‘Radically different’ partnership aims to construct more than a million solar panels to power electrolysers
A unique partnership between three traditional owner groups and a major clean energy investor is promising to establish a $3bn green hydrogen project in the far north of Western Australia.
In what could be one of Australia’s biggest clean energy projects, more than a million solar panels will power electrolysers to produce 50,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year.
Continue reading...Analysts call on government to make pumps mandatory for all new homes and scale up grants for installation in existing properties
The UK is lagging far behind France and other EU countries in installing heat pumps, research has shown, with less than a tenth of the number of installations despite having similar markets.
Only 55,000 heat pumps were sold in the UK last year, compared with more than 620,000 in France. Twenty other European countries also had higher installation rates than the UK.
Continue reading...Owner Origin Energy say ‘nothing has changed’ on plan to shut the coal-fired Eraring plant no sooner than August 2025
The New South Wales government says it will hold off any decision about the future of the country’s largest power station until at least next month, after it receives a “health check” on the state’s energy security.
Origin Energy, owner of the 2880MW Eraring plant near Lake Macquarie, also said on Friday that “nothing had changed” on the plan to shut the coal-fired power station no sooner than August 2025.
Continue reading...ScottishPower expects Hagshaw Hill to produce five times as much energy with half the turbines by early 2025
One of Britain’s oldest onshore windfarms will soon be “repowered” so it can generate five times as much green electricity as it did in 1995 – with almost half as many turbines.
The owner of the Hagshaw Hill windfarm, ScottishPower, began dismantling 26 turbines on its site in rural South Lanarkshire on Wednesday.
Continue reading...WA EPA dismisses most grounds of appeal against extension of operation licence for gas processing facility in the Pilbara
One of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel developments is a step closer to having its life extended for nearly 50 years after Western Australian officials dismissed appeals arguing it should be stopped on climate science and cultural grounds.
More than 750 organisations and individuals last year lodged objections to a WA Environment Protection Authority (EPA) recommendation that oil and gas company Woodside be allowed to operate its gas processing facility in the Pilbara until 2070.
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Continue reading...Plans would only supply Britain with fossil fuels for an additional three weeks a year, analysis finds
New oil and gas fields in the North Sea would produce only enough gas to satisfy the UK’s needs for a few weeks a year, with a minimal impact on energy security, analysis has found.
Fields now under consideration would supply at most an additional three weeks of gas a year to the UK, from 2024 to 2050, even if none of the gas was exported.
Continue reading...Scheme aims to raise standard of insulation in 19m of the UK’s leakiest homes
Labour has said that job opportunities for almost 4 million workers would be created under its plan to bring 19m of the UK’s leakiest homes up to an acceptable standard of insulation.
While it has previously said that the plan would reduce annual household energy bills by up to £500, the party has set out details of what it said would be a major expansion of the retrofitting workforce.
Continue reading...Energy security secretary Grant Shapps will this week outline plans for Britain’s atomic power’s renaissance and 2050 emissions commitment
In London’s Science Museum sit full-size turbine engines that tell the story of 300 years of steam power. This week, the museum will play host to the government’s dreams for a new industrial renaissance – this time for nuclear energy.
The secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Grant Shapps, has chosen the venue to set out his ambitions for the UK’s nuclear programme. He is expected to illuminate the path towards the government’s existing commitment to build 24 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity – the equivalent of a quarter of Britain’s total generating capacity – by 2050.
Continue reading...Rafael Grossi met with protests in Seoul during visit to try to calm fears over radioactive water discharge
Protesters have confronted the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog during a visit to South Korea in an attempt to calm fears over Japan’s plan to discharge treated radioactive water from its Fukushima plant.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Seoul on Friday to meet the foreign minister and a top nuclear safety official during a three-day visit after his trip to Japan.
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Bill Shorten: robodebt commission report will be a ‘vindication’ for victims and their families
The NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, says today “is a vindication” for victims of the robodebt scandal with the royal commission report being handed down. He told ABC’s RN this morning:
The heart of this story today is the fact that real people unlawfully had debt notices … raised against them by the most powerful institution in Australia, the commonwealth government.
Two of these people, after receiving robodebt notices, subsequently took their own lives that I’m aware of.
Today is not the day [their mothers] want. What they really want is their sons to be alive.
One of the challenges we’re seeing across the country is great teacher shortages … COVID brought that timetable forward.
Classrooms are more complex, there is a great diversity of needs across the classroom, and as society changes a lot of teachers and education ministers are testifying about the impact of technology in classrooms.
Continue reading...Opposition leader to tell Institute of Public Affairs that domestic reactors are natural next step from Aukus pact
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has ramped up calls for nuclear power in Australia, casting the move as a way to avoid dependence on wind and solar technology from China and a natural next step from the Aukus pact.
Dutton will make the comments on Friday at an event organised by the Institute of Public Affairs, a Liberal-aligned thinktank that has publicly opposed curbs on coal-fired power and has lobbied against the net zero by 2050 policy.
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Continue reading...Meeting to discuss updating national gas law to reflect fuel’s environmental impact as well as overhauling hydrogen strategy
Australian energy ministers meeting on Friday will discuss an overhaul of the country’s hydrogen strategy, the treatment of emissions from the Beetaloo gas field and whether to change the treatment of “natural gas” in the national gas law.
The ACT energy minister, Shane Rattenbury, will propose the gas law be updated to replace “natural gas” with “fossil gas” or “methane” to more accurately reflect the environmental impact of the fuel.
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Continue reading...Watchdog identifies 102 violations over past two years as country extracts ‘transition minerals’ for green-energy technology
A new report into China’s dominance in the green-energy market has identified more than a hundred allegations of environmental and human rights violations linked to its overseas transition mineral investments over the past two years.
China dominates the processing and refining of lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, nickel, zinc, chromium, aluminium and rare-earth elements – and the manufacturing of technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and batteries for electric vehicles (EV), which require so-called transition minerals.
Continue reading...Australian government stands by safeguard mechanism’s design and indicates it will not change in response to lobbying
The Albanese government is resisting a push by Japan for a major new Northern Territory gas export development to be given special treatment under Australia’s revamped emissions reduction policy.
The Kishida government has lobbied the Albanese government over its concerns about Australia’s safeguard mechanism, a climate policy that requires major industrial polluters to either cut greenhouse gas emissions intensity – how much they emit per unit of production – or pay for carbon offsets.
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Continue reading...Treasurer Jim Chalmers wants to maintain strong budget position while rolling out existing policies; federal government cancels satellite program. Follow the day’s news live
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, denies Australia’s first budget surplus in more than a decade comes at the expense of under-pressure households as the cost of living rises, AAP reports.
Chalmers has confirmed there will be a larger surplus for the 2022/23 financial year than predicted in last month’s federal budget.
By getting the budget in much better nick by finding savings ... it actually makes it possible from that much stronger foundation to provide the $15bn of cost-of-living relief that we had in the budget.
Continue reading...Beijing bolstering position as global renewables leader with solar capacity more than rest of world combined
China is shoring up its position as the world leader in renewable power and potentially outpacing its own ambitious energy targets, a report has found.
China is set to double its capacity and produce 1,200 gigawatts of energy through wind and solar power by 2025, reaching its 2030 goal five years ahead of time, according to the report by Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based NGO that tracks operating utility-scale wind and solar farms as well as future projects in the country.
Continue reading...Fees for accessing UK seabeds help boost profits to £443m while King Charles says some of surplus will go towards public good
The crown estate has generated record profits of almost half a billion pounds from Britain’s offshore windfarms, as talks continue over how much of the windfall should be shared with King Charles.
The royal property manager made £443m in profits in its last financial year, up by almost £130m from the year before, in large part thanks to payments made by renewable energy companies for the right to access the seabed.
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Birmingham tells RN he is ‘conflicted’ over voice to parliament
Shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, avoids disclosing what he will vote in the voice referendum, dodging ABC RN’s Patricia Karvelas’ questions.
Do you support the voice?
I’ve been clear that I don’t intend to actively campaign in the referendum.
Why aren’t you taking a position? I mean, you’re making it clear that you want it to be private. If it’s private, that means you are actually sitting on the fence.
Patricia, I think you can hear from my answer there, that I am, in some ways conflicted and think this is a very difficult situation the country has been put in, that we have got a question before a proposed change.
We’re getting a situation where the government is not really directly responding to Ukraine’s requests for the Hawkei vehicles, or the Abrams tanks, nor the D mining equipment they’ve asked for.
[The Albanese government’s] contribution in terms of humanitarian assistance is simply $10m compared with the $65m that had been provided previously. So this is a concern …
Status as the leading non-Nato contributor to Ukraine has slipped away and the type of support being offered now doesn’t seem to be either meeting Ukraine’s requests, providing the modern equipment that they want or need, nor the type of scale that would seem to keep Australia commensurate support of our other parts.
Continue reading...As the industry gathers in London this week, there are signs of a new dawn after the damage done by Tory subsidy cuts
Britain’s solar industry delivered record levels of renewable electricity to the power grid earlier this year, but as daylight hours stretch longer around the summer solstice, it could be on track to reach another record.
Solar power generation in June is on track to come within a hair’s breadth of the record set during an unusually sunny May in 2020 at about 20 gigawatt hours, according to Alastair Buckley, the professor of organic electronics at the University of Sheffield.
Continue reading...Electricity generated on Shetland could be used to fuel the proposed Rosebank field, instead of homes
Electricity from a new onshore windfarm could be used to power the biggest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, campaigners are warning, ahead of an imminent decision over whether to approve the project.
The huge Rosebank oilfield is three times bigger than the controversial Cambo field that was put on hold more than a year ago. It has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil and its final approval is expected to reach the energy secretary, Grant Shapps, in the next few weeks. It is expected to be approved after Rishi Sunak hinted last month that it would be “economically illiterate” not to invest in UK oil and gas because Britain will remain reliant on fossil fuels for “the next few decades”.
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