The Kilcoy Pastoral Company’s facilities in Queensland have drastically reduced energy expenditure by refurbishing existing plant and installing new compressor equipment supplied by Compressed Air and Power Solutions Australia (CAPS). [ + ]

SolarMax has announced the installation of its solar inverters at the Yass Soldiers Club, a regional NSW community venue. SolarMax reseller Ygrene Energy worked with the club to install a 100 kW system that includes seven SolarMax 15MT2 inverters to convert the direct current from solar panels into alternating current for use across the site. [ + ]

Optimising growth conditions and matchmaking bacteria is all in a day’s work when bioremediating contaminated sites. [ + ]

Scientists working at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, which is a collaboration between the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and the University of Bristol, have developed a novel way of charging mobile phones using urine as the power source to generate electricity. [ + ]

Major infrastructure projects will make a significant contribution to expanding Australia’s commitment to clean and green energy at a community level under the vision of not-for-profit organisation Embark. [ + ]

CHEP, a provider of pallet and container pooling solutions, has achieved significant energy savings through the installation of energy-efficient Atlas Copco compressors at its pallet production and repair sites in the UK. The savings from the installation have been measured at over 1000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. [ + ]

Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed a nanomaterial that could help reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from coal-fired power stations. Their work has been described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. [ + ]

Green Distillation Technologies is commercialising an innovative process to resolve the long-standing, global environmental problem of tyre disposal, to produce oil and recover steel and carbon from end-of-life tyres. The company plans to start operations in October at its Warren NSW pilot plant and market an IPO next year to fund seven additional plants in Australia in its first five years. [ + ]

Take a PET bottle, fill it with sand and put the lid on. Do this with lots more bottles, then stack them up and join them together with mud and cement. What sounds like a fun game for the children’s sandpit is, in fact, a new idea in recycling. The bottles are being used to build houses in an outstanding and ambitious project in Nigeria. [ + ]

Four stages can typically be identified in every economic cycle: growth, development, maturity and decline. Those who believe that the future of solar power in Australia is troubled are wrong, mistrusting a market which last year accounted for 4% of global PV installations and was ranked sixth in the world. [ + ]

Pasteurisation - ie, the rapid heating and cooling of food (usually liquid) - has been used since the late 1800s to treat and disinfect milk. Now, a version of the process will be used in Australia for a different purpose - treating recycled water. [ + ]

A producer of green energy from food and agribusiness wastewater is deploying advanced anaerobic technologies that achieve high returns of biogas from the world’s largest crop - sugar cane. [ + ]

Westpac and Meridian Energy are giving farmers in New Zealand easier access to solar energy, potentially helping them save thousands each year on their power bills. [ + ]

The City of Sydney's $4.3 million project with Solgen Energy installing Yingli Solar 250 W polycrystalline panels on 30 sites is claimed to be the largest collective building-mounted solar panel program in Australia. It will have a total peak electrical capacity of approximately 1.25 MW, reducing annual carbon pollution by up to 2100 tonnes. [ + ]

Unitywater will divert 200 tonnes of waste away from landfill, thanks to a recycling program that will see almost 90% of the old Cooroy Sewage Treatment Plant re-used. [ + ]