Council predicts that the cost of renewable hydrogen production will fall drastically by up to 60% over the coming decade due to the declining costs of renewable electricity generation and the scaling up of electrolyzer manufacturing. Thanks to its optimal renewable resources, Australia will be among the countries most favorably placed to contribute to the development of the hydrogen economy.

Peter Gutwein is the new Premier of Tasmania and the first Tasmanian Liberal Minister for Climate Change. The Premier, who has a history of rebelliousness to the party line, seeks to lead Tasmania to a renewable energy future.

Curtin University research that aims to develop a new way of producing, storing and exporting green hydrogen from Australian resources, UNSW Sydney’s efforts to develop novel cathode coating materials towards more durable and powerful energy storage devices and Monash University’s investigation into phase change materials for wind and solar energy storage are among 18 new research collaborations supported by funding through the Australian Research Council.

Power generation statistics released by the National Energy Administration appear to confirm the nation added 12 GW of solar last month. China also deployed another 41 GW of polluting coal-fired power plants last year.

Queensland’s Darling Downs region is set for its second large-scale solar project to gain grid connection in a matter of months as Risen Energy’s 100 MW Yarranlea Solar Farm connects to the grid for its staging procedures.

In recent decades Noosa has gone from hip-replacements to hip and trendy, and nowhere does it have its finger more on the pulse than its ambitious climate and energy goals. Said ambitions will now see Noosa host the Transforming Australia 2020 Summit run by the Cities Power Partnership.

Behind Blackrock’s grand exit from coal: Global capital flight from thermal coal and the coal-fired power sector is already at a canter in 2020.