Sustainability

Mazda Australia’s car part distribution centre in Melbourne has been fitted with a 900kW rooftop solar installation which is contributing to the centre, owned by Fraser Property Australia, now being 100% powered by carbon neutral energy.

If you’re thinking about buying an electric vehicle, whether due to soaring fuel prices or to lower your greenhouse gas emissions, where you live can make a huge difference to how climate-friendly your car is.

The University of New England’s own 3.2MW solar farm is proving its worth in more ways than one, not only as an independent renewable energy source for the university, but also as the setting of a pilot study to better understand the impact of large-scale solar on biodiversity. The study aims to learn whether solar plants are useful habitats for wildlife and if simple land management strategies during construction could better cater to native species.

The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest, has signed a contract with Snowy Hydro and its subsidiary Red Energy to match “100%” of its energy consumption with renewables, in particular solar.

Photovoltaics can wipe out 4.25 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year this decade, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even so, the actions announced so far remain way short of what is needed, with capital flows to fossil fuels still greater than the cash directed toward combating climate change.

Western Australian miner Iluka Resources will build Australia’s first integrated rare earths refinery to supply electric vehicle and renewable energy industries. The project has been enabled by a $1.25 billion loan from the Commonwealth government and is part of a broader push within Australia to establish ourselves as a serious alternative to China for the supply of processed critical minerals.

Australia’s largest hybrid solar and battery project, the New England Solar Farm & Battery Project in northern New South Wales, has reached a new milestone over the weekend following the delivery of the first of two massive 250 MVA transformers.

Australia’s march towards a renewable energy future has reached another milestone with AGL Energy announcing the closure of the first of four turbines at the 1,680MW coal-fired Liddell Power Station, signalling the beginning of the end for the ageing plant.

The International Renewable Energy Agency’s latest global outlook has spelled out just how ‘woefully’ far the world is from capping temperature rises at 1.5C, and lamented: ‘The stimulus and recovery efforts associated with the pandemic have also proved a missed opportunity.’

A West Australian joint venture seeking to recover high-purity vanadium from a steel industry waste product using a carbon negative process has won the support of the European Union. “We’re not the first people to look at that project, but we’re the first people to look at it through a different lens and use this type of process,” Neometals’ General Manager of Commercial and Investor Relations, Jeremy McManus, told pv magazine Australia. The project, which is still in the early stages, is already been sought out by potential offtakers “desperate to secure green vanadium,” McManus added.