28 October 2015, One Step Off the Grid, How Garnaut & Co plan to help communities take power back from the grid. Eleven years ago, Richard Turner was trying to nut out how to fit his kids’ cubby house with a solar panel and battery, to run a light and a television at night, when the sun wasn’t shining. Long story short, it was no easy DIY task. “Back then, there was no industry at all,” says Turner. The only suitable solar hardware he could find was from a local hobby shop. And then he needed to find a battery to match, and wiring, and make it all safe…“I worked it out, because I did physics and maths at school, and I enjoyed it. But I also did commerce and marketing, and I saw an enormous opportunity here to provide people with a fully branded and integrated (solar and storage) system. …There were no barriers to how big you could go.” Back in 2004, Turner took up that opportunity and the result was ZEN Technologies, now a highly successful Australian solar and storage company based in Adelaide. But since then another opportunity has presented itself to Turner, and that is to provide Australian consumers with an option to use 100 per cent renewable energy to power their homes, businesses or entire communities, at a cost cheaper than electricity from the grid. Read More here
Category Archives: The Mitigation Battle
28 October 2015, Climate Home, Australia PM Turnbull stands by coal amid moratorium calls. Recently annointed prime minister is defending mine expansion plans, to the ire of Pacific neighbours and climate campaigners. When Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister last month, climate watchers were hopeful he would reverse Australia’s coal-friendly stance. There was some sign of that this week, as newly appointed chief science advisor Alan Finkelenvisioned a world free of fossil fuels. Yet it has been business as usual for the country’s bullish mine expansion plans, which threaten international climate goals. That is despite 61 prominent Australians, from rugby player David Pocock to Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, backing Pacific islanders’ calls for a moratorium. Dismissing the idea, Turnbull told national journalists: “Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part in fact, of the global energy mix… and likely to remain that way for a very long time.” He variously argued that coal-fired power would reduce poverty in developing countries and that if Australia stopped exporting the black stuff, others would. “It would make not the blindest bit of difference to global emissions,” the Guardian reported him saying. Read More here
19 October 2015,ENOVA, Australia’s First Community-Owned Energy Retailer Awarded Licence. Enova Community Energy has moved one step closer to becoming Australia’s first community-owned energy retailer. On Friday 16 October, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) approved Enova’s application for a retail licence, subject to completion of Enova’s current capital raising by late November. The approval means that when Enova succeeds in raising the necessary capital, it can get down to business in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, with its groundbreaking business plan that could change the way energy is marketed. Read more here
16 October 2015, The Telegraph, Arctic offshore drilling to be cut back as US says it will not issue new leases. US decision to cancel future lease sales follows decision by Royal Dutch Shell to stop exploration in Chukchi and Beaufort seas. The Interior Department announced Friday it is cancelling future lease sales and will not extended current leases in Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast, a decision that significantly reduces the chances for future Arctic offshore drilling. The news follows a Sept. 28 announcement by Royal Dutch Shell that it would cease exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas after spending upward of $7 billion on Arctic exploration. The company cited disappointing results from a well drilled in the Chukchi and the unpredictable federal regulatory environment. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the federal government is cancelling federal petroleum lease sales in U.S. Arctic waters that were scheduled for 2016 and 2017. “In light of Shell’s announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half,” she said in a statement. Read More here