Home Posts tagged "Sustainability" (Page 15)

Tag Archives: Sustainability

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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Sustainable Strata Schemes

The issue of sustainability is currently very topical, given the level of commentary around climate change, increasing greenhouse gas emission levels and global warming. The current generation wants to ensure the population’s needs are met without compromising the needs of future generations, and there is general agreement that people need to reduce their carbon footprint. One of the key areas to take action is by having more sustainable living quarters. Not only will this benefit future generations, but it will probably reduce the cost of living with lower energy and water bills. According to City of Sydney Council, over 73 …

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Climate Change And The Sustainability of the Dairy industry

There are a lot more problems with the dairy industry than the price of milk. The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers. But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment. With the meat and dairy industries as the leading cause of global warming, in 2010, the UN announced that a global shift towards a plant-based diet …

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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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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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With carbon trading conservation pays for itself

In a place like Tasmania we cannot escape nature because it’s all abound. Nature is a great provider. It gives us clean air, clean water and productive soils. It pollinates our crops, and gives us places to recreate and places for inspiration. People value nature for cultural connection to place, for the value it brings the community, for the value it brings our economy and for itself. The Tasmanian Land Conservancy has been working to make explicit some of those connections. In terms of the economic value, in 2010 TLC embarked on the New Leaf Project, acquiring 28,000ha of native …

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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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CSIRO’s Solar Hackathon brings 100 Aussies together to create clean energy startups

With hackathons proving their worth as a way to nurture creativity and spur innovation, CSIRO is getting in on the action, inviting potential clean energy innovators to #hackthesun for $10k in prize money. This will be Australia’s first solar hackathon, with the same model internationally already having produced a number of successful solar startups. The hackathon will present teams with a challenge centring around renewable energy, as part of their goal to continue the conversation around solar and sustainable energy at this crucial time. To run the event, CSIRO has partnered with Silicon Valley-based Powerhouse (formerly SfunCube), a solar-centric incubator …

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Solabat: Solar + Battery Hybrid System

The Solabat project gives new meaning to the term solar + storage – it aims to combine the two on a single device. Researchers at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) say they are entering largely unknown scientific territory with the project. While small solar + battery devices are already widely available, the Solabat project is thinking much tighter integration and potentially much bigger – up to full size solar panels such as those used in home solar power installations. “Currently single systems of photovoltaic cells which are connected together – mostly lead-based batteries and vast amounts of cable …

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