Acciona Energía, a Spanish renewable energy company, has begun construction on the MacIntyre complex, a 1,026 MW wind farm in Queensland, Australia. MacIntyre and Karara wind farms are part of the $1.4 billion wind complex. MacIntyre is a 923 MW wind farm in which ACCIONA Energía owns a 70 per cent share and Ark Energy owns the remaining 30 per cent.
Read More
The Australian renewable energy industry accounted for 32.5 per cent of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2021, which represented an increase of almost 5 percentage points compared to 2020. This growth was again led by small-scale solar, which added 3.3 GW of new capacity during the year to record its fifth-straight record-breaking year.
Read More
Iberdrola has acquired the rights to Mount James wind farm in Queensland, Australia. The wind energy project covers more than 50,000 hectares of land and has completed its environmental studies. Reportedly, Mount James, in North Queensland, is said to be the world’s largest onshore wind farm, with a capacity of 1 GW.
Read More
Osaka Gas, based in Japan, has entered into an agreement with Aqua Aerem, a technology provider, to develop the 10 GW Desert Bloom Hydrogen project in Northern Australia, which will cost $10.75 billion. The green hydrogen project is being promoted by Aqua Aerem. The first stage of the Desert Bloom project will cost $743 million and produce 1,000 kg of green hydrogen per day.
Read More
A Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is the aggregation of supply and/or demand response from Distributed Energy Resources (DER) such as batteries and smart appliances to participate in one or more markets. VPPs have been lauded as a major part of the future energy mix in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). When the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) announced its VPP demonstrations project in 2019, AEMO predicted there could be 700MW of VPPs by 2022.
Read More
Australian energy utility, AGL, has received approval to build a 500 MW battery, with up to four hours of storage. The proposal has been approved by the state Department of Planning and Environment. The grid-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage system will be based at the site of the soon-to-be-closed Liddell power plant near Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley.
Read More
The 4th India-Australia Energy Dialogue was conducted on February 15, 2022, during which a letter of intent on new and renewable energy technology was signed between India and Australia. According to the government’s statement, this letter of intent will pave the path for lowering the cost of innovative and renewable energy technology and scaling up deployment to reduce global emissions faster.
Read More
The state government of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia has received a massive response to the South-West Renewable Energy Zone’s registration of interest (ROI) procedure. More than 34 GW of wind-solar PV and energy storage projects have been proposed, more than ten times the zone’s projected capacity.
Read More
Whilst Australia was in lockdown for much of 2021, transactions in the clean energy sector continued across all fields: solar, wind, batteries, pumped hydro and hydrogen, with total transacted in excess of $7bn. However, these volumes were subdued in comparison with 2020, which had 32% more transactions than 2021.
Read More
Neoen, a French renewable energy company, has begun preliminary work on South Australia’s 412 MW Goyder South Stage I wind farm. The Goyder Renewables Zone’s first stage is Goyder South Stage I. The Goyder Renewables Zone will be located near Burra in South Australia’s Mid North region, which will include a total of 1,200 MW of wind generation, 600 MW of solar generation and 900 MW of battery storage capacity.
Read More
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently announced up to $40 million in financing for research and development (R&D) to help the government meet its ultra-low-cost solar goal. The R&D funding round will build on ARENA’s prior R&D investment in solar PV, with a focus on projects that fit with the Solar 30 30 30 target of 30 per cent module efficiency and 30 cents per installed watt at utility scale by 2030.
Read More
Hydrostor, a long-duration energy storage system provider based in Canada, has received $250 million in capital from the Private Equity and Sustainable Investing Businesses within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The company is expected to utilize proceeds to develop and construct its 1.1 GW/8.7 GWh of advanced compressed air energy storage projects in Australia and California.
Read More
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced a $100 million financing round for grid-scale batteries with sophisticated inverters. Expressions of interest (EoI) will be accepted starting in February 2022 and will close on March 31, 2022. Later in 2022, selected bidders will be invited to submit a comprehensive application.
Read More
Alinta Energy, an Australian green energy company, has announced its plans to build a 1,000 MW wind farm 10 kilometres off the coast of Portland, in southwestern Victoria, to serve the Portland Aluminium Smelter and the east coast electricity system. As per the company’s statement, Portland Bay has an excellent wind resource that would be suitable to power offshore wind turbines.
Read More
As a relatively high-emission economy in a decarbonising world, Australia has a lot at stake. Decisions beyond Australia’s control will determine the fate of 95 percent of the 30,000 direct jobs that may be at risk in its key export industries. The articles talks about the impact of going “carbon light” in industries.
Read More
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that a $740 million fund will be established to invest in companies developing low-emissions technologies as part of the country’s goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Read More
Finance is playing a significant role in encouraging Australia’s push towards net zero, with companies that commit to climate targets finding it easier to attract investment and raise capital, according to Jo Spillane, Global Head of Private Capital Markets at Macquarie Capital. Spillane says that one of the main vehicles through which this is happening is Australia’s pension funds, or superannuation (super) funds as they are known locally.
Read More
The Queensland government has announced that green hydrogen will be produced on the Darling Downs in less than two years. This will be made possible through a unique demonstration facility capable of producing an estimated 50,000 kilogrammes of solar-powered renewable hydrogen per year, which is expected to be operational by the end of 2023.
Read More
New Horizons Ahead (NHOA), previously known as Engie EPS, has been awarded a 200 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Australia. According to a company statement, the project’s building phase will begin immediately at an as-yet-undisclosed location for an unnamed customer, with completion expected by the end of 2022.
Read More
Iberdrola, a Spanish electric utility, has purchased the under development Avonlie solar project owned by the UK-based RES. The project is located in New South Wales, Australia. It has a generating capacity of 245 MW dc/190 MW ac. When fully operational, the project will have 450,000 solar panels installed on a single axis tracking system.
Read More