Automatically labelling people as NIMBYs if they have concerns about local power projects is not a constructive way to proceed.
Grahamec/Wikimedia Commons
From coal seam gas to wind farms, new resource projects seem to be pitting communities against corporations, and people against their neighbours. We often see, in such cases, community concerns labelled…
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports has once again called for a “massive shift” to renewable energy. The challenge of curtailing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is considerable…
Could Australia have large solar farms like this one in New York?
Brookhaven National Laboratory/Flickr
The recent start of construction on the first of two large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants in outback New South Wales shows the importance of renewable energy targets and funding. The first…
Will transmission charges cloud over Germany’s solar industry?
Ben Birchall/PA
Germany, one of the world’s leading users of solar power, is set to charge people generating their own solar-powered electricity for access to the national grid. The move is part of the package of reforms…
It is estimated that around one and a half billion people globally have no access to reliable electricity. Most live in developing countries where the cost of connecting rural villages to the electricity…
In Australia’s middle and outer suburbs, rooftop solar technology provides a clear way to reduce the emissions from the energy our houses use. But higher density housing types (apartments and medium density…
When it’s hot, the sun is shining. That’s good for solar power.
Flickr/jimwhimpey
Renewable energy seems to be on a roll. One million Australian homes have rooftop solar cells. There’s so much renewable energy it’s reducing wholesale electricity prices. But then, that old chestnut pops…
Regional centres and outer suburbs - not inner-city latte sippers - are leading the solar charge.
Duncan Rawlinson
Households across the country are putting solar panels on their roofs at a rate that has exceeded all expectations. This year we hit 1 million rooftops with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, up from just…
Solar panels covering just 1 per cent of Australia’s landmass could provide all our electricity needs.
Flickr/Rantz
There are now one million Australian homes with solar electricity. That means 2.5 million Australians now rely on solar power – more than the population of Brisbane. Australians have clearly shown their…
You don’t need to be Glastonbury’s Michael Eavis to be happy about renweables.
Ben Birchall/PA
One of Britain’s largest independent cheese producers, Wyke Farms in Somerset, picked up a commendation in the BusinessGreen Leaders awards this month for its efforts to become completely energy self-sufficient…
When the sporting gods smile at Australia, we go to Rio, but Brazil has long been on the international business map.
AAP
We have recently witnessed Brazil being hit by mass protests not seen since the days of the military dictatorship, but apart from the Socceroos going to the 2014 World Cup and the Rio Olympics in 2016…
A trade dispute between China and the EU could blow up into full-on stormy weather.
Ben Birchall/PA
Manufacturers and politicians embroiled in the dispute between China and the EU are closely watching the looming deadline of June 5th. By then the European Commission must conclude its provisional anti-dumping…
How selfish! Are solar panels really pushing up the price of power for everyone?
Elliot Brown
If I install solar panels and a car battery to run my air conditioner, should I pay higher electricity network fees? The electricity industry and Queensland’s Energy Minister would say yes, but is that…
It doesn’t matter that wind and solar power are intermittent: the need for base-load power is a myth.
Flickr/Eidoloon
The future of civilisation and much biodiversity hangs to a large degree on whether we can replace fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – with clean, safe and affordable energy within several decades. The…
China’s solar photovoltaic industry has exploded in the last decade.
AAP/Chinese Solar Energy.
John Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
The bankruptcy of Chinese solar energy company Suntech Wuxi is being depicted in the media as a sign of chaos in the solar industry. The industry is said to be suffering from disastrous price falls created…
There are two main types of solar energy technology: photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal. Solar PV is the rooftop solar you see on homes and businesses - it produces electricity from solar energy directly…
Concentrated solar thermal power remains expensive compared to other forms of energy.
International Rivers.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation e Charis Palmer, The Conversation
Solar thermal energy will halve in cost by 2020, the new director of the CSIRO’s Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative said today. Solar thermal energy uses the concentrated heat of the sun to create…
It’s time to take solar transport fuels a lot more seriously.
National Renewable Energy Lab
Many times in human history governments have tried to write policies based around future technologies and missed identifying the transformational keys. In the 1970s, for example, few if any horizon-scanning…