Australia lies in the middle of a 42-nation leaderboard when it comes to attracting the foreign investment crucial to fund the energy transition, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) has said as it launched a new Global Investment Competitive Index (GICI) on which Australia ranked 21. With overseas governments “sharpening their settings to attract investment, cutting regulation, streamlining approvals, securing energy systems, reducing company tax rates and backing productivity growth,” the BCA said, “Australia must do better to attract a finite pool of global capital.”

The NSW Government has endorsed 16 projects through its Investment Delivery Authority (IDA), with the list including 14 energy projects – valued at $34 billion – that will now be given access to “specialist government support from a dedicated concierge service” and other support co-ordinated across a range of government agencies. The IDA’s first EOI round also included a range of data centre and technology proposals, which will be announced separately because of the complexities of evaluating associated energy and other infrastructure. Among the energy projects endorsed are AGL’s Hunter energy hub and Origin Energy’s Yanco Delta wind farm.

Increasingly complex approval processes, and challenges accessing unexplored complex oil and gas fields, mean new oil and gas projects are taking an average of 15.1 years to get from discovery to production – three times longer than during the energy rush from 1960 to 1980, a new Global Energy Monitor analysis has found. Fields that started up in 2019 took the longest – 20.7 years – while offshore fields took 3 years longer than onshore fields, on average. “Fifteen-year development cycles mean companies are making long-dated bets on a very uncertain future,” report co-author Scott Zimmerman said.

LNG markets around the world are bracing for the repercussions after Qatar shut the world’s largest LNG plant due to a pair of Iranian drone attacks that hit its production site in Ras Laffan Industrial City. QatarEnergy suspended the production of LNG and other products for security reasons, shutting off production that accounts for 20% of the world’s LNG capacity. The sharp decline in supply has caused LNG prices to surge. (al Jazeera)

A sustained conflict in the Middle East could push the price of Brent oil to US$185 per barrel and cause “lasting supply disruptions across an array of goods globally,” Westpac’s IQ analysis arm has warned after modelling of three possible scenarios concluded the war could increase Australia’s CPI by anywhere from 0.7% – if only Iranian oil is impacted – to 1.5% while cutting 0.5% from Australia’s GDP if the conflict lasts more than three months. (Westpac IQ)

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A new gas power station in Cataby, WA will generate up to 400MW and be ready to ramp up for grid stabilisation within minutes, Alinta Energy said. The new development is planned to begin operations in late 2028, pending approvals. The proposed site is within an industrial area in the Shire of Dandaragan, close to existing gas supply and transmission infrastructure.

Two renewable energy projects have been granted major project status by the government, joining green metal and rare earth ventures as projects deemed strategic to Australia’s energy supply chain development. Stellar PV’s 2GW Project Clean Wafers will develop a $500 million commercial-scale PV silicon ingot and wafer manufacturing facility in North Queensland over 12 months, while Solquartz’s $4.5 billion Northern Quartz Campus, near Townsville, will be Australia’s “first fully integrated solar and electronic grade silicon supply chain”.

Acciona has marked the erection of the first 5 transmission towers for Transgrid’s HumeLink East project, with 15 more assembled and 462 more towers yet to be erected as the project continues throughout the year. The tower network will form part of a new 500kV double-circuit transmission line between HumeLink West and the Bannaby substation at the Wondalga interface.

State government support has led to the naming of South Australia as the location for HAMR Energy’s methanol-to-jet fuel production facility, which will cost up to $800 million and be the first of its kind in Australia. The facility will convert 300,000 tonnes of low carbon methanol – made from plantation forestry residues and hydrogen – into around 140 million litres of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) per year. That’s enough, the company said, to decarbonise 4.5 million economy-class passenger trips between Adelaide and Melbourne each year.

This week’s opening of the Western Sydney Airport Transmission Substation marks the first major part of a broad range of energy infrastructure that will, Endeavour Energy announced, see nearly $320 million invested in new substations, high-voltage feeders, and a switching station that will support the new Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport and the surrounding 11,000 hectare ‘Aerotropolis’ mixed-use development region.

A 450kWh community battery in Dickson, ACT has been switched on – the third community battery, following similar BESS in Casey and Fadden, to bolster the ACT’s supply network. The sites are part of the Community Batteries for Household Solar program, which is delivering 400 community batteries nationwide as the government bolsters storage with what ACT minister for climate change, environment, energy and water Suzanne Orr called “local energy buffers”.

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Solar battery installers will face new requirements starting this month, as Clean Energy Regulator inspections ramp up amid a surging home battery market. Installers will face additional photo requirements to address common issues with labelling, on top of existing on-site verification photos. Nearly two-thirds of home batteries inspected to date have fallen foul of the regulator (usually related to labelling issues), with 0.9% found to be unsafe. (Solar Quotes)

With the price of oil passing US$80 a barrel, federal treasurer Jim Chalmers has asked the ACCC to monitor fuel prices for exploitative conduct by Australian fuel suppliers “and take appropriate action” on misrepresentations about prices, false and misleading or anti-competitive conduct. Meanwhile Energy Minister Chris Bowen has reassured Australians that there is more than a month's worth of petrol, diesel and avgas in the nation's strategic reserve tanks.

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For the second time in six months, the Albanese government is mulling changes to its Cheaper Home Battery subsidy. New options modelled by the government include winding up the program early, lowering the discount level, or further reducing the size of the batteries eligible for the subsidy. (AFR)

Victoria’s Public Engagement Framework reflects international best-practice principles for community engagement but is “not consistently applied” to renewable and other projects, Victoria’s Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee has found in tabling the final report of its inquiry into community consultation practices. The inquiry received 133 submissions, made 63 findings and offered 28 recommendations, including a requirement to mandate public engagement for state government bodies and a broader understanding that many in the public see “consultation” as much more than simply being informed of decisions.

Local communities should benefit from large-scale renewable projects, the WA government has emphasised as its Department of Energy and Economic Diversification releases its new Community Benefits Guideline for Large-scale Renewable Energy Projects in the SWIS. The guidelines have been welcomed by Clean Energy Council CEO Jackie Trad, who noted that community benefits “are most impactful when local residents can see a distinct association between clean energy projects and new programs, services or infrastructure established in the area.”

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A British firm has developed a closed-loop pumped hydro energy storage system that negates the need for the favourable landforms that traditional pumped hydro requires. RheEnergise has developed an incredibly dense liquid – really a slurry of minerals – that becomes less viscous with movement, making it suitable for pumping but easy to contain in the event of a spill. The company aims to deliver its first fully commercial system by the end of 2028. (IEEE Spectrum)

Cars featuring a sodium-ion battery, an emerging technology, are slated to go on sale in China in mid-2026, according to the battery’s maker, CATL. The battery, called Naxtra, can perform stably at -50°C, CATL says – a feature that could address lithium-ion EVs’ diminished range and slower charging in winter. (SciAm)

US wind-power developer Aikido Technologies has announced plans to build data centre capacity into its offshore wind turbines – with a reference design showing how a 4MW liquid-cooled data hall can be built into each of the three ballast tanks anchoring each of its turbines. The company will float a 100kW prototype off the coast of Norway by year’s end, with an up to 18MW project off the UK due in 2028. (IEEE)

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La Trobe University’s Net Zero by 2029 program has helped the institution cut operational carbon emissions by 80%. The university’s $75 million decarbonisation initiative includes what it says is Victoria’s largest urban solar farm – a 2.9MW network including 4,300 panels and supporting BESS – and a range of initiatives that have already made La Trobe’s Shepparton campus completely electric.

Carbon emissions from Australia’s biggest data centre operators have more than doubled in the past five years, according to new Clean Energy Regulator figures that show AirTrunk, Amazon Web Services, and CDC marking sharp increases in Scope 2 emissions over the period. The results inform the ongoing debate over what requirements data centre operators should face as they rapidly scale up their infrastructure and power demands to support the growth of AI. (AFR)

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The elimination of incentive incompatibilities between plant dispatch and market signals is enough to counteract ‘shape’ risk within renewables project finance structures, a trio of Griffith University researchers including NEM review chair Tim Nelson have concluded. Where run-of-plant (RoP) revenue designs have historically been applied to help renewables financiers to meet the needs of capital markets, their analysis of the proposed underwriting of new generation utilising fungible derivative contracts instead finds that bankability and fungibility don’t appear to be mutually exclusive.

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Experts are weighing questions about whether the moon’s surface can access enough energy to support the growth of a ‘Moon economy’ that a new PwC analysis says could be worth $181 billion ($US127.3 billion) by 2050. Unique operating conditions – including a 14 Earth day-long lunar nighttime that would, firms like radioisotope power generation firm Deep Space Energy note, rely on batteries and non-solar power to sustain lunar bases and industry. (Investor Ideas)