Category Archives: Energy

Regulator may take action against three energy retailers over alleged misuse of Centrepay system

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Australian Energy Regulator weighs up enforcement options against AGL, Origin and Ergon Energy after landmark court win

The national energy regulator is weighing up whether to take new action against three retailers for their alleged use of the Centrepay system after a landmark court win against AGL.

The Australian Energy Regulator won a major case in the federal court against AGL in August after alleging the energy giant used the government-run payment system to wrongly take welfare money from almost 500 customers for years after they ceased being customers.

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Renewable energy auction secures enough power for 11m UK homes

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£1.5bn auction awards record funding for new windfarms, solar farms and tidal power projects

Great Britain’s renewable energy auction has secured enough new clean electricity projects to power 11m UK homes after the Labour government made record funding available to suppliers.

The £1.5bn auction will support 131 new projects including windfarms, solar farms and tidal power projects after ministers increased the amount of funding available to seven times the sums offered last year.

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Australia news live: parts of Victoria told to plan for up to 72 hours without power; two Tasmanian emergency workers injured during floods response

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Weather situation overnight in Victoria has led to about 1,900 calls to the SES for assistance. Follow today’s news live

Delays predicted at Melbourne airport amid strike action

Melburnians catching a flight this morning may want to give themselves extra time as severe delays are predicted, with security screeners striking between 6am and 8.30am at the domestic airport.

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Emissions from Australian coal-fired power stations rise as wind and hydro dip

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More electricity demand and lower than usual generation from two renewable sources raises questions about climate targets

Greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s ageing coal-fired power plants rose slightly in the first half of the year, reversing years of declining pollution from the power section and raising questions about the country’s ability to meet its climate targets.

An increase in electricity consumption across the country and lower than usual wind and hydro output led to an increase in coal generation. It pushed up emissions from the electricity grid between January and June.

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Australia’s electricity grid to remain reliable if renewable projects delivered ‘on time and in full’, Aemo says

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Investments in solar, wind, batteries, pumped hydro and transmission links must be delivered ‘on time and in full’

Australia’s electricity authority has declared the country’s main power grid will remain reliable as it shifts from coal domination to running overwhelmingly on renewable energy – but only if investments in new generation are delivered “on time and in full”.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) reached its conclusion in a report that considered what needs to be built over the next decade to maintain the National Electricity Market, which links the five eastern states and the ACT.

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Police acting as ‘private security’ for Drax power station, say climate activists

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Greenpeace among 150 groups expressing outrage after preemptive arrests led to cancellation of protest camp

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have accused police of acting as “private security” for the UK’s biggest carbon emitter after dozens of pre-emptive arrests forced the cancellation of a climate protest camp near Drax power station.

In a statement signed by almost 150 groups, they called the operation against activists who had spent months planning the camp near the wood-burning power station “an unreasonable restriction of free speech”.

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AGL breached rules 16,000 times in wrongly taking welfare money from hundreds of people, court rules

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Landmark federal court judgment could trigger proceedings against three other energy retailers

AGL breached Australian energy rules more than 16,000 times through its use of the government-run Centrepay system to wrongly take welfare money from almost 500 people years after they ceased being customers, a court has ruled.

The landmark federal court judgment could trigger proceedings against three other energy retailers, which were referred to the regulator following a Guardian investigation into failures of the Centrepay system.

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Big polluters targeting esports industry with advertising deals, report reveals

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Oil firms, petrostates, airlines and carmakers ‘doubling down’ on sector that is popular with young people

Oil companies, petrostates, airlines and carmakers are among the big polluters bombarding the esports industry with adverts, a study has found.

Esports, short for electronic sports, are competitive video games watched by spectators, with multiplayer games such as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 attracting peak viewer figures in the millions.

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China’s coal-fired power boom may be ending amid slowdown in permits

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Permits for coal-fired power plants drop by 83% despite leading world in construction as focus turns to renewables

Coal-fired power is still enjoying a construction boom in China, but a marked slowdown in the permitting of future plants has given experts hope that the world’s biggest emitter may be turning a corner.

China led the world in the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the first half of 2024, with work beginning on more than 41GW of new generation capacity, data published on Thursday showed.

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Australia could save thousands of bats a year with simple tweak to wind turbines, study says

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Raising the wind speed at which turbines start spinning could prevent tens of thousands of bat deaths each year, researchers find

Australian windfarm operators are being urged to embrace a simple measure used overseas that scientists say could dramatically reduce the number of bats killed by turbines.

Curtailment – lifting the wind speed at which turbines start spinning – is used in some European countries and parts of the US and Canada, but rarely in Australia. A global study published in the journal BioScience found it was an effective way to limit bat deaths.

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Countries fueling Israel’s Gaza war may be complicit in war crimes, experts warn

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Exclusive: research tracks dozens of oil and fuel shipments that could have aided Israel’s war on Gaza

Israeli tanks, jets and bulldozers bombarding Gaza and razing homes in the occupied West Bank are being fueled by a growing number of countries signed up to the genocide and Geneva conventions, new research suggests, which legal experts warn could make them complicit in serious crimes against the Palestinian people.

Four tankers of American jet fuel primarily used for military aircraft have been shipped to Israel since the start of its aerial bombardment of Gaza in October.

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Labor pumps $160m into Westpac fund offering lower-interest loans for household energy upgrades

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But the loans are only available to those who already have or are approved for a Westpac home or investment loan of at least $150,000

The Albanese government has pumped $160m into a major bank fund that offers discounted loans to pay for energy efficient upgrades to homes.

The investment was announced on Sunday as part of the household energy upgrades fund in last year’s federal budget.

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Safety at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant deteriorating, IAEA warns

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Atomic energy watchdog reports damage after Russia accuses Ukraine of dropping explosive charge nearby

The UN’s nuclear watchdog warned on Saturday that the safety situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was “deteriorating” after a nearby drone strike.

Earlier on Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of dropping an explosive charge on a road near the occupied plant in southern Ukraine.

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Chair of Nuclear for Australia denies that calling CO2 ‘plant food’ means he is a climate denier

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Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis

The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.

Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.

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China adds new clean power equivalent to UK’s entire electricity output

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Data shows continued surge in wind and solar power amid hopes Chinese greenhouse gas emissions may have peaked

China added as much new clean energy generation in the first half of this year as the UK produced from all sources in the same period last year, data shows, as wind and solar power generation continued to surge in the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Electricity generation from coal and gas dropped by 5% in China in July, year on year, according to an update from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) thinktank, basing its analysis on data released by the Chinese government on Thursday.

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Melbourne lord mayor floats plan to slash power bills by bulk buying renewable energy

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‘MPower’ would be Australia’s largest scheme of its kind – with neighbouring councils invited to join in

Melbourne residents and business owners could have their electricity bills slashed by hundreds of dollars each year in a radical plan proposed by the city’s lord mayor.

Nick Reece has pledged to facilitate Australia’s largest community-led bulk purchasing scheme for renewable energy if he is re-elected.

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Danish wind power giant Ørsted delays major US offshore project

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News follows scrapping of two other Atlantic windfarms and axing of hundreds of jobs as costs surge

The Danish company developing the world’s largest offshore windfarm in the North Sea has been forced to delay a major project off the north-east coast of the US, months after cancelling two nearby developments and cutting hundreds of jobs.

Ørsted has pushed back the start of commercial operations at its 704 megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut by a year, to 2026.

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Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings

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Nuclear site awaits sentencing over breaches that it admitted could have threatened national security

Sellafield has apologised after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to a string of cybersecurity failings at Britain’s most hazardous nuclear site, which it admitted could have threatened national security.

Among the failings at the vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria was the discovery that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attacks, Westminster magistrates court in London heard.

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Investors push Glencore to scrap spin-off of heavily polluting coal division

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More than 95% of investors urged commodities firm to keep highly profitable fossil fuel arm to help maximise shareholder cash

Glencore has scrapped plans to spin off its coal business after shareholders urged the commodities company to hold on to the highly profitable but heavily polluting division.

The FTSE 100 company said that an overwhelming majority of its shareholders favoured retaining the coal business over its plan to list the division as a separate company on the New York stock exchange.

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Labour tries to attract clean energy contracts with record £1.5bn for auction

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The new budget comes after the previous government failed to award a single new offshore wind contract in 2023

The Labour government will make record amounts of funding available to clean energy developers after it increased the value of its summer subsidy auction by 50%, to £1.5bn.

The addition, compared with figures previously announced, means the total budget is seven times the amount available at last year’s auction, the government said.

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