World

Tesla’s new electric ute, the Cybertruck, may not be the most beautiful of vehicles, but that doesn’t seem to have cost it any attention. The unveiling almost broke the Internet, and a couple windows really did break in the process.

State and federal energy ministers have given a tick of approval to the National Hydrogen Strategy prepared by chief scientist Alan Finkel and voiced support for a $370 million fund for green hydrogen projects. Against high expectations of the country’s hydrogen export potential, a report finds that Australia has overhyped the potential demand for hydrogen exports by a factor of up to 11.

The possibilities presented by hydrogen are the subject of excited discussion across the world – and across Australia’s political divide, notoriously at war over energy policy.

A researcher has proposed a new approach to apply maximum power point tracking techniques to optimize electricity production in wind-solar power projects. The permanent magnetic synchronous generator hybrid model used in the study is based on a multi-input rectifier stage which is said to be able to eradicate current harmonics and eliminate the need for extra input filters.

Recent analysis from Wood Mackenzie predicts green hydrogen, produced primarily by solar electrolysis, will reach cost parity in Australia, Germany and Japan by 2030.

New research by the World Gold Council identifies greenhouse gas emissions across the whole supply chain of gold mining and sets out a plan to aureate the industry’s carbon footprint with solar PV and other renewables.

Market intelligence company Navigant Research has developed a country forecast of the global market. Incentives and pricing will be the main driver of installations, though the market will continue to be concentrated in certain key regions for now.

The third-quarter results for the inverter maker are in and look promising. All performance indicators are up for the steadily growing company.

A result of a collaboration between global accounting and financial services firm KPMG, Canadian gas giant ATCO, Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), H2City can be used to assess the costs and benefits of regional town or municipality switching to hydrogen.

Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2°C, and as close as possible to 1.5°C. The bad news is that four years on the best that we can hope for is holding global increases to around 1.75°C. We can only do that if the world moves decisively towards zero net emissions by the middle of the century.