Renewables are cheap. So why isn’t your power bill falling?

Steve Tritton/Shutterstock Tony Wood, Grattan InstitutePower prices are set to go up again even though renewables now account for 40% of the electricity in Australia’s main grid – close to quadruple the clean power we had just 15 years ago. How can that be, given renewables are the cheapest form of newly built power generation? This is a fair question. As Australia heads for a federal election campaign likely to focus on the rising cost of living, many of us are wondering when, exactly, cheap renewables will bring cheap power. The simple answer is – not yet. While solar and wind farms produce power at remarkably low cost, they need to be built where it’s sunny or windy. Our existing transmission lines link gas and coal power stations to cities. Connecting renewables to the grid requires expensive new transmission lines, as well as storage for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Notably, Victoria’s mooted price increase of 0.7% was much lower than other states, which would be as high as 8.9% in parts of New South Wales. This is due to Victoria’s influx of renewables – and good connections to other states. Because Victoria can draw cheap wind from South Australia, hydroelectricity from Tasmania or coal power from New South Wales through a good transmission line network, it has kept wholesale prices...

Read More........→March 22, 2025

Scientists Turn Industrial Waste into Batteries for Storing Renewable Energy

Emily Mahoney, the new paper’s first author, in the lab – courtesy Malapit LabA team at Northwestern University has transformed an industrial waste product into a battery for storing sustainable energy.While many iterations of these batteries are in production or being researched for grid-scale applications, using a waste molecule, in this case, triphenylphosphine oxide, (TPPO) has never been done before.The batteries used in our phones, devices, and even cars rely on metals like lithium and cobalt, sourced through intensive and sometimes exploitative mining operations. Demand for these critical minerals is expected to skyrocket over the next few decades.At the same time, thousands of tons of the well-known chemical byproduct TPPO are produced each year by many organic industrial synthesis processes, including the production of vitamin supplements, but it is rendered useless and must be carefully discarded following production.In a paper published last week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a ‘one-pot’ reaction allows chemists to turn TPPO into a usable product with the powerful potential to store energy, opening the door for the future viability of a long-imagined battery type called “redox flow” batteries.“Battery research has traditionally been dominated by engineers and materials scientists,” said Northwestern...

Read More........→January 16, 2025

China building more wind, solar capacity than rest of world combined: report

BEIJING - China is building almost twice as much wind and solar energy capacity as every other country combined, research published on Thursday showed.The world's second-largest economy is the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change.China has committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.It has endured several waves of extreme weather in recent months that scientists say are rendered more severe by climate change.China currently has a total of 339 gigawatts (GW) of capacity under construction, including 159 GW of wind and 180 GW of solar.That is "nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined", according to the study by Global Energy Monitor, a US-based NGO.The figure far exceeds the second-ranked nation, the United States, which is building a total of just 40 GW, the report said.It said China has broken ground on a third of new wind and solar capacity it has announced to date, compared to a global average of just seven percent."The stark contrast in construction rates illustrates the active nature of China's commitment to building renewables projects," the study said.China's national grid still relies on heavily polluting coal plants to deal with surges in power demandAFP/File | HECTOR RETAMALBeijing's vast renewable energy buildout does have some drawbacks.The national...

Read More........→October 26, 2024

Incredible 60% of Europe’s Electricity Was Powered by Clean Energy in the First Two Months of 2024

Irish wind turbines – David de la Iglesia Villar, marked CC License.According to an energy think tank, Europe’s generation of 516.5 terawatt hours of renewable electricity in January and February satisfied 60% of overall power demand. The generation is a year-over-year gain of 12% from the same period in 2023, and was driven by strong year-on-year growth in hydro and wind, and a rebound in nuclear. Coinciding with this was a 12% year-over-year fall in the use of fossil fuels, with a 15% drop in energy from coal-fired power plants, the think tank Ember, reports. Contrary to the assumption that this is the work of solar farms and wind turbines, the two fastest growing sources across Europe, the strong performance was led by nuclear, which grew 4% y-o-y, and hydropower which at 17.2% of total continental power demand was the highest percentage share of hydroelectricity ever generated in Europe. Hydroelectricity use grew 23% y-o-y to 152 terawatt hours, led by Norway, France, Switzerland, and Portugal. This was six times the amount of Europe’s total solar power yield, which topped out at 24 TWh. Wind power generated an impressive 137.5 TWh of electricity during the first two months of 2024, up 14%. Several countries, like Ireland and Portugal, are recording single days or multi-day stretches in which a two-thirds majority or greater...

Read More........→April 16, 2024

India's installed renewable energy capacity reaches 132.15 GW

Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay As of 29 February 2020, India’s cumulative renewable energy capacity stood at 132.15 Giga Watts, with an additional capacity of 46.69 GW under various stages of implementation and 34.07 GW under various stages of bidding. As on same date, the country had cumulative installed capacity of 138.93 GW from non-fossil fuels sources. The cumulative renewable energy capacity and cumulative capacity from non-fossil fuel sources constituted 35.80 per cent and 37.63 per cent of total electricity generation capacity of 369.12 GW installed in the country as on 29 February 2020, respectively. As part of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions as per the Paris Accord on Climate Change, India has undertaken to install at least 40 per cent of its total electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. India has set itself an ambitious target of 175 Giga Watts (GW) of renewable capacity by the year 2022, and is aiming at 450 GW by 2030. India’s primary energy consumption hit 809.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2018, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy. On this metric, the country is behind only China and the US. India’s installed capacity — for all energy sources — was a little under 369 GW at the end of January 2020, according to government figures. Source:...

Read More........→June 21, 2020

Can Artificial Trees Generate Renewable Power

Credit: Tech Briefs New tools for harvesting wind energy may soon look less like giant windmills and more like tiny leafless trees. A project at The Ohio State University is testing whether high-tech objects that look a bit like artificial trees can generate renewable power when they are shaken by the wind--or by the sway of a tall building, traffic on a bridge or even seismic activity. In a recent issue of the Journal of Sound and Vibration, researchers report that they've uncovered something new about the vibrations that pass through tree-shaped objects when they are shaken. Specifically, they've demonstrated that tree-like structures made with electromechanical materials can convert random forces--such as winds or footfalls on a bridge--into strong structural vibrations that are ideal for generating electricity. The idea may conjure images of fields full of mechanical trees swaying in the breeze. But the technology may prove most valuable when applied on a small scale, in situations where other renewable energy sources such as solar are not an option, said project leader Ryan Harne, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State, and director of the Laboratory of Sound and Vibration Research. The "trees" themselves would be very simple structures: think of a trunk with a few branches--no leaves...

Read More........→February 05, 2016

Rain Power Microturbine And Lights Home

Credit: Investigación y Desarrollo By collecting rainwater, students of the Technological University of Mexico (UNITEC) were able to generate electricity using a microturbine and supplying the vital liquid to homes in a poor community in Iztapalapa, in Mexico City. This system is similar to that used in dams, which uses rainwater to rotate a microturbine and generateelectricity. Currently, it is only possible to recharge portable 12 volt batteries, whose energy is sufficient to power LED lamps but not to provide power to the entire  Microturbine and rain water illustration, Credit: Investigación y Desarrollo house. The system called "Pluvia" collects rain from the roof of the house, where the surface must be adapted so the water will flow into a gutter, if unable to modify the ceiling, sheets to simulate a slope are added, routing fluid in one direction, said Omar Enrique Leyva Coca , who developed the project with Romel Brown and Gustavo Rivero Velázquez . To choose the right pipe, an arithmetic operation that determined the diameter of the tube in relation to the roof area was performed. Thus the liquid reaches the first filter, which is responsible for separating the water from the first two weeks of the season, which generally contains higher acidity, soil and contaminants, sending it to a storage tank....

Read More........→March 14, 2015

Google and SunEdison to develop new solar project on an old oil field

Google recently finalised an investment to install an 82MW solar power plant on top of an old oil and gas field in California. The new installation will be located in California’s Kern County after Google signed a deal with solar company SunEdison. The Regulus solar plant will generate enough energy to power 10,000 homes and will be SunEdison’s largest developed and constructed project in North America. It is expected to begin operating later this year. The site was once the home of 30 oil wells but now there are only five as the oil resources were depleted. The solar project will be funded with the help of Google’s $145 million equity commitment and will bring 650 jobs to Kern County as well as feeding 82MW of clean solar energy into the grid via a 20-year power purchase agreement. Prudential Capital Group also provided financing for the project. The structured financing arrangements were developed, designed and executed by SunEdison which will be responsible for construction of the plant itself. It will consist of over 248,000 SunEdison mono-crystalline solar PV modules. California is committed to increasing the amount of energy it generates from renewable sources. The Kern County project is the latest of 17 renewable energy investments Google has made since 2010, including 5 in California. “We’re continually looking for...

Read More........→October 04, 2014

Global offshore wind power market to reach 40 GW by 2020

Robin Whitlockin: The global offshore wind power market is expected to grow from 7.1 Gigawatts (GW) in 2013 to 39.9 GW by 2020 according to research company GlobalData. More countries around the world are utilising offshore wind potential, creating at least a fivefold rise in global offshore wind capacity – a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 28 percent. GlobalData’s latest report states that the sector registered substantial growth between 2006 and 2013, rising from 0.9 GW in 2006 to 7.1 GW in 2013. Of this 1.6GW came online in 2013, driven mainly by the UK, Germany, Denmark and Belgium. Offshore wind is now expected to become one of the largest renewable power market segments by 2020 with significant contributions by the UK, Germany and China, thanks to a number of projects currently in the planning and construction stages. “Offshore wind power is increasingly being explored for its high yield, due to stronger and more consistent winds compared to onshore, and the scope that this provides for the construction of large-scale projects” said Swati Singh, GlobalData’s Analyst covering Power. “An additional benefit is the fact that future offshore wind power technology development will ensure a decline in the average cost per megawatt, although overall project costs are expected to rise in countries with wind farms planned...

Read More........→September 28, 2014

Clean Energy Ministerial highlights major impact of EVs in India

Robin Whitlock: Clean Energy Ministerial, the high-level global forum focused on promoting global clean energy, has released a report highlighting the significant positive potential impact of EV deployment in India. The report by Clean Energy Ministerial’s Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI) reveals that the benefits of widespread EV deployment in India are greater than expected when real world driving conditions are taken into account. The analysis was conducted by the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and supported by EVI. It is helping to inform the Government of India’s National Mission on Electric Mobility which has set deployment targets of 5 to 7 million hybrid and electric vehicles in the country by 2020. The report demonstrated that real-world driving conditions amplify the benefits of EVs in India due to the superior ability of electric powertrains to maintain high efficiency in highly transient operation. The country could potentially save 4.8 million barrels of oil and 270 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 if the passenger car EV adoption rates necessitated by the government targets continue into the decade beyond 2020. “Electric vehicles are one of the most promising technology pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption around the world”...

Read More........→September 19, 2014

Nissan develops stylish ?Bladeglider? EV

Car manufacturer Nissan has developed a new and stylish ‘wedge’ shaped electric car called the ‘BladeGlider’ which it describes as a proposal for the future direction of Nissan EV development The company developed the vehicle in order to give both the driver and passengers a new, sustainable and exhilarating driving experience. It has a unique architecture which Nissan describes as ‘targeting the visionary individual’ and incorporates a ‘pioneering’ spirit that distinguishes it from anything yet envisioned for EV’s. “The goal was to revolutionise the architecture of the vehicle to provoke new emotions, provide new value and make visible for consumers how Zero Emissions can help redefine our conception of vehicle basics” said Francois Bancon, division general manager of Product Strategy and Product Planning at Nissan. The car has a narrow front track which is designed to challenge the orthodoxy of car design that the company says has dominated the roads since the earliest days of the internal combustion engine. The concept has its roots in the aerial images of a soaring, silent, glider and the triangular shape of a high performance "swept wing" aircraft. This means that the main developmental focus was aerodynamics in order to achieve low drag and generating a road-hugging down force. “BladeGlider was conceived around delivering...

Read More........→April 01, 2014

Energy-dense biofuel from cellulose close to being economical

A new Purdue University-developed process for creating biofuels has shown potential to be cost-effective for production scale, opening the door for moving beyond the laboratory setting. A Purdue economic analysis shows that the cost of the thermo-chemical H2Bioil method is competitive when crude oil is about $100 per barrel when using certain energy methods to create hydrogen needed for the process. If a federal carbon tax were implemented, the biofuel would become even more economical. H2Bioil is created when biomass, such as switchgrass or corn stover, is heated rapidly to about 500 degrees Celcius in the presence of pressurized hydrogen. Resulting gases are passed over catalysts, causing reactions that separate oxygen from carbon molecules, making the carbon molecules high in energy content, similar to gasoline molecules. The conversion process was created in the lab of Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue's Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering. He said H2Bioil has significant advantages over traditional standalone methods used to create fuels from biomass. "The process is quite fast and converts entire biomass to liquid fuel," Agrawal said. "As a result, the yields are substantially higher. Once the process is fully developed, due to the use of external hydrogen, the yield is expected to...

Read More........→June 19, 2013

Clothes of the future: where hi-tech meets high fashion

Photo: EPA It seems impossible to survive in the modern world without going either “smart” or digital, and clothes are no exception. The fashion industry is now working on technology to bring dressing habits to a completely new level. We're still in the stone age of nano-fibres and networked apparel but, in the not too distant future, you can count on having a coat which tells your mom where you are and having the Encyclopaedia Britannica embedded in your underwear! According to IMS Research, about 14m wearable tech devices were produced in 2011; by 2016, the global market could reach $6bn. Nancy Tilbury, designer to the stars and one of the creators of the futuristic Studio XO, predicts, “Generation Digital are constantly connected and live their lives digitally. Clothes are the next logical step”. Though thought of now as innovation, tampering with textiles and technology has been going on for over a thousand years. Artisans have been wrapping fine golden and silver foil around fabric threads since as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. At the end of the 19th century, with the advent of electric appliances, designers and engineers sought to combine electricity with clothing and jewellery; the so-called Electric Girl Lighting Company hired out young ladies wearing light-adorned evening gowns to brighten up cocktail parties....

Read More........→May 21, 2013

India will soon be in the geothermal energy business

India will soon start a project to produce electricity through earth heat or geothermal energy, according to a report in the Hindu Business Line. The news service quotes Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah as saying the country was planning to produce 80 per cent renewable energy through biomass, sun and ethanol, to reduce dependence on coal imports from Australia, Africa and Indonesia. Abdullah spoke to the Business Line during the kick off of the two-day Northern Regional Science Congress in New Delhi. He said wind energy was another area where there were plans to increase generation by 300 MW every year. Abdullah suggest that for this to happen, linkages to Denmark are being considered. Is there a replicant in your future? Or at least a very humanoid robot? The 1982 film Blade Runner depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants – visually indistinguishable from adult humans – are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as by other "mega–manufacturers" around the world. Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. Source: Renewable Energy Magazine, Image: flickr.com...

Read More........→March 30, 2013

BSR developing biogas plant to fuel garbage truck fleet

Having gained consent from Berlin’s Senate Department for Health, Environment and Consumer Protection in July, the German waste collection service provider, BSR Ruhleben, has commenced construction of a biogas plant in Berlin-Westend. The facility will ferment organic waste to produce biomethane to power its fleet of refuse collection trucks. Berlin’s Senator for Health, Environment and Consumer Protection, Katrin Lompscher; Spandau district councillor Carsten-Michael Röding (Department of Building, Planning and Environmental Protection); and BSR CEO Vera Gade-Butzlaff attended the recent ground-breaking ceremony of a new biogas plant in Berlin being constructed by BSR Ruhleben to provide biomethane to power its fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG) powered refuse collection vehicles. Vera Gade-Butzlaff, CEO of BSR, says the new plant will be capable of displacing 2.5 million litres of diesel per year. “About half of all collective kilometres of BSR in the future will be accomplished as climate-neutral. This usage also makes us less dependent on – predictably upward trending – price development of fossil fuels,” Gade-Butzlaff explains. By the end of 2012, and every year thereafter, the biogas generated from organic waste by BSR will be the equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5,000 tonnes. When...

Read More........→February 24, 2013

University spinoff does geothermal with a carbon sequestration twist

Renewable Energy Magazine: The University of Minnesota is the US has launched a startup it says will provide renewable energy more economically than existing technologies by using sequestered CO2 rather than water to extract heat from geothermal wells. Heat Mining Company LLC, said in a written statement that the use of sequestered carbon dioxide will allow electricity to be provided from many more sites than would be possible with conventional water-based systems and does it more economically. “CO2 Plume Geothermal technology makes production of power using geothermal heat financially feasible, where water isn’t,” said Ken Carpenter, Managing Partner of South Dakota-based Heat startup. “This technology sits at the convergence of two conflicting demands in our society: the need to burn fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and the desire to reduce carbon emissions,” Carpenter said. CO2 Plume GeothermalTM (CPGTM) technology is an attractive solution for conventional fossil-fueled power plants, as it prevents emitted CO2, an environmental liability in the atmosphere, from being released to the air and uses it instead as the underground working fluid to extract geothermal heat for additional electricity production and/or district heating. In the process, the CO2 is permanently stored underground,...

Read More........→October 09, 2012

Pacific agency sees climate change as "most serious long-term threat"

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP) stressed here Monday that climate change is potentially the most serious long-term threat to the development and survival of the Pacific people today. Kosi Latu, SPREP Deputy Director-general highlighted the issue at the on-going annual conference of the New Life Churches of Fiji on protecting the environment as God's creation and gift to humankind, which was attended by more than 300 delegates at the Suva Civic Centre. Latu told the conference that when bigger countries talked about climate change, it was really about changing their economy from being a fossil fuel-based economy to a renewable energy-based economy because the burning of fossil fuels was the primary contributor to climate change."But for us here in the region, it' s much more than that. It's about our survival." Latu noted that Pacific island countries were highly dependent on fossil fuel to meet their energy needs, spending between 30-40 percent of their annual national income on energy sources such as oil and gas, but contributed only 0.03 percent to the total global emissions. "The impact is incredible" and relocation has already happened in some islands in the Pacific, Latu said. "While the impact will vary from country to country, the low lying islands of the Pacific...

Read More........→October 09, 2012

Honda to recycle rare earths to be green

TOKYO — Honda Motor Co said Wednesday it will start recycling rare earths and other key materials in hybrid auto batteries this year—a key innovation in the Japanese automaker’s effort to be green. Japan is dependent on imports, mostly from China, for rare earth elements, which are essential for making high-tech products, but a steady supply has been periodically threatened over political disputes with China. Honda officials said the company was targeting September or October to begin recycling of rare earths. They said it would be a first for the auto industry. Honda President Takanobu Ito said: “In the long term, we hope to move to renewable energy sources that won’t harm the environment.” Ito outlined Honda’s efforts to reduce pollution and global warming, including experimental projects to combine solar with its fuel-cell cars—what he called the Honda “dream” to derive energy solely from nature and emit just water. Fuel cells are powered by the energy created when hydrogen combines with oxygen to produce water. They are still too expensive for commercial use and remain experimental. Ito said Honda’s roots lie in its determination to develop a fuel-efficient gasoline engine to clear U.S. pollution-control regulations of the 1970s. Honda’s CVCC engine was the first in the world to clear...

Read More........→July 28, 2012

Tapping geothermal energy to create fresh water

Researchers at the University of Western Australia (UWA) will investigate the use of geothermal energy to desalinate groundwater, helping to reduce competition for scarce fresh water resources in those parts of Australia where geothermal energy can be economically used to improve water quality. Winthrop Professor Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, director of the Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence at UWA, said...

Read More........→June 18, 2012

Revolutionary “green” supersonic aircraft unveiled

Yet another green project at last week’s Paris Airshow shows how the industry’s attention is shifting towards becoming more efficient and bringing down emissions. HyperMach presented a large-scale model of its ground-breaking new supersonic business jet, SonicStar, which it hopes to roll out within 10 years. For years, innovation in supersonic technology has been curbed by understandably stringent regulations on the level of aircraft noise permitted over land. But SonicStar uses innovative technology to allow control of aerodynamics leading to actively eliminating the problem of sonic boom at very high speeds. To make unprecedented travel times a reality, speed is, quite literally, of the essence. But with climate change a pressing global concern, HyperMach have put revolutionary green engine technology at the heart of SonicStar’s development. This next generation hybrid electric gas turbine engine which has been in development for seven years at SonicBlue provides the power generation capability to reduce jet emissions by 100%, increase thrust to weight ratio by 20% and reduce parts count in core engine components by 40%. No sonic boom despite going at three times speed of sound As well as curbing emissions and boosting efficiency, SonicStar will achieve the speed of Mach 3.5, while dramatically reducing...

Read More........→May 13, 2012