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New Plastic Recycling Rules in Australia

Posted on July 4, 2023July 4, 2023 by dishanth

The Background to the Decision

Since industrialization, humans have had a remarkable capacity to alter and change our environment on a large scale.

To facilitate the growth of industry, we have allowed companies and other organizations to pollute the environment indiscriminately with no regard for the people, creatures, and nature that have been impacted.

In most regards, we think of pollution as the toxic air spewed from industrial plants into our atmosphere. While that is a problem, make no mistake about it, there are other problems that rapid industrialization has had on our world.

One of those is plastic pollution, the byproduct of cheap disposable products wrapped in material that the environment cannot break down easily.

While some moves by industry have seen eco-friendly plastics being used in mass production, these examples are few and far between, to the dismay of eco-friendly citizens worldwide.

In some countries, though, that appears to be shifting. Recently a coalition of governments has pushed through legislation for new plastic recycling rules in Australia, forcing companies to take serious measures to curb their output of non-biodegradable plastic products.

How do the new Plastic Recycling Rules in Australia work?

The decision to impose new plastic recycling rules in Australia was made at the first meeting of federal and state environmental ministers in Sydney on Friday, June 9th. Tanya Plibersek, the federal environment minister, said that the “historic agreement” meant packaging would be “subject to strict new government rules.”

The new rules include the following:

A ban on single-use plastic bags.
A ban on selling disposable coffee cups made from expanded polystyrene (EPS).
A requirement for all plastic packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2025.
A requirement for all plastic packaging to be labelled with clear information about its recyclability.

According to a communique released after the agreement, the new plastic recycling rules in Australia would shift the country towards a more circular economy, with the rules addressing three specific areas: packaging design, outlawing harmful chemicals and plastics, and harmonizing curbside plastic recycling.

These decisions were made in the backdrop of the goals Australia has set in regard to plastic recycling. The Australian government has said that the new rules will cost the economy $1.1 billion over the next ten years, but the benefits of reducing plastic waste outweigh the costs.

As per the voluntary model that Australia has right now, only 18% of plastic is recycled in the country, far short of the 70% goal by 2025 that it has set.

Many have come out supporting this move; the Boomerang Alliance, a coalition of 55 environment groups, stated that this was the first “substantial and meaningful step” to address plastic waste in over 20 years.

It’s not just environmentalists that are lauding this decision, as major companies such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Unilever have all come out in support.

For the People, by the People.

Serious change needs to be made in order to address the problem of plastic waste pollution worldwide. While it would be nice to believe that companies would willingly make the decision to cut back and recycle on their own, the reality is that it isn’t in their best interest to do so.

These programs cost money, and the incentive for shareholders is to increase profits no matter what. Government regulations will force these companies to accept the new way of doing things as simply a cost of doing business, thus ensuring that the people’s best interest is upheld as a primary objective.

Ultimately, this is what governments are for, and hopefully, with the example of these new plastic recycling rules in Australia, this action will spur other governments in other countries to make similar decisions.

Source Happy Eco News

Unilever certifies as a B Corp in Australia and New Zealand

Posted on August 26, 2022 by dishanth

The business announced the certification on Wednesday (24 August), confirming that it had passed its B Impact Assessment. The Assessment measures the positive impact an organisation has in five fields, namely environmental impact; interaction with workers; interaction with communities; impact on customers and good governance. Topics relating to both day-to-day operations and long-term plans and business models are taken into account.

edie has reached out to Unilever ANZ to request a copy of its B Impact Assessment. These are required to be made publicly available.

Around 460 businesses in Australia and New Zealand have certified as B Corps. Globally, a further 4,900+ have certified. Most of these are SMEs, as B Lab, the body overseeing B Corp certification, originally targeted its work in this field. It is yet to launch certification for large multinational businesses; this is in the pipeline.

“When businesses of the size and scale of Unilever Australia & New Zealand certify, it shows just how much the idea of business delivering positive impact on people and planet has grown,” said B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’s chief executive Andrew Davies. “Their certification sends a powerful signal that will further advance change in the consumer goods sector, and our broader global economic system.”

Strategic approach

Unilever ANZ stated that the global company’s overarching corporate and sustainability strategy, The Compass, has proved “integral” to the identification and implementation of changes that have improved its B Impact Assessment score to the point of certification.

The Compass was launched in 2020 and is headlined by an overarching vision of becoming “the global leader in sustainable business”, ensuring that all parts of the business are “purpose-led” and “future-fit”.

On the environmental side of things, the Compass is supported Unilever’s Climate Transition Action Plan – its roadmap to reaching net-zero value chains by 2039 that has been backed by more than 99% of its shareholders. It also includes updated ambitions on issues including packaging and waste, gender equality, human rights and social inclusion.

Environmental actions already taken by Unilever ANZ under the compass include procuring 100% renewable electricity in operations; reaching zero-waste-to-landfill status for factories and piloting regenerative agriculture methods.

“We’re thrilled to achieve B Corp Certification, as both a validation of the actions we’ve implemented across Australia & New Zealand, and a motivator to strive even further,” said Unilever ANZ’s chief executive Nicky Sparshott, adding that he and his team are “already planning how we can turbocharge our positive impact”.

Sparshott added that the business will need to work collaboratively with suppliers, staff and communities to maintain its certification and encourage other businesses to follow suit. All B Corps are required to re-certify every three years.

The news will doubtless fuel the debate around which companies should be able to certify as B Corps. When Nespresso certified earlier this year, many SMEs which have been B Corps for years questioned whether a Nestle-owned entity, or a company sourcing coffee from regions facing systemic human rights issues, should be able to certify.

Source Edie

Western Australia utility replicating success of 100% renewable energy town

Posted on August 16, 2022 by dishanth

The small town of Onslow, Western Australia, is now powered almost entirely by renewable energy, and the utility behind that project wants to roll out the same tech across the state.

State-owned utility company Horizon Power said today that it will deploy distributed energy management system (DERMS) technology that helps coordinate the use of different resources like rooftop solar PV, battery storage and electric vehicles (EVs).

In the demonstration project at Onslow, the entire town ran on renewable energy and battery storage for a period of about an hour-and-a-half last year, thanks to a microgrid system which allowed it to operate as a self-contained electricity grid.

While that means Onslow still relies on natural gas engines and diesel generators, that reliance is greatly reduced, and the energy minister for Western Australia, Bill Johnson called the demonstration a “landmark step towards building a cleaner, brighter, renewable energy future for our state”.

The project showed that distributed energy resources (DERs) could be safely integrated at grid level, and Johnson, along with Horizon Power and software and controls providers PXiSE and SwitchDin, talked up the potential for it to be replicated widely.

Horizon Power said today that the technology enabled four times as much rooftop solar to be installed and integrated into the grid at Onslow, a town where more than 40% of homes have PV.

The DERMS works using predictive analytics to enable maximised penetration of renewable energy on the grid – predicting weather patterns, electricity consumer behaviour and so on – while also ensuring stability and security of electricity supply to homes and businesses.

It enables not just DERs but also centralised resources like large-scale solar PV and batteries as well as thermal power stations to act in concert together to meet local energy needs.

Horizon will introduce the technology into remote and regional parts of the state. The company’s general manager for technology and digital transformation said that around 60% of Horizon Power’s energy systems are already dealing with limits on rooftop solar.

The DERMS will “increase solar access for our customers, lower their energy bills, and help reduce emissions,” Ray Achemedei said.

The rollout begins in the coastal resort town of Broome early next year and the utility will progressively deploy the tech across all of its power systems by the middle of 2024.

“This is the technology that will underpin the transition to 100% renewable towns,” Achemedei said, noting that the paradigm shift from centralised fossil fuel generation sending power in one direction only to decentralised and decarbonised energy which is bi-directional or multi-directional in flowing around the grid presents challenges that Horizon Power is tackling head on.

Other initiatives from the utility include a tender for distributed microgrids for rural areas launched in October 2021.

Then in November last year, Horizon began Energy Storage in Regional Towns, a AU$31 million programme to equip nine remote towns in Western Australia with shared community battery storage.

That programme is funded by the state government and is adding about 9MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity to local energy networks. Western Australia’s government put battery storage and solar PV at the heart of its post-pandemic economic recovery plans, announced in June 2021.

Source Energy Storage News

Victoria’s solar rebate expansion will help wean state off gas, say experts

Posted on May 2, 2022 by dishanth

Energy experts say the Victorian government’s expanded solar rebates scheme will help drive the state’s transition away from gas as it aims to halve its emissions by the end of the decade.

Victorian households will be able to access rebates for both solar panels and a solar hot water system under the widening of the program announced on Tuesday. Households can now only take part in the solar panels program or the hot water rebate, but not both.

Meanwhile, an additional 50,000 businesses across the state will become eligible for solar panel rebates and an interest-free loan to slash up-front installation costs.

When the household changes come into effect in mid-May, almost 190,000 Victorians who previously accessed a $1,400 rebate to install solar panels will be able to access an additional 50% rebate – of up to $1,000 – to have solar hot water or a high-efficiency electric heat pump system installed.

When the 10-year scheme was announced, the government said the policy aimed to cut the state’s carbon emissions by almost 4m tonnes and would result in household solar generating 12.5% of the state’s 40% target for renewable energy by 2025.

Alison Reeve, the deputy program director for energy and climate change at the Grattan Institute, said a large part of the state’s transition to a low-emissions future required a phasing out of its reliance on gas.

“Switching people from gas water heating to solar heating is a positive step on that journey,” she told Guardian Australia.

“In Victoria you’ve got a lot of houses with gas heaters installed and it takes time for that change to kick through.”

The discovery of natural gas in the 1960s in Bass Strait has caused it to become the state’s dominant residential fuel source, particularly for heating homes in winter.

The department of industry and science’s latest energy statistics, released last year, show Victoria’s gas use from the residential sector is 14.8% – almost double the nationwide figure of 7.9%.

When the solar homes scheme launched in 2018, the Andrews government estimated a solar hot water system could save a household up to $400 each year.

Source The Guardian

Pilot Energy puts blue hydrogen before green with “first-to-market” CCS technology

Posted on March 29, 2022 by dishanth

ASX-listed gas junior Pilot Energy says feasibility studies have confirmed “significant opportunity” to develop a large-scale hydrogen production project using gas and novel carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology first, and renewables later, in Western Australia’s mid-west region.

Pilot said in a statement on Monday that the studies, commenced last year, aimed to assess the economic and logistical feasibility of developing a large-scale “clean” – but certainly not green – production project using the company’s existing oil and gas production operations.

Broadly, the company said the results showed Pilot was “well positioned to play a significant role in the energy transition through harnessing the world-class CCS and renewable resources of the Mid West region of Western Australia.”

More specifically, the studies found that the existing Cliff Head Oil Field offshore facilities, wells and pipelines were already suitable for CCS to the tune of 6.4 million tonnes of CO2 at an injection rate of 500,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.

Pilot holds a 21.25% interest in the Cliff Head Oil Field through its 50% ownership of Triangle Energy, the operator of the Cliff Head Oil Field. The CCS and blue hydrogen feasibility study is being jointly funded by Pilot, APA Group and Warrego Energy.

Pilot said that the feasibility studies also highlighted the Mid West region could produce “clean ammonia” on a globally competitive basis for export into emerging Asian clean energy markets.

The company said the next steps would be to progress into the permitting and approvals process and front-end engineering and design for a staged development of commercialising CCS and blue hydrogen leveraging technology from US cleantech firm 8 Rivers.

8 Rivers Capital has been working on development of gas plants in the US using the proprietary technology of a company called Net Power, of which it is a co-owner, that burns natural gas with pure oxygen instead of air, producing only CO2 and water as byproducts. Excess CO2 is captured, “pipeline-ready,” for underground storage.

This will no doubt please the federal Morrison government, which as Pilot notes has prioritised CCS in its Technology Investment Roadmap, in the hope that CO2 compression, transport and storage can meet a “stretch target” of under $20 per tonne.

But whether this counts as “clean hydrogen” production is highly questionable, particularly after factoring in the emissions along the gas exploration and production life cycle.

Increasingly, the true “colour” of hydrogen, particularly in the export market, will determine its competitiveness in the market, with a premium being placed on renewables derived green hydrogen as businesses and governments reach for ambitious climate targets.

Still, Pilot Energy chair Brad Lingo welcomed the results of the studies, saying they outlined a clear multi-stage development path, starting with CCS and “building off this platform,” to produce clean power and hydrogen for domestic use and for export, as low-cost “clean” ammonia.

“This staged development path is very much in the reach of the company in terms of financial capacity and technical delivery taking advantage of the existing Cliff Head Oil Field infrastructure and operations,” Lingo said.

“The Company is very focused on delivering a First-to-Market CCS Project in the Mid West to anchor the further development of a Clean Hydrogen/ Ammonia and Renewable Energy Project.

“We are very much focused on engaging with NOPTA and the other relevant regulators to secure the necessary approvals to implement this project with an aim of having the first stage of the development pathway operational by 2025 and generating positive cash flow from these operations as well as delivering a material impact on carbon emissions in the Mid West,” he said.

Source Renew Economy

Australian mining billionaire to invest $2.2 bln in renewable energy project

Posted on February 28, 2022February 28, 2022 by dishanth

Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest, who’s been betting big on a global green revolution, said on Sunday he was investing A$3 billion ($2.2 billion) in renewable energy in central Queensland.

Forrest, Australia’s richest man, said his company Squadron Energy has acquired the two-stage Clarke Creek project – a wind, solar and battery farm development – with contracts already issued for the immediate start of construction.

“We are investing in Clarke Creek not only to harness the renewable power of the wind and sun to energise our homes, our factories and our cities, but as a critical step towards breaking our reliance on fossil fuels,” Forrest said in a statement.

Forrest has said he wants to turn Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (FMG.AX), of which he is chairman, into the world’s biggest green energy group. read more

Stage one of the Clarke Wind project is anticipated to be fully operational in 2024. Stage two could come online in 2026, Forrest said.

When completed, the project could produce enough wind, solar and battery energy to power more than 660,000 homes, or 40% of Queensland households, Forrest said in the statement.

($1 = 1.3827 Australian dollars)

Source Reuters

Western Australia — Out with the poles, in with the solar panels

Posted on February 1, 2022 by dishanth

Western Australia is a vast state. Power companies are having to come to terms with the high cost difference between maintaining poles and wires and installing hybrid power systems at the ends of the long power lines. And when the bushfires burn all the poles, then it makes the decision much easier.

Horizon Power is rolling out standalone off-grid solar and battery powered systems for 19 customers east of the town of Esperance. “Horizon Power first began offering certain remote regional customers the option to be powered by a custom built stand-alone solar and battery power system, or SPS, after bushfires destroyed more than 320 power poles and hundreds of kilometres of power lines in the region in November of 2015.”

At that time, only four landowners took up the offer. Now they expect to deliver more than 1000 systems to farmers and remote indigenous communities. As part of the Western Australian government’s Recovery Plan, Horizon Power has received $46 million to provide 150 systems across regional Western Australia. Each system consists of solar panels, battery storage, and a backup diesel generator. Connection to HP’s service hub means that any faults can be diagnosed remotely. Service teams can be dispatched if needed.

By March 2022, 45 standalone power systems are set to be deployed in Esperance to large commercial farms at the edges of HP’s overhead network. This will lead to the removal of 120 km worth of poles and wires from private paddocks. Farmers will no longer have to maneuver their huge tractors and other equipment around electrical infrastructure. Crop dusters will also appreciate the removal of flight obstacles.

The Renew the Regions Program has led to many power-related projects across Western Australia, which will lead to long-term benefit for the locals. Some of these are:

Derby, in the remote Kimberleys, had a $5.2 million solar and battery storage project installed, including a 40kW solar shade over the local pool.
Marble Bar (the hottest town in Australia) installed a 582kW/583kWh battery energy storage system to be paired with the Marble Bar solar farm, which generates more than 1,000MWh of electricity annually.
Broome is to receive two batteries, which would free up more than 1,400kW of new rooftop PV hosting capacity to residents and businesses next month.

Remote areas are showing the transition from centralized to decentralized power, and the locals are benefitting from the transition. This is a rare silver lining to come out of the WA bushfires of 2015.

Source: One Step Off the Grid

Source CleanTechnica

‘Just a new fossil fuel industry’: Australia to send first shipment of liquefied hydrogen to Japan

Posted on January 24, 2022 by dishanth

Australia will export its first load of liquefied hydrogen made from coal in an engineering milestone which researchers say could also lock in a new fossil fuel industry and increase the country’s carbon emissions.

Under the $500m Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) pilot project, hydrogen will be made in Victoria’s LaTrobe valley from brown coal and transported aboard a purpose-built ship to Japan, where it will be burned in coal-fired power plants.

Carbon capture and storage will be used in an attempt to reduce the carbon emissions associated with making the hydrogen and supercooling the gas until it forms a liquid before it is loaded aboard the Suiso Frontier vessel. The first shipment is due to depart from Hastings in the coming days.

The project is being led by a Japanese-Australian consortium including Japan’s J-Power, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Shell and AGL.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Friday the development was a “world-first that would make Australia a global leader” in the budding industry.

“A successful Australian hydrogen industry means lower emissions, greater energy production and more local jobs,” Morrison said in a statement.

“The HESC project puts Australia at the forefront of the global energy transition to lower emissions through clean hydrogen, which is a fuel of the future.”

Morrison also announced an additional $7.5m to support the next stage of the project, which has a goal of producing 225,000 tonnes of carbon-neutral hydrogen each year and an additional $20m towards the next stage of the CarbonNet project which aims to produce commercial-scale carbon capture and storage.

According to government estimates, this will reduce emissions by 1.8m tonnes a year.

But Tim Baxter, a senior researcher for climate solutions at the Climate Council, said the assumptions were questionable as the reliance on “fossil hydrogen” meant government needed to “come back with a zero emissions hydrogen plan”.

“Hydrogen derived from fossil fuel sources, like what is being shipped out of the LaTrobe Valley, which is derived from some of the world’s dirtiest coal, is really just a new fossil fuel industry,” Baxter said.

“Fossil hydrogen is a whole new fossil fuel industry, regardless of whether carbon capture and storage is attached to it. It results in extraordinary greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not a climate solution.”

Though “clean hydrogen” has become central to the government’s emissions reductions plans, hydrogen produced by fossil fuels is more expensive, will release more greenhouse gas emissions and comes with greater risk of creating stranded assets.

Dr Fiona Beck, an engineer with the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, said Friday’s announcement did mark an engineering milestone as it showed it was technically possible to liquefy and store hydrogen for transport, as this was more difficult to do than with LNG.

However, Beck, a co-author of a recent peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production that examined the emissions that will be created out of the proposed Japanese-Australia hydrogen supply chain, said if hydrogen made with fossil fuels became the norm, Japan would be transferring its emissions to Australia.

Japan, which has limited options for onshore wind projects, has been looking for ways to reduce its CO2 emissions. One way is by burning ammonia, which is made with hydrogen, in its coal-fired power plants – which are also powered with Australian coal.

Under current CO2 accounting standards by which emissions are measured, Japan would slash its emissions while shifting them across to Australia owing to the CO2 emissions involved in creating, processing, transporting and shipping the hydrogen.

“If you’re importing hydrogen made from coal, essentially the emissions are going to be worse in Australia rather than it would be by just taking that coal and burning it in Japan,” Beck said.

“There’s no policy pressure or economic reason why Japan would buy low-emissions hydrogen when it gets the same benefit by buying cheap, high-emissions hydrogen.”

Beck said that while current government planning stated its intention to reduce emissions associated with creating hydrogen “there’s very few actual mechanisms to do this”.

“Unless Australia has some strong policy to keep its carbon emissions down, we could see a rise in emissions in Australia due to this hydrogen trade.”

Source The Guardian

A new carbon capture method turns CO2 into solid carbon ‘In an instant’

Posted on January 21, 2022 by dishanth

A new decarbonization technology developed by RMIT University researchers in Australia instantaneously turns CO2 into solid carbon, a press statement reveals.

The team claims their method is commercially viable and that it could soon be deployed in aid of global efforts to reduce the ongoing effects of the climate crisis.

A ‘radically more efficient’ method

The new method is based on an existing experimental carbon capture technique that utilizes liquid metals as a catalyst. “Our new method still harnesses the power of liquid metals but the design has been modified for smoother integration into standard industrial processes,” explains Associate Professor Torben Daeneke, a co-lead researcher of the project. “As well as being simpler to scale up, the new tech is radically more efficient and can break down CO2 to carbon in an instant,” he continues.

The RMIT team’s technique uses liquid metal heated to between 212-248°F (100-120°C). This heated metal is then injected with CO2 to kickstart the required chemical reaction. The CO2 gas bubbles up to the surface of the liquid metal, leaving flakes of solid carbon behind in a reaction that only takes a second. “We hope this could be a significant new tool in the push towards decarbonization, to help industries and governments deliver on their climate commitments and bring us radically closer to net zero,” Daeneke continues.

“It’s the extraordinary speed of the chemical reaction we have achieved that makes our technology commercially viable, where so many alternative approaches have struggled,” Dr. Ken Chiang, a co-lead researcher, adds.

Is the rise of commercial carbon capture a good thing?

The team of researchers has filed a provisional patent application and RMIT has signed a 2.6 million dollar agreement with environmental tech startup ABR, aimed at commercializing the technology. It is one of many carbon capture methods in the process of being commercialized globally.

Another team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, recently announced that it had developed a technique that mimics the seashell forming process to suck carbon out of the oceans. This would have a positive knock-on effect, as the less carbon there is in the ocean, the more it can absorb from the atmosphere. In Scotland, meanwhile, a new carbon capture facility will remove up to 1 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year.

While carbon capture technology does have the potential to help in efforts towards carbon neutrality, scientists do caution that it must not be viewed as a replacement for widespread initiatives aimed at curbing the emissions of the fossil fuel industry. In July last year, for example, the U.S. Center for International Environmental Law wrote that carbon capture could act as a “dangerous distraction” that could delay the transition away from fossil fuel consumption.

Source Interesting Engineering

Quantum battery breakthrough paves way for revolution in energy storage

Posted on January 20, 2022 by dishanth

Researchers have made significant progress towards making quantum batteries a reality after demonstrating a new proof-of-concept device.

The next-generation battery technology has the potential to revolutionise energy storage by making use of a phenomenon known as superabsorption.

This process involves a quantum mechanical principle relating to a molecule’s ability to absorb light, requiring less charging time the more they become entwined.

This means that it is theoretically possible for the charging power of a quantum battery to increase faster than the size of the battery. Superabsorption therefore means the bigger the battery, the faster it charges.

Until now, however, it has not been possible to demonstrate the effect on a large enough scale to make a quantum battery.

In a new study, published in the journal Science Advances, researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia were finally able to prove the concept of superabsorption by building several wafer-like microcavities, filling them with organic molecules, and charging them with a laser.

“As the microcavity size increased and the number of molecules increased, the charging time decreased,” said Dr James Quach, a scientist at the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing at the University of Adelaide.

“This is a significant breakthrough, and marks a major milestone in the development of the quantum battery.”

The next step is to now develop a fully functioning quantum battery prototype, with the hope of ushering in a new era of ultra-efficient batteries for use in electric vehicles and electronic devices.

The way quantum batteries operate means they could potentially harvest and store light energy simultaneously, providing significant cost reductions compared to conventional solar technologies.

“The concepts that Dr Quach and his team have worked on opens up the possibility of a new class of compact and powerful energy storing devices,” said Professor Peter Veitch, head of the University of Adelaide’s School of Physical Sciences.

Source Independent