Visionary renewable energy projects that could pay off for Australia

Although there are numerous innovative projects seeking to improve the sustainability of Australia’s energy sector, one of the main barriers to making them happen is – as with most things – money. With the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) set to lose $1.3bn in unallocated funds, the agency has announced a raft of grants for green projects, including $17m for nine research and development projects that “have a pathway to being fully commercial” through industry partners as reported by Annie Kane. According to Arena’s CEO Ivor Frischknecht, the three-year projects all focus on integrating either more renewables or more energy …

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Clean energy – current market trends

Marco Stella is Senior Broker, Environmental Markets, at TFS Green Australia. The TFS Green Australia team provides project and transactional environmental market brokerage and data services across all domestic and international renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon markets. Here, Mr Stella outlines the current market trends. Large-scale Generation Certificate (LGC) market It has proven a mixed beginning to 2016 for the LGC market. A solid start across the first two months of the year saw the spot market climb into low $80 territory in February, only to soften back to a low of $75 by late March as buyers disappeared …

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Renewables Could Revitalise Australian Manufacturing says Shorten

Zero – that’s the number of times solar and renewable energy were mentioned in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s Budget speech on May 3. Opposition leader Bill Shorten fared better on that front in his Budget reply speech on Thursday evening. In the speech, Mr. Shorten said Labor views renewables as a means of giving new life to Australia’s manufacturing sector as reported by Energy Matters. “By 2030, there will be $2.5 trillion of investment in renewable energy in the Asia-Pacific. Australian workers should be collaborating with our universities and researchers to design, manufacture and export battery technology, solar panels and turbine …

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Australia large-scale renewable investment hits a low point

Australian investment in large-scale renewable energy projects fell sharply in the first quarter of 2016, more than six months after the Coalition government promised “certainty” after forcing Labor to agree to slash the renewable energy target to 33,000GWh. New data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed that investment in large-scale renewables – wind and solar – slumped to just $US69 million, falling back to levels seen in the midst of the investment freeze, when the then Abbott government sought to abolish the RET altogether, or seek bigger cuts. The impact in 2014 was so dramatic that large-scale investment actually dried up completely …

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Scientists use DNA to investigate cleaner energy sources

The key to unlocking cleaner energy might be in our DNA, according to a new study by Stanford scientists. By combining synthetic DNA with microscopic particles, Yuran Zhang and a team of geothermal energy researchers hope to tap into the widely available but often overlooked cleaner energy source all over the world. Geothermal energy is the heat of our Earth, and geothermal power is generated by extracting that heat and converting it to electricity. Effectively, the heat moves through irregular cracks or fractures deep underground, so geothermal engineers must have a detailed understanding of the underlying geology and the location …

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Renewable energy and the promise of nanotechnology

With the goal of bringing together experts from the fields of medicine, engineering, science, and technology, the Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology officially opens its doors today at the University of Sydney. The institute’s Founding Director, Thomas Maschmeyer, is the recent developer a nano-structured battery gel. He hopes the gel can help restructure the power grid, putting a focus on renewable energy while helping to cut carbon emissions. Could Nanotechnology save the human race? The Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology hopes to expedite the process. To listen to the podcast click here. Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve …

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Malcolm Turnbull defends renewable energy agency Abbott wanted scrapped

Malcolm Turnbull says the renewable energy agency that Tony Abbott wanted to scrap has been “very well run”, as he announces a $1 billion fund to spur investment in the sector. The funding will be spread over a decade and will draw on part of the borrowings meant to support the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a $10 billion scheme that Mr Abbott vowed to scrap but which will be retained. The new statement will make it clear that a bill to dismantle the CEFC, which has been rejected twice and is a trigger for a double-dissolution election, will be abandoned …

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Companies putting the new in renewable

Based on the vision of a sustainable and resource-efficient future, clean technology is all about minimizing pollution and making the world’s infrastructure energy efficient. Renewable energy, sustainable chemistry, and recycling are just a handful of initiatives the sector focuses on. Last year, the Chinese cleantech market invested over $100 billion in cleantech initiatives. In Australia, cleantech stocks are consistently surpassing the wider market. It’s not just the Asia-Pacific region that’s getting into a tizzy over clean energy. In North America, Canadian businesses are pushing the government to invest in clean innovation and decrease their reliance on fossil fuels. And it’s …

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The quest for the perfect wave for renewable energy is being solved by Australian science

Australia’s search for the perfect wave is being solved with a wave energy atlas. The CSIRO wave atlas project is mapping the wave energy potential of Australia’s vast coastline for renewable wave energy farms. Atlas project leader Dr Mark Hemer said the project found most of Australia’s south west and southern coastline had some of the world’s best wave energy resource. “We’ve just released a development version of the atlas,” he said. “Obviously some people are interested, like the project developers themselves or the device developers, potential financiers, [and] marine planners trying to allocate sections of the marine resource. “We’re …

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Global Geothermal Power Market is Expected to Grow at 11.6% CAGR

The global geothermal power market was estimated at $3,233.5 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.6% during 2016 – 2022. The factors driving the growth of the global market include increased government support for geothermal power projects and stringent environment regulations, high capacity factor, and increasing need for energy independence and geopolitical energy security. Asia-Pacific dominated the global geothermal power market in 2015, and it is anticipated to retain its dominance during the forecast period. The geothermal power market in Asia-Pacific is expected to grow, due to high energy demands in the region …

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