News

The Australian government’s green bank has reaffirmed its intent to evolve beyond investing in solar and wind, expanding its focus to include green hydrogen, energy storage and transmission projects after finalising a string of investment firsts in the past 12 months.

With large-scale battery developments emerging as an increasingly important component of Australia’s energy mix, India-headquartered multinational Sterling and Wilson Solar has revealed plans to expand its renewable energy offerings to include providing engineering, procurement and construction solutions for energy storage projects.

An order issued in late June instructed customs agents to detain solar shipments containing silica-based products sourced from a Chinese firm and its subsidiaries. Three solar players may already have been impacted.

Corporate power purchase agreements are the second most adopted purchasing method in the world, and they’re growing fast. With the U.S. and Europe picking up the pace in the last year, the Asia Pacific is not going to be left behind, with Wood Mackenzie estimating corporate PPAs in the region doubled in the last year.

The new headquarters planned by DEWA is intended to consume no more annual electricity than it generates, from a large volume of rooftop and building-integrated PV.

In a campaign style speech, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, founder of Fortescue Metals and one of Australia’s richest men, outlined his ambition of producing mammoth quantities of green hydrogen, a task he sees as imperative to stop the “planet cooking” while also cornering a market he believes will soon be worth trillions.

President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michele O’Neil, says renewables industries have fallen short in their treatment of workers and urgently need to do more to provide quality jobs which are secure and fairly paid.

Solar as a solution to poverty – it’s the route Brisbane-based charity SolarBuddy is taking, bringing Australian school children with it. Crucially though, the charity’s founder Simon Doble told pv magazine Australia it’s also a unique opportunity to learn about the rollout of clean technologies unencumbered.

Researchers at Monash University have published a new study in which high voltage lithium batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles and grid scale energy storage systems, are tested with a novel lithium salt shown to be far less hazardous than current conventional materials.

Three PhD students from Melbourne are moving their research into recycling lithium-ion batteries from the labs into pitch meetings, vying to become one of the first companies in Australia to recover the metals and minerals from spent batteries. Their method, they say, is simpler, less toxic and more cost competitive than those widely used.