Australia 10th In Global Solar Capacity As Industry Looks Ahead To Sunnier Times

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia installed almost 1 gigawatt of new solar capacity last year but was easily eclipsed by cloudy nations such as the United Kingdom, which installed about four times as much, according to the REN21 Global Status report on renewable energy.
Investment in new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs rose to a record $US286 billion ($396 billion) even as prices for most technologies, such as solar and wind energy, fell. Growth also came despite falling prices for rival fuel sources, such as coal and oil.
"Renewables are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels in many markets and are established around the world as mainstream sources of energy," Arthouros Zervos, chairman of REN21, said in the report.

Signs of an improving outlook for renewable energy in Australia. Photo: Matthew Staver

Globally solar PV capacity added 50 gigawatts to reach 227 GW of capacity. New wind power capacity rose even more, adding 63 GW of new capacity to reach 433 GW.
Australia added 900 MW of new solar PV last year – the eighth-most in the world – to reach 5.1 GW of capacity.
That total, though, ranked Australia 10th in the world, trailing nations not known for their sunshine, such as the UK, South Korea and Germany. The UK added 3.7 GW alone last year to reach 9.1 GW of capacity, or almost twice Australia's tally.

Solar PV capacity in Australia lags that of less sunny nations such as the UK and South Korea.

Solar PV capacity in Australia lags that of less sunny nations such as the UK and South Korea. Kane Thornton, chief executive of the  Clean Energy Council, said it was "obviously disappointing that the UK had almost twice as much solar power as Australia by the end of 2015, given we have some of the strongest sunshine in the world."
"Solar power is an area where we should be giving the British an absolute whipping and, with investment confidence returning, we're hopeful that we'll give them a much better run for their money in 2016," Mr Thornton said.
Australia's investment in large-scale renewable energy all but halted in the past three years after the Abbott government began a review of the industry and later cut the Renewable Energy Target for 2020 of 41,000 GW-hours to 33,000 GW-hours with Labor's support.
Without support for the industry from the ACT government , and programs such as the Clean Energy Finance Corp and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – both facing the axe for most of Abbott-Turnbull government – investment in new projects would have shrunk further.

Renewables delivered 14.6 per cent of our electricity [in 2015], enough to light up the equivalent of approximately 6.7 million average homes," Mr Thornton said in launching the Clean Energy Australia Report 2015.
Eight major solar farms and five new wind farms became operational last year, including large solar power plants at Nyngan and Broken Hill in NSW.
The industry is just under halfway towards meeting the 2020 RET goal, which will require some $40 billion in new investment and has the potential to create more than 15,000 jobs, Mr Thornton said.
"The good news is that investment confidence continues to grow in 2016, and there are more than enough projects either under construction or with development approvals to meet the target," he said.
UNSW researchers break world record for solar cell efficiency
Australian researchers find a way to hugely increase the efficiency of solar panels.

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Climate Change Is Real and This Chart Proves It

Gizmodo - Ria Misra

Climate change is real, it’s happening right now, and it’s pushing us into an increasingly grim-looking future. Still don’t believe it? Take a look at this graph.
Earlier this month, climate scientist Ed Hawkins put out one of the best visualizations we’ve seen of the changes in global climate over the last 160 years.
Instead of depending on a simple line graph, Hawkins created a visually-arresting climate spirograph showing how—despite small variations between individual months—we’ve moved a long way from our baseline temperatures in 1850.
Now, the USGS has made a new visualization that projects Hawkins’ graph out past the present and into our hot, dusty future.
So far, we’ve climbed almost a full 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1850—most of that in just the last couple decades.
The USGS’ Jay Alder used the IPCC’s future climate projections of what happens if our current carbon emissions rates continue to rise unchecked.
The new visualization tacks an additional 84 years onto Hawkins original graph, depicting the nightmarish scenario in which global temperatures rise almost 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.Of course, this projection is what happens if we don’t change our ways.
There’s still a chance now for us to cut back emissions and prevent the increase in temperature from being so dramatic.
Cutting-back won’t be easy, though. It’s going to take resources, money, time, and, perhaps most of all, a firm global commitment to the fact that climate change is real.

Links

• One of the Most Convincing Climate Change Visualizations We've Ever Seen
• Animation Shows Advance Of Climate Change With Horrifying Clarity
• If You Don't Think a One-Degree Temperature Rise Matters, Read This
• No, Now This Is Officially the Hottest Earth Has Ever Been
• Why Scientists Think the Planet Is Heating Up So Fast Right Now