I’m glad to see a new study calling for all Aussie homes to have smart meters installed…..a 100% uptake by the end of the decade in other words. Smart meters have been around since the day dot but really only in a half hearted way. Smart meters—just to remind you—measure energy usage digitally and allow […]
Australian Mining Upbeat Despite Global Challenges
Australian mining meets global investment, sustainability, supply chain and geopolitical issues as part of this year’s International Mining & Resources Conference—IMARC—in Sydney in November. IMARC is Australia’s largest mining event with over 7,500 decision makers, mining leaders, policy makers, investors, commodity buyers, technical experts, innovators, and educators from more than 100 countries for three days […]
OZ Minerals Greenlights New Copper-Nickel Project
OZ Minerals is to develop its fourth mine, the West Musgrave copper-nickel Project in Western Australia, at a cost of $1.7B. The new project is to be one of the largest fully off-grid, hybrid renewable powered mines in the world with an initial 80% renewable penetration drawn from wind and solar generation. Developed with agreement […]
The OZ Minerals “Open House”
One of our members, OZ Minerals, has just launched “Open House” to boost the development of modern mining through innovation and technology adoption. “The Think & Act Differently (TAD) team have launched the TAD Open House to provide an easy, online way for innovators and innovative companies to approach OZ Minerals with ideas and technologies […]
Aussie Electric Cars Start Moving
The Federal Labor Government has now introduced their electric car discount bill to parliament in a sign the country may finally be moving ahead on electric mobility. It’s a good start even if there’s still some way to go. But the stars seem to be aligning on e-mobility as governments start acting. This Federal bill […]
Solar Shines On “Copper Paste”
A USA startup has come up with a commercial process to swap silver paste in solar panels for copper—known as “CuBert”—with impressive results and new investors. Co-founded in 2015 by an engineering professor and a post-doctoral researcher at Kentucky’s University of Louisville, Bert Thin Films is on a mission to promote copper paste as a […]
Are Aussie Homes “Glorified Tents”?
Aussie homes are being called “glorified tents” costing residents hundreds more on their energy bills each year as pressure grows to build in higher efficiency standards. That chance comes this July when the country’s building ministers get together to review possible changes to the National Construction Code—NCC—which is only done once every 3 years. I […]
Time To Float The Energy
Energy is big news these days for all sorts of good and bad reasons, but a new report suggests we could be doing a lot more with offshore wind to decarbonise the world. The Global Wind Energy Council-GWEC-has just published a snapshot setting out big opportunities for floating offshore wind for countries across the globe. […]
Clean Energy Exports Edge Closer
An ambitious $30B project to produce up to 20GW of solar energy and export it to South East Asia gets $210M boost on way to reality. The plan to build a giant solar farm in the Northern Territory is expected to cover 12,000 hectares capable of producing 17-20 GW of solar generation backed up with […]
Electric Cars Are “Inevitable”
A new study out of Europe says the global take up of electric vehicles by consumers is inevitable and already underway. But it still seems a distant story here in Australia. The authors of the Element Electric report say it’s expected that battery electric vehicles—or BEVs—will become the most demanded engine across Europe from 2025. […]
Materials Movement Is Next Zero Emissions Priority
Hard on the heels of COP26, the UN’s Climate Change Conference that attracted global attention, we’re doing our own bit to cut emissions. We’ve just launched the third deep tech research project—Materials Movement—as part of our ongoing Zero Emissions Copper Mine of the Future initiative. Materials Movement, which will start early next year, will take […]
Low Cost Solar Gets Copper Breakthrough
Australian startup Sundrive creates world’s most efficient commercial-sized solar cell by replacing expensive silver with affordable copper during manufacturing. Efficiency is a big deal when it comes to solar and refers to the amount of power you generate based on the amount of sunlight coming in. A decade ago commercial-sized solar cells had an efficiency […]