There are calls from the backbench and elsewhere for the federal government to safeguard the future of coal. But do those calls make economic sense? A look at Queensland’s energy landscape suggests not.
The latest research suggests that in Australia, rooftop solar photovoltaics are more likely to be adopted by middle-class households.
Households that are most likely to go solar are those that can afford solar panels, but aren’t so rich that they don’t have to worry about their electricity bill at all, says a survey of 8,000 homes.
The Khi Solar One concentrating solar power plant in South Africa.
Wikicommons
Joachim Seel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Andrew Mills, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Ryan Wiser, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Large-scale solar and wind tend to push energy prices down, which sounds great as a consumer. But that makes keeping the grid in constant balance harder.
Rising seas, harsher weather, rainier days. The impacts of climate change make it harder for Caribbean countries to plan their transition toward renewable energy sources.
Ricardo Rojas/Reuters
Masaō Ashtine, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
The 2017 hurricane season showed that Caribbean nations urgently need more resilient power grids. But the effects of climate change – including more severe storms – complicate the shift to renewables.
Block Island Wind, the first offshore wind energy project in the U.S., started operation in 2016.
Ionna22
A recent survey of electric utility leaders finds that Trump administration efforts to promote coal energy and roll back air pollution regulations have had little impact on their long-range plans.
The coils winding facility building in France, where a global effort to build the ITER fusion energy reactor is underway.
Rob Crandall/Shutterstock.com
As fusion becomes more technically viable, it’s time to assess whether it’s worth the money because breakthroughs in the lab don’t guarantee success in the marketplace.
Grid-scale energy storage systems may make it easier to rely completely on renewable energy.
petrmalinak/Shutterstock.com
Saving power to use later lets consumers, businesses and utilities generate energy when it’s cheap and deliver it when they need it most. There’s not much of it today, but the industry is growing fast.
To understand what happened to our love of giant radioactive kettles, take a look at cultural theory.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, SA Liberal leader Steven Marshall and SA Best leader Nick Xenophon at a leaders’ debate hosted by the ABC.
AAP Image/Morgan Sette
SA Liberal Party leader Steven Marshall said that state Labor policy had left South Australians with ‘the highest energy prices in Australia’ and ‘the least reliable grid’. Is that right?
The fossil fuel era won’t last forever. And a new set of countries will find their reserves of lithium, copper and rare earth metals are in high demand.
Looking through semitransparent cells – one day these could be big enough to make windows.
UNSW
Solar windows would need to trap enough light to generate power, while letting through enough to keep buildings light. Thankfully, newly developed semitransparent cells offer to do just that.
Puerto Rico’s power utility, PREPA, has been decimated by years of scarcity and bad management. But will privatizing it really turn the lights back on for Puerto Ricans?
AP Photo/Carlos Giusti
Many Puerto Ricans are happy to see their broke power utility sold off to whoever can get the lights turned back on. But privatizing the island’s energy grid may bring more problems than relief.
The Loy Yang power station ‘tripped’ early in the year, triggering fears of a summer of blackouts.
DAVID CROSLING/AAP
Raising the cost of solar panels coming to the US could rekindle interest in a simple but potentially significant technology: solar reflectors.
Sights like this Brooklyn rooftop covered with solar panels with a view of the Manhattan skyline have become more commonplace amid a U.S. renewable energy industry boom.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Sun, wind, waste biomass, geothermal, tides and waves: all these energy sources in Sydney’s backyard add up to a zero-carbon energy solution for the city.