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Real hot: the Ivanpah solar power plant and others like it use mirrors to produce heat to make steam and drive an electricity turbine. BrightSource Energy

If a solar plant uses natural gas, is it still green?

The massive Ivanpah solar power plant uses natural gas – even more than it expected last year. It’s not ideal, but solar power and natural gas are a powerful, and relatively ‘green,’ combination.
Solar thermal technology is still an outside bet - and not the kind of investment the CEFC was set up to make. WorleyParsons/AAP Image

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is meant to back winners, not minnows

Environment minister Greg Hunt wants the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to focus on new technologies, not wind and solar. But that’s not what it was set up to do, and Australia already has an agency for that.
CSIRO is contending with a A$111 million hit to its budget over four years. Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons

CSIRO risks backing the wrong horse as it reacts to budget cuts

What happens to CSIRO when the federal government decides to strip away A$111 million over four years from its A$733 million annual contribution to the organisation’s budget? We are beginning to find out…
It doesn’t matter that wind and solar power are intermittent: the need for base-load power is a myth. Flickr/Eidoloon

Baseload power is a myth: even intermittent renewables will work

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…
Concentrated solar thermal power remains expensive compared to other forms of energy. International Rivers.

Solar thermal energy cost expected to halve: CSIRO

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…
The Climate Commission says Queensland could be a leader in concentrated solar thermal power, but the political will is lacking. AAP

Qld a leader in solar? Not under current govt, say experts

Around the clock solar power could be a reality for Australians in the foreseeable future, but experts say a hostile state government stands in the way of Queensland becoming the solar power leader suggested…
Concentrating solar energy has a lot of commercial potential in Australia. John Marmaras/CSIRO

With a bit of concentration, solar thermal could power your town

Most people are familiar with solar energy generated by photovoltaic (PV) solar cells; they are the tiny PV cells on your calculator or the large PV installations that many people are installing on their…

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