Australia

Australian-based Redback Technologies is now eligible for subsidies under the South Australia Home Battery Scheme, alongside nine other brands. The company manufacturers its solar inverter-battery hybrid systems overseas.

IEEFA supports new bill prohibiting the opening up of thermal coal mining in Queensland’s Galilee Basin

Diversifying its gas-focused portfolio Down Under, the Italian oil group has acquired the Northern Territory’s largest solar project – the 33.7 MWp Katherine Solar Farm.

The first sod has been turned on a $30 million smart microgrid which is to power Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds Campus. The project, featuring a 7 MW solar farm and a 1 MW battery, is delivered in partnership with AusNet Services and its subsidiary Mondo with the goal to provide an integrated research and education platform, and contribute to the university’s sustainability goals.

With li-ion battery supply chains stretched by the rapid EV and energy storage uptake, Western Australia is looking to position itself at the forefront of global battery manufacturing. The state government has launched a strategy to grow WA’s future battery industry, which includes plans for an investment attraction strategy.

After it launched construction on its first solar project in Australia last month, Indonesia’s Terregra Renewables is all set to break ground on another 5 MW solar farm in South Australia.

A flagship report from the Senate Committee on Electric Vehicles (EV) has called on the federal government to adopt a strategy that will accelerate EV uptake in Australia, and implement new vehicle emissions standards to encourage manufacturers to sell more EVs. Since a growing EV fleet could pose a challenge to the grid, solar is set to assume an important role in flattening out the demand and supply curve.

Australian retail landlord, Vicinity Centres, has remodelled the northern entry of one of its shopping centres with an energy-generating glass atrium in a world-first commercial application of technology developed by Perth-based company ClearVue PV.

Elon Musk’s company is seeing tremendous success with its EVs and global manufacturing, and dramatically scaling its energy storage deployment, but the Solar Roof is still not being widely deployed.

The OECD Environmental Performance review of Australia, released yesterday, comes at a critical time in the lead-up to Federal elections in May. Three formerly Liberal-aligned candidates are standing as independents in opposition to longstanding Liberal members of parliament, on the basis that the Liberal National Party, in power since 2013 has failed to adequately address climate change and its many challenges, including environmental degradation. The OECD review agrees with them.