CleanTechTV™ tells the world about Australia’s cleantech companies in a way that attracts investment, deals, partnering and licensing to drive the growth of this sector and Australia’s next wave of innovation.

At CleanTechTV™, we talk to our cleantech leaders – any time, any where – as they make international news around the world. CleanTechTV™ is the first to offer real time web-based interviews on the Australian cleantech sector.

We use the latest in online video technology so your news message gets out fast.

WHO is on CleanTechTV™?

CleanTechTV™ features tech leaders speaking about their company and service/offering in an interview format with leading cleantech reporters Giles Parkinson [The Australian, Business Spectator and more] and Brad Howarth [BRW, BOSS, AFR and more].

HOW does CleanTechTV™ share the news?

CleanTechTV™ promotes companies to the world via the CleanTechTV™ news site which is powered by the latest in search engine optimization, video tagging, social media, RSS, and boasts news feeds to the world’s most influential online media outlets and investor communities. CleanTechTV™ site is searchable by sector, company name, State and executive profile.

WHAT will being featured on CleanTechTV™ do for our company?

The interviews can be re-purposed, downloaded and embedded easily for corporate websites, e-newsletters, presentations, video business cards, email, conferences and more.

Each time an executive appears on CleanTechTV™ it launches a sophisticated content sharing campaign ensuring strong and targeted pick-up in Australia and around the globe.

CleanTechTV™ allows your company to access “The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do”

“I don’t know all the secrets to building a successful company, but there are a few things I’ve seen that seem like surefire ways to ever-so-slightly grease the road to success. Here’s an easy one: make a video demo and prominently promote it somewhere where new visitors can find it. One that shows off the core function of your product without making people think they’re watching an ad or a pitch. And answer, as thoroughly as possible in 2-3 minutes, what it is that you’re bringing to the table.”

Tech Crunch: by Jason Kincaid October 2009

For more info about CleanTechTV™ contact us at:

Sydney: +61 2 9006 1614 or Palo Alto: +1 650 798 5238
Email: team@cleantechnologytv.com

What role will Australia’s play globally in cleantech sector in next 5 years? What are our strengths?

CleantechTV spoke with:
Fadi Geha – Managing Director at EcoView Technologies Ltd.
Marc Newson – Partner specialising in Cleantech & Carbon Markets at Ernst & Young
Tony St. Clair – Agri Business Manager at MBD Energy Ltd.
Stephen de Belle – Managing Director and CEO of Granite Power Ltd.

Join the conversation:
Join CleanTechTV on twitter
Australian Business Leaders Talk – Linkedin Group where you can connect with like-minded business leaders to discuss the issues and developments in the cleantech space.

What does your cleantech sector need to support its growth?

CleantechTV spoke with:
Stephen de Belle – Managing Director and CEO of Granite Power Ltd.
Tony St. Clair – Agri Business Manager at MBD Energy Ltd.
Fadi Geha – Managing Director at EcoView Technologies Ltd.
Marc Newson – Partner specialising in Cleantech & Carbon Markets at Ernst & Young

Join the conversation:
Join CleanTechTV on twitter
Australian Business Leaders Talk – Linkedin Group where you can connect with like-minded business leaders to discuss the issues and developments in the cleantech space.

Matthew Warren, head of Clean Energy Council which represents over 350 cleantech companies that specialise in renewable energy and energy efficiency, said:

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” said Matthew Warren [...] “Australia is really at the top of the list, in the scale of the economy and the quality and scale of renewable resources,” Mr. Warren said. “But the grid issues are significant because we run a very, very large, long and thin grid,” he said.
“It’s like running a grid from Paris to Moscow with sparsely distributed energy demand through that grid.”

However, Australia is beginning to tackle the problem as demonstrated with the revised renewable energy targets passed in June which earmarked AUD $20 billion for clean energy technologies and is expected to create 28,000 green jobs. Furthermore, the Clean Energy Council feels that despite the fact that Australia has not yet set a price on carbon the renewable energy target of 20% by 2020 is achievable.

Climate change policies have been a topic of hot debate during this year’s neck and neck Federal election and, despite lack of the climate policy stability, movement in the sector is progressing. A.G.L. Energy, the largest energy retailer in Australia and New Zealand’s state-owned Meridian Energy announced earlier this month that they would build a billion dollar wind farm in Victoria – with 140 proposed wind turbines it would make it the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere.

Read the full article here.

By installing the proposed “Westland Solar Park” which they claim at peak output would generate as much electricity as several big nuclear power plants they would reuse the land which would have otherwise been useable for years to come. 12,000 hectares have been allocated by farmers from the region and officials at Westlands Water District, a public agency which supplies water to farms in the valley, into what would be one of the world’s largest solar energy complexes if it moved ahead.

As Australian farmland is tackling similar difficulties, the “Westland Solar Park” would be a good example of potential large scale projects – turning a bad situation into a positive outcome for our environment and local farmers.

First reported in the New York Times by Todd Woody, “Recycling Land for Green Energy Ideas” Aug 10th:

The San Joaquin initiative is in the vanguard of a new approach to locating renewable energy projects: putting them on polluted or previously used land. The Westlands project has won the backing of groups that have opposed building big solar projects in the Mojave Desert and have fought Westlands for decades over the district’s water use. Landowners and regulators are on board, too.
“It’s about as perfect a place as you’re going to find in the state of California for a solar project like this,” said Carl Zichella, who until late July was the Sierra Club’s Western renewable programs director. “There’s virtually zero wildlife impact here because the land has been farmed continuously for such a long time and you have proximity to transmission, infrastructure and markets.”
Recycling contaminated or otherwise disturbed land into green energy projects could help avoid disputes when developers seek to build sprawling arrays of solar collectors and wind turbines in pristine areas, where they can affect wildlife and water supplies.

He followed up with this story on the 11th of Aug “For Parched Farmers, a Crop of Electrons“:

In an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, I wrote about an ambitious plan to build one of the world’s largest solar energy complexes on 30,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Elsewhere, big renewable energy projects have encountered opposition from farmers, ranchers and environmentalists who worry about the impact of solar power plants on agriculture, wildlife and scarce water supplies.
But farmers in the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District are embracing solar power as a solution to their water woes. And environmental groups are backing the project as a way to avoid fights over building solar power plants in pristine desert areas.

Source: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

Also printed in the AFR, this story can be read online “Green energy scheme to revive unusable farmland”

Cate Blanchett calls for Australia to tackle climate change and transition to clean renewable energy. Source: Australian Conservation Foundation

Watch the video here.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Director’s of the Sydney Theatre Company, have been determined to make their stamp on the company and to have it be green. Since their time at the STC, they have initiated a number of policies to reduce the environmental footprint of the company.

Just last month, they were recognised for their contribution to the environmental cause at the 2010 Green Globe Awards, a NSW government initiative recognising sustainable businesses, where they were awarded the prestigious Premier’s Award for their “Greening the Wharf” program – introducing rainwater harvesting and solar power to the theatre.

As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in an article entitled “Theatre project shines brightly” on the 28th July:

“Designing a sustainable performing arts centre on a greenfield site is one thing but doing so with a heritage building in a prime position on Sydney Harbour presents a considerably greater set of challenges,” Green Globes judging panel chair Ronnie Harding said of the decision to recognise the theatre.
“With 300,000 attendances at the Wharf each year the STC has an excellent starting point to promote its Greening project, including through hosting lectures, discussion forums and art exhibitions,” she said.
At the launch of the program in June, Blanchett said she felt environmental issues were simply too big to ignore.
“As a cultural institution we want to be engaged in what is the most important issue that is facing us as a species, that is, climate change.
“We all know theatre happens under electric lights. We’re a huge consumer of energy, so this is a really positive thing.”

STC artistic director Cate Blanchett, NSW Environment Minister Frank Sartor and NSW Arts Minister Virginia Judge inspect the greening of the theatre. Photo: Wolter Peeters. Source: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/theatre-project-shines-brightly-20100728-10uwb.html

From Australia:

“Big solar’s big potential”, Climate Spectator, 16th Aug

This week, the Australian Solar Energy Society joined the Australian Conservation Foundation in calling for an additional 5 per cent of Australia’s electricity to come from ‘big solar’ by 2020.
That target would see the generation of around 8,500 megawatts of large-scale solar, and the construction of more than 30 big solar plants around the country. It would also cut Australia’s carbon pollution by more than 240 million tonnes over the life of the projects.

“The wind farm that ate the RET” Climate Spectator, 13th Aug

In Australia’s renewable energy market, fortune favours the quick and the big.
The $1 billion Macarthur wind farm to be built in south-western Victoria is being touted as the most significant renewable energy project in Australia since the Snowy Hydro.
But don’t expect another project of similar ambition to follow anytime soon, even though there are a couple on the drawing board – there’s simply no room left in the market.
Macarthur has been a long time in the planning for AGL, it’s just been waiting for the opportunity provided by the passage of the Renewable Energy Target.

“How to be fully renewable in 10 years” Sydney Morning Herald, 13th Aug

AUSTRALIA could switch completely to renewable energy within a decade by building a dozen vast, new solar power stations and about 6500 wind turbines, according to a major new study.
The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan – a collaboration between Melbourne University’s Energy Research Institute, the environment group Beyond Zero Emissions and engineers Sinclair Knight Merz, puts the cost at $37 billion in private funding and public investment every year for the next decade.

“Fossilised approach to power” – The Australian, 11th Aug

BOTH Labor and Coalition policy on carbon trading will damage Australia’s emerging renewable energy industry, leading scientists have warned.
Michael Dopita, co-editor of an Australian Academy of Science report on renewable energy, says Labor’s plan to delay the introduction of an emissions trading scheme and the Coalition’s plan to go without one will send some start-up companies developing renewable energy to the wall.

“Geothermal’s pressure test“, Climate Spectator, 11th Aug

Geodynamics has spent an estimated $300 million over the past decade on the development of its cutting edge hot dry rocks geothermal technology in the Cooper Basin. Some time in the next month or so it might find out if it has all been worth it.
It may seem overly dramatic to label the fracturing tests that will be undertaken at a single well over the next few weeks as a “make or break” for the company.
But that is the way it is being viewed by Geodynamics and its backers. Success will deliver the key to an estimated 6,500MW of clean, base-load power that could be brought to the grid over the next 10 to 15 years; failure will cause the company to undergo a major rethink of its ambitions.

“Ten climate policy ideas Julia or Tony could steal” ABC Environment, 9th Aug

Some might say the government and the opposition are lacking for ideas on climate change policy. ABC Environment has 10 good ones they could consider.
THE GOVERNMENT’S proposed emissions trading scheme never quite got off the ground. And with both major parties being attacked for a lack of strong policies on climate change, it would seem alternative ideas were thin on the ground in the party rooms. However, ABC Environment has scanned the globe for climate policies the next Australian Government could steal.

“Ambitious targets in greenhouse proposal” Sydney Morning Herald, 9th Aug

THE state government is developing a new plan to combat climate change and it says it can make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions even if a proposal to build two new coal-fired power plants goes ahead.
The state’s old greenhouse gas targets have been thrown out and replaced by a far more ambitious agenda to cut emissions by at least 5 per cent by 2020, instead of just stabilising them by 2025.
This means the average carbon footprint of every person in NSW will have to be reduced by a hefty 27 per cent in the next 10 years, according to federal government estimates. The NSW Department of Climate Change, Environment and Water says the plan is realistic even if there is no national emissions trading scheme by 2013.

“A mighty wind – turbine power growth hit 40 per cent last year” Sydney Morning Herald, 9th Aug

Wind power generation across the eastern states grew by 40 per cent last year as several large farms began operating.
A Climate Group report on electricity generation and its emissions, covering all states except Western Australia, found 83 per cent of power used in 2009 came from greenhouse-intensive coal. Nine per cent was from renewable sources – mainly hydro power – and 8 per cent from gas.

From overseas:

“Ban announces high-level panel to tackle global sustainability issues” – The UN News Centre, 9th August

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today unveiled a new panel on global sustainability that is tasked with finding ways to lift people out of poverty while tackling climate change and ensuring that economic development is environmentally friendly.
“I have asked the Panel to think big,” the Secretary-General told reporters in New York today. “The time for narrow agendas and narrow thinking is over.”
To be co-chaired by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma, the 21-member High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability brings together representatives from government, the private sector and civil society in countries rich and poor.
It is essential, Mr. Ban said, to promote low-carbon growth and enhance resilience to climate change’s impacts, as well as to tackle the intertwined challenges posed by poverty, hunger, water and energy security.
“In short, we need a new blueprint for a more livable, prosperous and sustainable future for all,” he stressed.

“The Necessity of Smart Grids” RenewableEnergyWorld.com, 9th of Aug 2010

You could argue that smart grids are unnecessary and that traditional system reinforcement with copper and steel will do the job. I can’t argue the physics of that, but I can argue on the commercial side. I know of a utility that complains that 30 percent of its copper and steel is idle for 350 days of the year, only getting used during the peak of summer. And its forecast is that this will progressively get more extreme with time. To install more metal infrastructure for progressively shorter periods of peak demand is just not economically feasible.

“Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover” New York Times, 9th Aug 2010

Five years ago, the leaders of this sun-scorched, wind-swept nation made a bet: To reduce Portugal’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, they embarked on an array of ambitious renewable energy projects — primarily harnessing the country’s wind and hydropower, but also its sunlight and ocean waves.
Today, Lisbon’s trendy bars, Porto’s factories and the Algarve’s glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago.

Read the full article on Climate Spectator and the AuSES press release regarding their announcement last week.

This growth was boosted by the opening of the largest wind farm at Waubra, north-west of Ballarat and wind turbines from across the states fed 4.1 million megawatt hours into the national electricity grid.

Wind supplies about 2 per cent of total power across the eastern seaboard. This is expected to grow dramatically over the next decade as wind farms are built to meet the bulk of the national 20 per cent renewable energy target.
The growth in renewable power last year meant emissions were about 2 million tonnes lower than if the electricity had come from coal.

Read the full story here.

Image Source: http://thinkgeoenergy.com/