By Chris Briggs, University of Technology Sydney As Australia’s electricity supply shifts to clean energy, a big challenge is looming. How do we “keep the lights on” as big coal plants close, and a far-flung network of wind and solar generators replaces them? This balancing act was outlined in the latest annual stocktake by the…
Australia’s newly minted Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia Tim Ayres believes opportunities such as the revitalisation of manufacturing come around rarely. Today is one of those opportunities he argues in this excerpt from his address to the National Manufacturing Summit. As the Prime Minister said back in April – we need to…
Low emission industrial technology developer Calix has been awarded a $15 million grant from the Australian Government’s Carbon Capture Technologies Program. The grant will support the construction of a world-first, renewably powered carbon capture and use (CCU) demonstration plant in South Australia. The plant will produce near-zero emissions lime and supply captured industrial CO2 emissions…
In this, the second in an occasional series about Peter Dutton’s Coalition plans for nuclear power in Australia, Peter Farley finds the earliest conventional nuclear power could be on online in Australia would be 2048-49. Read the first article on reliability here. It has been said that we could have nuclear power plants running in…
By Hanqin Tian, Boston Coll ege; Eric Davidson, University of Maryland, Baltimore; Pep Canadell, CSIRO, and Rona Louise Thompson, Norwegian Institute for Air Research Food’s role in climate change has emerged as one of the defining challenges of our time. The journey of a steak, fruit or salad from the vast expanses of agricultural lands…
Strong employment outcomes for apprentices and trainees – NCVER The latest report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) shows that the proportion of apprentices and trainees who were employed after training remained high in 2023. The report, Apprentice and trainee outcomes 2023, shows that 95.6 percent of apprentices and trainees who completed…
By Charlie Huang, RMIT University Australia’s largest export, iron ore, has long been a powerhouse of economic growth. Over the past two decades, its contribution to our national income has surged from just A$8 billion in 2005 to over A$124 billion today. But the Australian iron ore industry faces a major challenge as its biggest…
By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University Last night ABC’s Four Corners investigated the problem-plagued Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro power station, focusing on a bogged tunnelling machine, toxic gas and an unexpected volume of sludge. While these specific problems are new, we have criticised this project since 2019 and outlined six key problems even earlier elsewhere. How…
By Alan Finkel, The University of Queensland This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition. Just over a year since US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, it’s becoming clear this strangely named piece of legislation could have a powerful impact…
The AROSE consortium and the EPE and Lunar Outpost Oceania consortium are each designing early-stage prototypes of a semi-autonomous Moon rover to be transported to the Moon via NASA. In this contributed article, AROSE outlines the challenges and industry opportunities. When Australia’s Trailblazer lunar rover arrives on the Moon, the remotely operated vehicle will confront…