Packaging and recycling company Visy says it will have new solar panel arrays up and running at seven of its 120-plus Australian sites next month, representing a combined 4,500 kilowatts of generation capacity. In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it partnered with Energy Aware on six sites in Victoria and 1K5° Commercial in…
The federal government has approved the 450-megawatt Goulburn River Solar Farm, a project budgeted at $880 million and which will include a million solar panels, a battery storage system, and upgrades to the surrounding road. According to a statement from federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek on Monday, the Upper Hunter region project – located between…
The Victorian government has given BrightNight approval to begin development of the $700 million Mortlake Energy Hub, a hybrid solar and battery energy storage project. Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio said on Thursday that the fast-tracked project is expected to create approximately 300 construction jobs. According to its website, the energy hub is planned as…
First Graphene has announced a two-year agreement with Halocell to supply graphene used in solar cells, ahead of the release of Halocell’s first commercially-available perovskite solar module this month In a statement to the ASX on Thursday, First Graphene said its customer had been able to “expedite its manufacturing process and enhance [the] light absorbing…
The 600-megawatt Birriwa Solar and Battery Project in NSW’s central west has been given federal approval, with environment minister Tanya Plibersek claiming this as “another big step” towards the nation becoming a renewable energy superpower. In a statement on Monday, the project west of Dubbo was described as including approximately a million solar panels and…
The federal government has given environmental approval for the first stage of SunCable’s Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPL) project in the Northern Territory, which is planned as the nation’s biggest solar farm and a potential exporter of electricity to Singapore. There were “strict conditions to protect nature” attached to the approval, according to a statement from…
By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University Imagine if Australian cities became major producers of clean energy, rather than relying on far-flung solar and wind farms. Far fetched? Hardly. Our cities and towns are full of warehouses, commercial areas, shopping centres and factories. These types of buildings have one very important underutilised resource – large expanses of…
International metals company Rio Tinto has announced that it will build two new 5.25 megawatt solar farms on its leases in the Northern Territory’s Gove Peninsula. In a statement on Wednesday morning (Australian time), Rio said the solar farms will be in Gumatj and Rirratjingu country, following agreement with traditional owner groups on the facilities’…
By Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Opposition leader Peter Dutton might have been hoping for an endorsement from economists for his plan to take Australian nuclear. He shouldn’t expect one from The Economist. The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that has reported on economic thinking and served as…
By Andrew Blakers, Australian National University As Australia’s rapid renewable energy rollout continues, so too does debate over land use. Nationals Leader David Littleproud, for example, claimed regional areas had reached “saturation point” and cannot cope with more wind and solar farms and transmission lines. So how much land is needed to fully decarbonise energy…
