NSW Labor pledges $1bn state-owned investment company for renewable projects if elected

‘Privatisation does not work. It has been a disaster for New South Wales and under Labor it stops,’ leader Chris Minns says

A New South Wales Labor government would create a $1bn state-owned energy security company to drive investment in renewable energy projects and lower prices in the state, the party’s leader, Chris Minns, has said.

On Sunday, Labor will pledge to establish a NSW “energy security corporation”, an investment vehicle for renewable energy projects in the state, should the party win the 24 March state election.

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EU plans to loosen state aid rules to boost renewables investment

Proposed use of tax credits follows pressure to respond to Biden’s $369bn green subsidy scheme in US

The EU is stepping up its green subsidy race with the US through plans to loosen state aid rules on tax credits for renewable energy projects.

European policymakers have been under pressure to respond to the US president Joe Biden’s $369bn (£298bn) Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to encourage renewables investment in everything from electric cars to wind turbines.

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Record levels of renewable energy push demand for electricity to all-time low for December quarter

Increased output from renewables, with a near-zero fuel cost, also nudged more coal and gas out of the generation market

Milder temperatures and record levels of renewable energy drove electricity demand to its lowest levels for any December quarter, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Wholesale power prices also retreated during the period, particularly after the Albanese government imposed price caps on black coal and gas that are used to generate power, AEMO said in its quarterly report released on Wednesday.

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King Charles redirects £1bn windfarm profits towards ‘public good’

Wind energy agreements have generated windfall that would normally go towards monarchy

The King has asked for profits from a £1bn-a-year crown estate windfarm deal to be used for the “wider public good” rather than as a funding boost for the monarchy.

Under the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant, which is currently £86.3m a year, the King receives 25% of the crown estate’s annual surplus, which includes an extra 10% for the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.

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Household solar boom back on track after severe weather and supply disruptions lead to 14% drop in capacity

December 2022 was third-busiest month on record for solar panel installation partly driven by spiking electricity prices

When record rainfall caused flooding in south-east Queensland last February, Steve McLean’s solar installers were kept off roofs, blowing a $60,000 hole in his firm’s budget and setting back what might have been another record year for his business.

“If we didn’t do a system for five weeks, you can imagine that no one else did … We got absolutely smashed in February and March,” McLean, the owner of Gold Coast Solar Systems, said. “If you take that number out of the marketplace, well, that was disastrous.”

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‘Billionaire biffo’ shines light on hugely ambitious $30bn Sun Cable solar project

The row between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest reveals the technical, economic and even geopolitical hurdles to completion

Behind the “billionaire biffo” between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest over the future of Sun Cable is a project that has analysts dubbing “visionary” but also “extremely ambitious”.

In Australia’s first big business story of the year, Sun Cable was placed into voluntary administration on Wednesday. That signalled the company won’t be able to meet debt payments without another injection of funds said to be $60m, with Forrest the one not “aligned” with other investors in a willingness to dig deep again.

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Giant solar farm project in doubt after disagreement between Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest

Australian billionaires had backed $30bn Sun Cable venture designed to help power Darwin, Indonesia and Singapore but the company has gone into voluntary administration

Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest have fallen out over plans to build a giant solar farm in the Northern Territory to supply Darwin, Indonesia and Singapore with power, with the venture entering voluntary administration.

Grok, the family investment arm of Cannon-Brookes, and the appointed administrators said in separate statements the company driving the project, Sun Cable, would continue to operate and seek new financial support.

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Energy efficiency ‘war effort’ needed to cut bills and emissions, say MPs

Ministers missed crucial opportunities but should use energy windfall tax to speed up insulation efforts, committee says

A national “war effort” on energy efficiency is required to cut energy bills, reduce climate-heating emissions and ensure energy security, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.

Boosting efficiency in homes and businesses is the fastest way to cut energy use but the government missed a “crucial window of opportunity” last summer, the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC) said. The energy bills crisis was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while political turmoil in the UK resulted in three prime ministers in office between July and October.

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Australia news live: flood peaks expected in parts of SA, private hospital nurses to strike in NSW for first time in decades

South Australian SES revises dates for expected peak flows with Renmark and Berri expected to peak today; nurses at two major private hospitals in Sydney to walk off the job at 1pm

Private hospitals nurses to walk off the job for first time in decades

Staying in NSW, nurses at two major private Sydney hospitals will walk off the job later today.

The Australian market regulator and the cap price that people pay for electricity will make their announcement in February about what bills people will pay for next year. And we expect that the move will feed directly through to that and see downward pressure of up to $243 on electricity bills of what it was previously going to be.

How much of a philosophical jump was it for you as a Liberal, to intervene in the market in this way and cap the prices?

Well, it wasn’t a jump at all to stand by people following the illegal war in Ukraine, which is pushing up electricity bills. The government is there to protect the people – not the other way around.

And that’s exactly what we did. We looked at a range of measures to support people to deal with these high electricity prices. And this is the one that the commonwealth government asked us to do and, obviously, our No 1 priority is standing by the people of New South Wales using our balance sheet to support families and businesses. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

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Eight batteries to be built around Australia to increase renewable energy storage capacity

Energy minister Chris Bowen says the batteries – shared between four states – will increase capacity tenfold to help stabilise the grid

Eight large batteries to store renewable energy will be built around Australia to support the grid and help keep energy prices down, the federal government has said.

The government-owned Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) would provide $176m to the projects, the energy minister, Chris Bowen, announced on Saturday.

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Electricity generated by burning native Australian timber no longer classified as renewable energy

Labor revokes Abbott government move which allowed energy from burning wood waste to be counted with solar and wind

Electricity generated by burning native forest wood waste will no longer be allowed to be classified as renewable energy under a regulatory change adopted by the Albanese government.

The decision, which Labor had promised to consider after it was recommended by a Senate committee in September, reverses a 2015 Abbott government move which allowed burning native forest timber to be counted alongside solar and wind energy towards the national renewable energy target.

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Australia is on track … sort of: official expert advice urges a ‘big upward shift’ on emissions cuts

Climate change minister tells parliament official projection of 40% cut does not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments

Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the country on track to reach a 40% cut in climate pollution by 2030 – just short of the national target of 43% – but the government has been told a “big upward shift in momentum” is needed to tackle the problem.

Giving the country’s first climate statement to parliament, which is now required annually under legislation passed earlier this year, Bowen said the official projection of a 40% cut did not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments, and that those measures would “lift our result to at least 43%”.

The statement did not shed light on what the government would do to make deeper cuts in line with its goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, an expectation raised by a UN-backed report if the Great Barrier Reef is to avoid being nominated as a world heritage site “in danger”. It also did not mention the country’s vast coal and gas export industries.

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Rishi Sunak searches for Tory compromise over onshore wind U-turn

PM is stuck between two wings of party and at risk of Commons defeat on pro-renewables amendment

Rishi Sunak is scrambling to find a compromise on permitting onshore wind amid a growing backbench Conservative rebellion, though No 10 remains fearful of a backlash from MPs who oppose windfarms.

The U-turn on backing onshore wind projects would directly contradict a pledge by Sunak during his leadership campaign but Downing Street has sought to frame it as government policy.

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Evidence grows of forced labour and slavery in production of solar panels, wind turbines

A ‘certificate of origin’ scheme could counter concerns about renewables supply chains, says Clean Energy Council

The Australian clean energy industry has warned of growing evidence linking renewable energy supply chains to modern slavery, and urged companies and governments to act to eliminate it.

A report by the Clean Energy Council, representing renewable energy companies and solar installers, has called for more local renewable energy production and manufacturing and a “certificate of origin” scheme to counter concerns about slave labour in mineral extraction and manufacturing in China, Africa and South America.

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About 2.6 million Uyghur and Kazakh people have been subjected to coercion, “re-education programs” and internment in the Xinjiang region of north-west China, which is the source of 40-45% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon. A report by the United Nations office of the high commissioner for human rights three months ago found Xinjiang was home to “serious human rights violations”, and the US has listed polysilicon from China as a material likely to have been produced by child or forced labour.

On batteries, there were major issues with the mining of between 15% and 30% of the world’s cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Amnesty International found that children, some as young as seven, were working in artisanal cobalt mines, often for less than $2 a day. Mining conditions were reportedly hazardous, and workers often did not have adequate protective equipment and were exposed to toxic dust that contributed to hard metal lung disease.

On wind energy, there had been rapid growth in demand for balsa wood used in turbine blades that had reportedly led to workers in Ecuador’s Amazon region being subject to substandard labour conditions, including payment being made with alcohol or drugs. The demand for balsa has also reportedly increased deforestation, and affected the land rights of Indigenous people in Peru. Some balsa wood suppliers have more recently provided Forest Stewardship Council certifications, which verifies responsible forest management and fair wages and work environments.

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Queensland faces ‘significant’ wellbeing decline if it doesn’t quickly transition to renewables, report says

Report by Deloitte warns biggest risk to jobs in the state is a carbon-fuelled economy

A Queensland government-commissioned report by Deloitte says there could be “significant” declines in wellbeing, assets left stranded and a stagnating economy if the state doesn’t quickly transition to renewables.

The report by the global accounting giant, obtained under the state’s right to information regime, also suggests Queensland could have a bright economic future should it rapidly decarbonise in coordination with the rest of the world.

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Alok Sharma backs bid to lift ban on onshore windfarms in England

Tory MP becomes latest member of party to get behind push to drop moratorium imposed in 2014

The president of the Cop26 climate summit Alok Sharma has become the latest Conservative party MP to support lifting the ban on new onshore windfarms.

Sharma has joined his former boss Boris Johnson, who nominated him for a peerage, in backing an amendment to government legislation in an attempt to drop the moratorium on onshore wind.

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New battery technology could be a ‘game changer’ for regional Australian communities

The CEO of Swiss company Energy Vault says its gravity storage technology can be built anywhere you can build a 20-storey building

The head of a Swiss energy company which has been contracted to build a solar storage battery in Victoria says its technology will be a “game changer” for rural communities because it can be built anywhere – provided the locals don’t mind having a structure that is as tall as a 20-storey building.

Energy Vault has pioneered a gravity energy storage system that uses surplus energy to raise 35-tonne blocks, made out of recycled materials, to the top of the tall battery structure. Energy is released by lowering those blocks.

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Australia’s ‘carbon capital’ charts a course away from fossil fuels and a boom-bust cycle

Queensland’s Gladstone council is pinning its hopes on a 10-year energy transition plan, amid concerns for its future in a net zero world

The 6.30am twin-engine service from Brisbane to Gladstone on Monday morning is chock full of blokes in hi-vis and heavy boots.

But this week federal public servants, journalists, renewable energy advocates and the Queensland energy minister joined the usual crowd of Fifo workers descending on the town.

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PM’s meeting with Chinese president confirmed – as it happened

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Andrews rules out deal with the Greens and independents in event of minority government

Dan Andrews was also asked what would happen if Labor finds itself in a minority government situation – will it do a deal with the Greens?

No deal will be offered and no deal will be done.

And independents – no deals with independents?

No deal will be offered and no deal will be done.

So if you’re in a minority situation and you hold more seats than the Liberal party, what happens? You go back to another election?

Well, I think what the best thing to do, and what happens, Michael, is we work hard for the next 13 days, we work hard to put a positive and optimistic plan out there, and we’ll see what the verdict of Victorian voters is. I’m arguing, I’m urging people to vote for a strong, stable majority Labor government, to vote for your local Labor candidate.

The new SEC – government-owned, not private for-profit, but government-owned electricity, so owned by every single Victorian – creates nearly 60,000 jobs – 6,000 of those will be apprentices. It will be 100% renewable electricity. These companies can’t be relied upon to replace themselves. They’ll just put another profit machine in place. We need to make sure that we’re looking after pensioners, we’re looking after families and, indeed, businesses. And without electricity, there is no economy, so we have to replace them. And we choose to replace them with a public option – a government-owned option. An option that’s owned by every single Victorian.

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Solar farm owner Toucan Energy enters administration amid Thurrock scandal

Authority lent total of £655m over four years to owner of 53 solar parks across Britain

One of the country’s largest solar farm owners has entered administration amid the fallout from a scandal that forced an Essex council leader to resign.

Administrators at Interpath Advisory have been appointed to Toucan Energy Holdings, which owns a portfolio of 53 solar parks with a combined capacity of 513 megawatts across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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