The Netherlands is the country where all passenger trains are powered by wind energy, where your groceries can be delivered by all-electric vans, and where people cycle over solar bike lanes, so the Dutch must be sustainability champions, no?
Even for a working couple, with no battery storage, and with 70 per cent of their solar generation going back to the grid, the payback period for a 5kW solar system could be as short as five years.
Chief scientist Alan Finkel says it is clear that investors in the energy market prefer wind and solar because they are cheaper to build than traditional generation such as hydro and coal.
A new technology bought by battery storage firm Printed Energy promises to do what the company’s name suggests – print out ultra-thin, flexible screen-printed batteries, on top of ultra-thin flexible screen printed solar panels – and engineer another major reduction in renewable energy costs
It was a victory for climate change action and support for the Paris Climate Agreement, for sure. But the G20 Communique at the end of the Hamburg summit was much more than that: A statement about sustainability, income inequality, and human rights as well.
Clean energy investment in the second quarter of 2017 reached $64.8 billion, boosted by two massive solar parks in the United Arab Emirates according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, an encouraging 21% increase on the first quarter of this year, but still down 12% compared to a year ago.
A number of people made some really interesting comments on my recent CleanTechnica article, “Mark Z. Jacobson & The 100% Renewable Energy Naysayers.” Some of these had to do with the problem of getting the last 20% of our energy from renewable sources, after we got to the 80% mark.
A community-driven effort to install just under 100kW of solar and 25kWh of battery storage at a former coal mine site in Victoria’s south-east has won state government funding, lending momentum to broader plans to install solar on community facilities across the region, and at other Parks Victoria sites.
New data has confirmed the effects of a second rooftop solar boom taking place around Australia – driven by falling technology costs and increasingly volatile electricity prices – with nearly one quarter of all Australian households found to have invested in solar panels.
Newly established electricity retailer Energy Locals has defied the sharp jump in electricity bills across the country and announced a fall in its electricity prices for consumers in NSW and Queensland, and a lift in its solar feed in tariffs.
