Capital
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Contact Energy, a major New Zealand energy gentailer, has announced a $448 million (NZ$525 million) equity raise to support an aggressive roster of renewable projects including an expansion of its 100MW Glenbrook BESS with an additional 200MW/400MWh second phase. The company has also reached FID on the 150MW Glorit solar farm near Auckland, a 50/50 joint venture with Lightsource BP that will go live late in 2028. Recent rapid expansion has also seen the company grow its mix with 27 hydroelectric generation stations and 7 geothermal stations. (Renew Economy)
More global investment firms have joined efforts by the Global Clean Power Alliance (GCPA) to lay down clear and readily scalable renewable finance guidelines and clean energy action plans that were launched at COP30 to supercharge renewable energy rollouts in developing regions including the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Mozambique, and the African Union. The GCPA now lists 30 supporting organisations across the UK, US, South Korea, India and elsewhere.
 Projects
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A proposed massive wind and solar farm in remote parts of far western NSW would allow faster development with fewer community complaints, according to a consortium of renewable companies that sees the so-called Inland Renewable Energy Region, led by Squadron Energy, as a way of rapidly ramping up overall energy supply. The group wants the market operator to declare a proposed transmission line to the region a priority project in the final Integrated System Plan. Other supporters include Australian companies Tilt Renewables, Ark Energy and Voyager Renewables, as well as Spanish renewables firms Iberdrola and Acciona. (AFR)
Elsewhere in regional NSW, the Parkes Shire Council has emphatically rejected the NSW Government's proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the area. The council will move a motion today against the proposal noting that “the absence of proactive government engagement has eroded community trust”. (The Aus)
Fox ESS has announced a partnership with Origin Energy, enabling customers with Fox ESS home battery storage systems to participate in Origin’s Loop virtual power plant (VPP) program. The integration enables Fox ESS battery owners to connect their systems to Origin’s automated VPP network, which manages distributed energy resources to provide grid services while generating revenue for participants. (Energy Storage News)
Policy
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Victoria’s Liberals and Nationals would implement “strict new independent audits and economic impact assessments” (EIAs) for renewable energy projects if elected in November. Shadow minister for regional development Danny O’Brien promised to “stand up to protect the prime agricultural land that underpins our food security and regional economies”. The state Labor government is “steamrolling regional communities” and has ignored the impact of large-scale wind, solar and transmission projects on farming regions, he said in promising to ensure that agriculture is factored into approval decisions under a Victorian Liberal government.
New Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor may have called for technology agnosticism around energy policy, but new federal deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume is actively promoting the merits of nuclear power that, she argues, “would add to the energy abundance that would bring prices down over time”. Hume was a staunch advocate of the nuclear policy the Liberal Party adopted before its shellacking at the last federal election. (ABC)
Regulation
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As in Australia, cyber attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure systems are a key focus for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has announced a series of virtual town hall meetings regarding rulemaking under the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA). Input from critical infrastructure entities will inform implementation of the Act, which among other things would require energy and other infrastructure operators to report certain cyber incidents to authorities within 72 hours and ransom payments within 24 hours. The energy sector hearings will be held on March 9 (US Eastern time) with other sectors following until April 2.
Technology
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Petrochemical giant ExxonMobil has inked a partnership with Infosys that will see the Indian tech giant adopting ExxonMobil’s Data Center Immersion Fluids liquid cooling systems, promising to reduce the power consumption of energy-intensive AI and high-performance computing workloads that Infosys is deploying through its Topaz generative AI and Cobalt cloud services.
Advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) venture Hydrostor has signed a 50MW offtake agreement with California Community Power (CC Power) that will see the community utility take a portion of the power generated by Hydrostor’s 500MW/4GWh Willow Rock project in California, which is set to come online by 2030. Hydrostor’s technology, which stores compressed air in purpose-built underground storage tanks, is also in late stage of development at the company’s NSW site. (Hydrostor)
Climate
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Meta, TikTok, Coal Australia and even Dr Karl Kruszelnicki have headlined a string of witnesses to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, which held its first day of hearings yesterday and will close today with representatives from the AHRC, Responsible Future Illawarra, Minerals Council of Australia, and University of Canberra News & Media Research Centre. The hearings come a fortnight after the EU endorsed the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, and days after US president Donald Trump stopped his government from fighting climate change by officially declaring it to be fake news.
Research
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Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo have developed design guidelines to improve the energy density, cycling, and commercialisation prospects of sodium-ion batteries, using the Fugaku supercomputer to simulate the way sodium ions move within hard carbon anodes. The simulations helped visualise a stubborn ‘diffusion bottleneck’ at the atomic level, providing clues that could significantly boost the batteries’ rate capability. (PV Magazine)
