Capital

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Neara, which uses AI to manage power grids, has become Australia’s latest unicorn, announcing it has closed an $90 million Series D funding round to reach a valuation of $1.1 billion. Support principally came from TCV, a global growth equity firm, which has previously invested in Netflix, among other start-ups. Returning investors included Partners Group, EQT, Square Peg Capital, and Skip Capital. "Across energy, transport, and communications, systems built for a different era are now being pushed beyond their design assumptions," said Jack Curtis, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Neara. "The world needs faster, more intelligent ways to understand what infrastructure is really capable of and how it behaves in the contexts that matter most.”

Data-centre demand on Australia’s power grid is set to increase after AI company Firmus secured a $14.2 billion ($US10 billion) finance package, led by private equity firm Blackstone, that will help Firmus build a series of vertically integrated ‘AI factories’ around Australia. Firmus’s business model revolves around building and selling data centre capacity for AI giants, with Firmus reportedly eyeing an IPO amid negotiations around a capacity supply deal with Meta. (AFR)

Brisbane based critical minerals miner RZ Resources is eyeing an ASX listing that could value the company at $1 billion, months after the US government named it as a potential future provider of energy transition-related critical minerals. RZ has been pencilled in for a $650 million ($US460 million) loan to help it speed up its Copi mineral sands project – one of multiple facilities that are gaining primacy as major economies pivot away from China to secure sources of minerals like copper, antimony, gallium, magnesium and neodymium that are essential for the manufacture of wind turbines, EVs and other equipment. (AFR)

Projects

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A pair of wind turbine developments, located 56km off the shore of Victoria’s Gippsland, could deliver up to 2.8GW by the time they’re completed, with Danish firm Ørsted taking the projects another step towards fruition as it lodged the federal environmental application for the Gippsland 1 project. The current timeline should see feasibility studies complete by the end of 2027, with Ørsted ultimately planning to install up to 200 turbines and up to 120km of export cables. (Renew Economy)

Policy

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Queensland will offer rebates of up to $4,500 to community housing properties across the state, with the new Queensland Community Housing Energy Upgrades program now open and set to continue until October 30. Part of the $116 million Queensland Social Housing Energy Performance Initiative, the program has an $18 million funding pool and supports the installation of ceiling insulation, draught proofing, electric appliances and hot water systems, solar PV systems and more.

Fixing the electricity system is amongst six ideas for policy reform to meet our climate targets proposed by Steve Hatfield-Dodds in The Conversation. He also suggests expanding the Safeguard Mechanism and ending fossil fuel subsidies. (The Conversation)

Energy systems

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Developers of offshore wind turbines can now apply for R&D licenses to test their construction methods, anchoring techniques and other aspects of turbine construction in the Illawarra Offshore Wind Zone. Advocates say the area – which was chosen by DCCEEW for its strong and consistent winds and proximity to grid connections and areas of high demand – will be a crucial proving ground for technologies integral to helping Australia’s slowly-slowly offshore wind industry gain momentum to catch up with well-established international peers. (Illawarra Flame)

Regulation

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The scale and legal ownership structure of Victoria’s oil and gas infrastructure will be discussed during proceedings of the Parliamentary Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee on Wednesday February 11, with hearings to be held at Leongatha Memorial Hall and streamed live from 12:00pm. The hearings will span a range of topics including onshore development, works in Commonwealth and Victorian waters, ensuring cost effective decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure, and evaluating exposure to leaked greenhouse gases. (Vic Parliament)

The government should commission a comprehensive review of electricity prices if it wants to tackle the problems in retail, the Grattan Institute has written in a submission to the review of proposed changes to the Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct Act. Only about 20% of customers switch retailers in any given year, despite government efforts to make switching easier. At last count, there were 145,500 plans in the market.

“Relentless lobbying” by Japanese gas companies has swayed Australian fossil fuel infrastructure, new research from InfluenceMap has revealed, with Japanese companies’ equity stakes making them among the most significant foreign investors in Australia’s fossil fuel infrastructure – having invested over $71 billion ($US50 billion) in 13 export projects that would release up to 290 million tonnes of CO2 annually, the equivalent of nearly 50 large-scale coal-fired power stations. (InfluenceMap)

Climate

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Last year was officially Australia’s fourth warmest year since records began in 1910, the BOM has reported in its Annual Climate Statement 2025, with the national average annual temperature 1.23°C above the 1961-1990 average. Rainfall was 503mm on a nationally averaged basis – 8% above 1961-1990 averages – yet surface water storage levels declined 5% last year and 14% across the crucial southern Murray-Darling Basin. Sea surface temperatures increased to 0.93°C above 1961-1990 averages, outpacing global temperatures that were 0.71°C above 1961-1990 averages.

Research

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University of Sydney researchers have developed a sunlight-powered process that extracts clean hydrogen from fresh water and seawater. The technique taps the natural chemistry of gallium to produce hydrogen with efficiency of up to 12.9%, which is expected to increase as the research team further refines the process.

Neural network algorithms are helping BESS manufacturers better understand variations in the state of energy (SOE) performance of lithium-ion batteries, whose characteristics vary widely under different operating conditions. Rapid scale-up of megawatt BESS systems poses “unprecedented scalability challenges”, researchers note in evaluating a broad range of algorithms for SOE estimation in smart grids.