Sustainability

Adelaide Airport has revealed plans to install a new 2.3 MW PV system on its domestic and international terminal roof, nearly tripling the size of its existing rooftop solar capacity and significantly scaling up its on-site renewable energy generation.

Rio Tinto, the nation’s biggest iron ore miner, has reached agreement with Ngarluma traditional owners to pursue the development of an 80 MW solar farm as part of the company’s efforts to decarbonise its vast iron ore operations in Western Australia.

The IEA Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme’s (IEA-PVPS) latest report on solar panel recycling offers a comprehensive review of all existing technologies in this market segment, from pure mechanical recycling to innovative techniques such as light pulse treatment, water-jet cleaning, pyrolysis, and chemical treatments.

The Commonwealth government says it will fast track the development of a proof-of-origin scheme for hydrogen and renewable electricity to help Australian industry meet growing domestic and international demand for verified renewable energy and clean products.

State-owned utility Western Power has awarded Perth-based power infrastructure provider Genusplus Group a five-year contract to maintain and upgrade the South West Interconnected System.

Construction has begun on a solar and battery-based microgrid that is to provide the northeast Victoria town of Corryong with crucial energy resilience, helping keep the power on during emergencies such as bushfires and storms.

Renewables developer Lodestone Energy will build a 220 MW solar farm on one of New Zealand’s iconic high-country grazing properties with the landowners targeting the PV facility to help rehabilitate redundant land.

Seven transmission projects valued at $7.9 billion are declared newly actionable in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2024 Integrated System Plan, to progress the 10,000 km of new transmission lines needed to achieve a net zero economy by 2050.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest Integrated System Plan has stamped the role rooftop solar will play in the nation’s energy transition, revealing that the total capacity of rooftop PV and other distributed solar in the nation’s main grid is forecast to rise from 21 GW to 86 GW by 2050.

Power giant AGL Energy has teamed with Melbourne-based solar panel recycling company Elecsome to explore the development of a PV materials recovery facility at the site of the coal-fired Bayswater power plant in the New South Wales Hunter Region.