Australia's smart meter snag
A report released by Smart Grid Australia reveals that government and energy companies face a huge task ahead educating and persuading consumers/voters of the merits of smart meters and time-varying...
View ArticleThe world’s electricity business models are broken. What’s next?
After decades of dull, regulated returns, the international electricity sector is in a state turmoil. Their business model is effectively broken – a series of dramatic “game changing” technologies has...
View ArticleIn the market for an energy efficiency boost
Energy efficiency is set to make a significant contribution to mitigating climate change even without enabling policies. A recently released CEDA report Australia’s Energy Options: policy choicenot...
View ArticlePlayed by the electricity monopoly game
The Australian Energy Market Commission delivered its final verdict on how we might improve the efficiency of the energy market through getting consumers to adjust demand, rather than just add...
View ArticleDoha: Week 1 wrap
The Doha Climate Summit is an implementation meeting. Agree a second round of credible Kyoto targets, conclude the political negotiations that started in Bali and set some parameters around the talks...
View ArticleNetwork businesses have been creaming us: Grattan
‘Mission control, we have a problem’ – that’s the way the Grattan Institute is describing our current approach to regulating electricity networks.While the report authored by Tony Wood points out a...
View ArticleDoha Dispatches: Kyoto buried under mass of hot air
DOHA: There are only a few big issues to be resolved at these climate change talks in Doha, and the biggest will be the hardest to achieve – not because it can’t be done, but because the countries...
View ArticleRush on for green fund's $10b
Oliver Yates, the new chief executive of the government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation, may not have an office yet, but he's already receiving informal proposals for his green fund's $10...
View ArticleToyota plan to make hydrogen cars in Melbourne
TOYOTA wants to make hydrogen cars in Melbourne fuelled by brown coal from the Latrobe Valley in a move that could save the struggling local car industry.The hi-tech switch would also require a new...
View ArticlePower bill cuts at stake in AGL fight
AN average $160 cut to household electricity bills is at stake when the Supreme Court on Friday begins hearing AGL Energy's challenge to the electricity regulator's decision to lower power prices.The...
View ArticleGreen movement has been an abject failure
It is now almost impossible to reduce emissions on a scale required to prevent runaway climate change. IF THE civil rights movement were as unsuccessful as the environmental movement has been, Rosa...
View ArticleDodging wind policy lunacy
Climate SpectatorLast week I caught up with the chief marketing officer of Vestas globally, Morten Albaek.Albaek reports directly to the Vestas chief executive and his role covers not just marketing...
View ArticleWhy CCS shouldn't be viewed as the unpopular cousin
The last week has seen a wave of reports from the World Bank, the World Meteorological Organisation and other climate experts on the urgency of reducing carbon emissions, which are already at dangerous...
View ArticleBHP Billiton: ‘Coal is going to decline'
One of the world’s biggest mining firms says that extreme weather caused by climate change is already impacting some of its assets, thus forcing the company to re-evaluate its investments in the coal...
View ArticleThe solar price race
Solar photovoltaic module average selling prices are becoming somewhat normalised (or commoditised), with premium pricing available only in select countries or regions. However, further downstream,...
View ArticleAbbott's ignorant power punt
The Coalition was at it again this week, desperate to drag the media’s attention away from electricity network regulation and onto the carbon tax.You see them now talking about not just a carbon tax...
View ArticleForget Kyoto, focus on China's solar charge
The obsession with who has and hasn’t signed-onto a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and whether or not a country has a nationwide or economy-wide carbon price is a monumental distraction. What...
View ArticleAEMO: Wind dominates new capacity
The Australian Energy Market Operator today released its 2012 National Transmission Network Development Plan (NTNDP), which details its 25-year projections for generation and new transmission...
View ArticleCarnegie gets enviro approvals for flagship project
Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd has secured environmental and maritime safety approvals for its flagship Perth Wave Energy Project.The WA Environmental Protection Authority announced an outcome of ‘Not...
View ArticleTwo-thirds of world’s top companies have set green targets
Last year, $260 billion was invested in clean energy globally, marking the one trillionth dollar put into the sector since 2004 and the first time that clean energy saw more investment than fossil...
View ArticleLarge-scale community solar coming to Australia
The roof of the South Melbourne Market building was recently renovated, and the LIVE Community Power project intends to attract investors to install 3,000 photovoltaic solar panels on the roof. The...
View Article20 years on, climate change predictions have come true
Climate change predictions made 20 years ago have so far proved accurate, suggesting that the world is indeed on track to a radical climate shift, according to a new paper published today. In 1990,...
View ArticlePV prices to continue falling – US report
The price of solar PV systems is to keep on falling according to a joint report from the US government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Berkeley’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory...
View ArticleJapan researchers invent solar-cell fabric
Clothes that could literally light up your life were unveiled Tuesday by Japanese researchers who said their solar-cell fabric would eventually let wearers harvest energy on the go.The new fabric is...
View ArticleCampbell Newman’s solar tap-dance
Campbell Newman just cannot seem to get his mind around what to do about solar PV.First Newman brought the state’s net feed-in tariff to a screeching halt, but did it in such a way that he sparked a...
View ArticleUS installs record amount of solar in 2012
Almost exactly a year ago, during the height of the Solyndra hysteria, Mitt Romney made a rather odd statement about solar. (Yes, we’re still talking about Romney). “When other solar companies saw...
View ArticleAustralia takes a shine to solar energy research
The Gillard government will step up its investment in joint solar energy research with the US, using additional funds from its new $2.2 billion renewable energy agency. Martin Ferguson, Minister for...
View ArticlePull the plug on electricity shambles
This year thousands of pages in government reports have addressed electricity supply policies. Electricity is also at the eye of the carbon emission restraint storm that continues to blow, even after...
View ArticleBiofuels output to ramp up as cellulose wins fans
Cellulosic biofuel companies will boost production almost 20-fold in 2013 as the first high-volume refineries go into operation, signaling a shift from an experimental fuel into a commercially viable...
View ArticleThe end of the solar price crash
A few days ago I caught up with Oliver Hartley, Managing Director of the Australian operations for Hanwha-Q-Cells – one of the world’s largest producers of solar PV cells and modules. The story of...
View ArticleSolarCity shares soar 47% in market debut
Dec 13 (Reuters) - Shares of SolarCity Corp jumped nearly 50 percent during their market debut on Thursday, a day after the company was forced to slash its IPO price to attract investors skittish about...
View ArticleTop 12 RenewEconomy articles of the year
It’s THAT time of year, when media outlets get all self-indulgent and are absolutely convinced that their readers want nothing better than to be reminded of what was important, and popular, over the...
View ArticleCleantech is no more dead that the internet was in 2000
Clean tech is dead. The same way that the Internet was dead in 2000.” To me, in assessing the state of the clean-tech industry in my final Clean Edge Views column of 2012, that may well be the quote...
View ArticleThe week in green numbers…
110 billion: The US-dollar amount Saudi Arabia intends to spend installing more than 41GW of solar over the coming two decades, including 25GW of concentrating solar power 1.8: The gigawatt amount of...
View ArticleDemonstrating the future of 'clean coal'
If there is a future to clean coal, it may well be found in Banana Shire in central Queensland.There, amid open-cut coalmines and the odd Queensland bottle tree, federal and state governments and the...
View ArticleProgress still too slow on climate
The results of the United Nations climate change conference that closed in Doha, Qatar, last Saturday week again show that the international negotiations are moving steadily in the right direction, but...
View ArticleA year in the carbon tax scare campaign
What an incredible year in the carbon market. After one of the worst cases in rent seeking this country will probably ever experience, we finally saw a carbon price introduced. Yet for all the concern...
View ArticleGovt announces first recipients of $100m energy efficiency program
The federal government has announced the first recipients of the $100 million Low Income Energy Efficiency Program (LIEEP).The program will see a trialling of new methods for low income households to...
View ArticleWhat Australia’s clean energy industry wants for Xmas
We asked corporate leaders from the clean energy industry what they wanted for Xmas. Policy certainty was the number one issue, and it may arrive a few days early with the RET review. Oh, and lunch...
View ArticleHumanity has overshot the Earth’s capacity
A new report on China’s ecological footprint opens with some grim news for the planet as a whole: The demand humans place on the planet — in terms of land use, resource consumption, pollution, and so...
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