Sustainability

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has launched a $62 billion energy and jobs plan, which includes the biggest pumped hydro scheme in the world. The government is also planning to convert publicly owned coal-fired power stations into clean energy hubs from 2027.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced the state will now be targeting 70% renewable energy penetrations by 2032 – a significant increase in ambition and a teaser for “one of the biggest announcements our government has ever made” later today.


Google will be using Australian company Enosi’s technology to trace its energy use in Sydney, part of its journey towards time matched renewables – a far more ambitious and globally favoured standard.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA PVSP) reviews the current regulatory and industrial landscape for end-of-life PV management in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, and the United States.

South Australia resources company Oz Minerals has given the green light to a $1.7 billion copper and nickel project in Western Australia that is to be powered by a mix of solar PV and wind generation which the miner believes will become one of the largest, off-grid hybrid projects in the world.

Indonesia will have to get to work installing more than 24 GW of solar this year – and every year – if the region is to achieve the 2.1 TW to 2.4 TW of photovoltaics the International Renewable Energy Agency has estimated it will require to achieve a net zero carbon energy system by 2050.

The city authority wants a developer to construct a 7 MW solar project for it as part of a push to widen its sources of electricity, and says clean energy will be cheaper than – largely coal-fired – grid power from Eskom.

Australian-based mining giant Fortescue Metals Group has announced it will deploy an additional 2 GW to 3 GW of renewable energy generation and battery storage as part of a more-than $9 billion plan to decarbonise its iron-ore operations by 2030.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed a new method of extracting silver and aluminium from end-of-life PV cells using iron chloride and aluminium chloride dissolved in brines. According to the research team, the cheap solvents retrieve up to 95% of the metals within 10 minutes, achieving a 98% purity of silver chloride.

Victoria’s ongoing transition to renewable energy sources, including the installation of hundreds of thousands of rooftop solar PV systems, has helped the state “smash” its 2020 emission reduction targets on the path to net zero by 2050.