Indholdsfortegnelse for 172 / Jul-Sep 2025 i Renew Magazine

While the transition to electric buses here in Australia seems to be going in stops and starts, our Kiwi neighbours are pushing to eliminate all diesel buses in their public transport fleet. Leading the pack is Auckland Transport, which recently took possession of another 44 new fully electric buses, including 26 double decker buses. This brings Auckland Transport’s total electric bus fleet to 224 vehicles—more than any other city in Australasia, according to Auckland Transport. Edward Wright, Auckland Transport’s infrastructure and fleet specification manager, says another 31 electric buses will be added to the fleet by the end of June 2025 (so they should be operating by the time you read this). Further, the total number of electric buses operating in Auckland is planned to rise to 450 by August…

Diesel trucks produce a large proportion of exhaust particulate emissions, and total greenhouse emissions from light and heavy trucking makes up around 25% of road transport emissions in Australia (shorturl.at/K41O8) (total freight, including shipping, rail and air transport, makes up a huge 40%, see shorturl.at/G2Rpy). So eliminating freight trucking exhaust emissions is steadily being examined by freight companies and other truck-owning organisations. Recently, freight company Linfox announced plans to purchase 30 electric prime movers from the Volvo Group, following two trials of smaller electric trucks. Volvo has stated that this order has accelerated their plans to manufacture electric trucks in Australia, with 10 of these new trucks to be made in Brisbane, starting in 2026, and 10 now delivered (see right). But Linfox is not the first freight company to…

ARTICLE TULITHA KING: What is Farm it Forward? EMMANUELA PRIGIONI: Essentially, Farm it Forward (FIF) connects people who want to grow their own food but have no land with those who have land but are unable to grow their own food. It is a highly relational approach to growing fresh food, building synergies between community, nutrition-security and skills development. We run volunteer sessions which bring people together to meet, get their hands dirty and take home fresh, organically grown produce. The involvement, social connection and fresh food is hugely beneficial for the individual’s physical and mental health and hopefully reduces their food costs. How did FIF start? In 2019 the group behind FIF noticed that Census and Council data revealed increased risks of social isolation in certain demographics. We also…

The average home in Australia is a box, or various derivations of a box, such as multiple interconnected boxes, boxes with extra bits, boxes with bits missing, and numerous other variations. They all have one thing in common—they all have at least four flat sides and a roof. But homes don’t have to be that way; they can be more interesting and look more natural, and one way of doing that is with curves. Some homes might have a curved feature wall that offsets the straightness of the rest of the home, but you can go further than that. The ultimate curved home is a dome home, but these are very rare in Australia, despite having some considerable advantages (and a few disadvantages too, of course). What are dome homes?…

“The charge level is also important if you need to store your battery for a longer period. You should store your battery at between 30% and 60% charge, but never completely drained or full. Check your battery’s charge level periodically, and store it in a dry, cool, well-ventilated area with a smoke detector.” The bicycle. Means of transport, lyrical muse, emissions saver. Is there anything it can’t do? If a bicycle is your trusted friend and companion, keeping it in top-notch condition is essential. Maintenance basics for all types of bikes To keep your bike running as smoothly as possible, weekly or fortnightly maintenance should focus on the ABCs: • Air: Maintain tyre pressure and check tubes for damage. Patch any holes or rips • Brake: Check the brake pads…

When I built in Perth, WA, in 2013, the house had a great range of features (Star rating, flexible design, rain water tank). However, the appliances included a gas cook top (the oven was electric), gas boosted solar hot water system (considered to be the least damaging in terms of greenhouse gases at the time) and a gas point for heating in the living area. The combination of excellent thermal performance during winter (and summer) as well as the installation of a reverse cycle air conditioner in the living area immediately made the gas heating redundant, so I put insulation over the outlet vent in the ceiling and blocked up the inlet vent in the wall. Over the years, there were a number of improvements—additional solar panels on the roof,…

Giving reefs a hand It’s no secret that coral reefs globally, like many other ecosystems, have been suffering under ever-increasing temperatures. Coral reef “skeletons” are composed of calcium carbonate, but it isn’t just the coral polyps that produce it—a lot of the material is actually produced by crustose coralline algae. The algae-produced calcium carbonate contributes greatly to the structural integrity of reefs while also serving as a home to planktonic coral larvae—free-swimming organisms which settle in and become polyps, producing reef-building calcium of their own. The coral polyps also emit ammonia which the algae feed upon, so it is in the algae’s best interest to entice any coral larvae that may be swimming past to settle into the reef, which the algae do by emitting metabolite chemicals that attract the…

Atrial underway at Victoria’s Goorambat East Solar Farm could mark a significant shift in how large-scale solar projects are built in Australia. ENGIE, the project developer, and engineering, procurement and construction contractor Bouygues Construction Australia, are testing an autonomous piling system that promises to make solar farm construction faster, quieter, and safer. The 250MW solar development, located in Benalla in northern Victoria, is set to eventually provide enough power for more than 100,000 homes. But it’s the construction method, not just the scale, that’s attracting attention. Rather than relying entirely on manual pile driving to install the supports for the solar arrays, ENGIE is trialling a robotic solution developed by US company Built Robotics. Known as the Autonomous Piling System (APS), the machine is essentially a retrofit kit installed on…

In March this year, the City of Newcastle launched Empowering Climate Champions—a first-of-its-kind community net-zero training initiative delivered by expert facilitators from leading climate organisations across Australia. The free, six-week program equips community members with the tools, knowledge and strategies needed to develop and lead local projects that support the transition to renewable energy, electrification and energy efficiency in Newcastle. More than 50 community members took part in the program, including members of Renew’s Hunter Region Branch, with Renew board member Graham Hunt leading two of the training sessions. Other organisations involved included Climate Council, Community Power Agency, Australian Electric Vehicle Association, BehaviourWorks Australia, Solar Citizens, and Rewiring Australia. We spoke with the City of Newcastle’s Climate Change & Sustainability program lead Lexi Crouch about what went down. What was…

“There is an epic new story playing out right now, one that’s less about the magic and chaos that’s erupting from giant AI server farms, and more about what’s taking place on actual farms.” In 2025, you might be forgiven for feeling like you’re living inside an episode of Black Mirror. Almost daily, we’re bombarded with a flood of AI news headlines that are, let’s say, both tantalising and discombobulating. ChatGPT can now pass law and medical exams, a 36-year-old mother from the Bronx has married a virtual husband, Google DeepMind can translate live meetings across multiple languages in real time, experts predict that AI agents and Large Language Models will make 40% to 100% of all human jobs obsolete within years. But beneath the radical headlines there is another…

Domeshells, Murwillumbah NSW Chris Brown from Domeshells takes us through a bit of the company’s history and what they do. It’s been a long and challenging road for myself and Domeshells since we began in 2000. We completed our first research and development project with QUT (Queensland University of Technology) Brisbane in 2000, after which our technology, at the time certified by the University engineers, was established. We built a few projects with the system we first developed and continued seven more years of research and development with QUT, funded by ARC grants, with two students completing their PhDs on those projects. From the outset, our intention was to develop the simplest and most cost-effective way of building thin concrete dome shells. Thin concrete shell structure technology is unique as…

As a result of the massive expansion of the world (and Australian) electric vehicle (EV) markets, it’s been a while since I wrote a general market update for battery electric cars (BEVs). This is because the BEV market has grown so much that I’ve focussed more on sections of the market rather than bigger overviews. However, in these times of deliberate disinformation through twisted and invented ‘facts’ (and through their use, the attempts by some to deny the EV transition is even still happening), perhaps it is time to do a full review of where we and the world are at in the EV transition. World The march of the EV transition did continue in 2024—despite attempts by some to deny it. World EV sales for 2024 were up by…

As the percentage of renewables on the grid increases, so does the need for increased grid stability. With generators of old, such as massive coal-powered alternators, their very mass made the grid quite stable, at least until they suffered a catastrophic failure, as Australia’s coal generators seem to have a habit of doing. This huge amount of rotating mass has a huge amount of inertia, so helps keep the grid voltage and frequency stable, even with large sudden changes in demand, as can happen with a power line failure. Most renewables, especially solar, have no such inertia, however that is being addressed with large energy storage systems (grid connected batteries) that have what’s called synthetic inertia—where the battery’s inverters can recognise grid issues and help keep the grid stable as…

It’s a self-evident fact that the First Peoples of this land harvested native foods for more than 60,000 years. Colonial powers dismissed their farming techniques and classified them as mere ‘hunter-gatherers’, a notion that is still very prevalent today. The reality is that these were people forcibly displaced, and their farming practices hugely disrupted. They relied on carefully curated fire practices to manage land, but the Europeans brought fences and ploughs among many other alien technologies, and subsequently, that traditional knowledge was all but lost. All, but not quite. The knowledge survived in places. In northern Australia, it was never totally lost. In Arnhem Land, Europeans had been forcibly repelled, until the Methodist Church set up missions to protect and encourage traditional knowledge and practices. In the south, however, it…

When our soap bars get too small to use, they are rinsed and thrown in a jar in the pantry to dry out, ready to be used at some later time. After a year or two, the jar was full, so I decided to actually make the effort to do something with them! There are several ways to reuse old soap— you can fine grate it for use as a washing powder, but it will eventually leave soap scum in the washing machine. You can also dissolve it in water to make a liquid soap, but we tend to prefer bar soap most of the time, so I decided to turn the old scraps into new bars. I’ve seen people use various methods, such as grating the soap, adding a…