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Hotels Embracing Renewable Energy

The first two decades of the 21st century have brought a plethora of changes to the world of energy, on a global scale. Sure, the effects of energy pollution on climate change have been apparent to both the scientific community and the wider public for ages. However, it’s only recently that both countries and large corporate entities have truly seen the need to go green in order to save the planet from negative climate change and actually started working on it. You’ll find this idea in basically all industries – and, perhaps not quite obviously – the tourism sector. If …

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Australia set to run on 100% renewable energy within 15 years

Australia is set to reach its target of 100% renewable energy by the early 2030’s, provided current uptake of renewable energy options in the residential and commercial sectors remains strong. The Australian renewables energy industry will install more than 10 gigawatts of new solar and wind power before the end of 2019 and if that rate is maintained, Australia would reach 50% of its renewables target in 2025. The reduction target, set under the famed Paris Agreement into global climate change, forms part of a commitment made by Australia in 2015 to cut carbon emissions nationwide by up to 28% of 2005 …

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Bunch of Old Bananas or Building Materials of the Future?

Potatoes reborn as insulation, peanuts processed into partition boards and mushroom bricks that grow in five days – just some of the ways the building trade could change its wasteful ways and construct virtuous new cities. In a report released on Wednesday, international engineering firm Arup set out novel ways for an industry that devours raw materials to cut waste. “We need to move away from our ‘take, use, dispose’ mentality,” Guglielmo Carra, European lead for materials consulting at Arup, said in a statement. “What we need now is for the industry to come together to scale up this activity so that …

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Australia’s First Biofuels Pilot Plant Opened in Gladstone

Australia’s first biofuels pilot plant was officially opened by the Premier of Queensland and Minister for the Arts, Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, in Gladstone. The $18 million Northern Oil Advanced Biofuels Pilot Plant (NOABPP) was opened just 14 months after the project was announced by the Premier. The NOABPP is a joint venture between Southern Oil and J.J. Richards & Sons, on the site of their Northern Oil Refinery and brings together five best-of-class technologies from around the world to produce biocrude and renewable fuels from waste. Southern Oil Managing Director Tim Rose said that, together with a $5.3 million biocrude …

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Lower Costs, Greater Investment Produces Record Year for Australian Renewable Energy

Renewable energy produced a record share of Australia’s electricity in 2016, with a slew of new projects putting Australia on track to reach the 2020 Renewable Energy Target. More than 17 per cent of Australia’s electricity came from renewable sources last year, up from 14.6 per cent in 2015, thanks to greater rainfall in key hydro catchments and a series of new wind and solar projects, according to a new report from the Clean Energy Council. Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton said the industry was set for another record year in 2017. “Every month brings new project announcements. While …

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ACT pours another $5m into battery storage research

An Australian National University research program that aims lead the world in grid-scale battery storage innovation and integration has been awarded $5 million in grant funding from the ACT government. The funding, announced on Wednesday, has been provided as part of the Renewable Energy Innovation Fund, which was set up off the back of the ACT’s first and second wind energy auctions. Last week, the Territory government announced the winners of the second round of its battery storage auction, part of a nation-leading plan to deploy 36MW of cutting edge distributed battery storage in more than 5,000 ACT homes and businesses …

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NT Labor proposes 50% renewables by 2030 ahead of election.

The Northern Territory Labor party has promised to adopt a renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2030, in new policy detail released ahead of the NT’s August 27 election that they are expected to win easily. The proposed target would put the NT in line with most other Labor state’s and territories in Australia – as well as federal Labor – and puts it ahead of the federal Coalition government, which is aiming for just 23 per cent renewables in 2020, with no target set for beyond that date. Giles has also weighed in on the South Australian …

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Renewable energy fund: QIC, Future Fund back AGL

Renewable energy fund: Queensland Investment Corporation and the Future Fund are set to become major players in the race to meet the renewable energy target, backing a $2 billion-$3bn fund with diversified energy group AGL that will build up to a fifth of the new capacity needed. QIC and the Future Fund will tip $800 million into a fund that plans to build 1000MW of new wind and solar farms along the east coast in a deal that breaks a long-running deadlock between investors and energy retailers. AGL chief executive Andy Vesey said the fund, to be announced today, will …

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Boost to renewable energy target

Renewable Energy: Ross Israel from QIC and Andy Vesey from AGL Energy are the new breed of renewable energy evangelists. They view Australia’s renewable energy target as an opportunity to generate a mainstream discussion about decarbonisation of Australia’s power generation, while at the same time pioneering new methods of financing for large scale solar and wind projects as reported by the Financial Review. Vesey, who is chief executive of AGL, believes Australia is yet to seriously address the fundamental question of how to solve the problem of an oversupplied energy generation market. He takes every opportunity in public forums to …

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Developing reliable renewable energy sources

As the world’s population continues to grow, so does our consumption of natural resources. Many of these resources are non-renewable, so research into renewable sources of energy is vital. Research led by Bournemouth University’s Dr Zulfiqar Khan is tackling this issue through reducing corrosion, improving heat transfer and fluid dynamics, and using nano coatings to enhance surface effiencies in renewable energy systems as reported by Science News. The European Union’s (EU’s) Renewable Energy Directive states that the EU should be producing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; a challenging target for any country. Dr Khan’s research is …

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