Renewable Energy News

Australia’s Clean Energy Council (CEC) has produced a summary of renewable energy trends that emerged in 2018. It signals a positive future for renewables, with solar power growing in popularity and helping to drive down energy prices. CEC chief executive Kane Thornton described 2018 as a record year and “an amazing time” for the clean energy industry.

Renewable energy sources are for the first time displacing black coal power in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM). That’s according to the latest National Energy Emissions Audit for 2019 from the Australia Institute. It reports that, in the year December 2017-18, grid renewable generation grew by almost a third, reaching 17.6 per cent of total generation in the NEM.

Research funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation shows a huge increase in renewable energy is needed to arrest global temperatures below a 1.5°C rise. Modelling by the foundation’s One Earth initiative predicts North America will need to expand its solar energy generation by seven times the amount it produced in 2018.

Melbourne’s solar growth suburbs are lighting up with new installations of solar power systems, thanks to Victorian State Government’s Solar Homes rebate program. Nearly 7,000 households across the state have installed solar panels since the Andrews Government program began in August 2018. These involved rebates of more than $3.4 million.

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