Carbon casualties

The collapse of the voluntary offset market following the failure of ETS legislation has finally taken its toll on Carbon Planet, one of the most prominent offset groups in the country, as well as several other carbon management groups. Carbon Planet slid quietly into administration earlier this month and is now in the hands of Stephen Duncan and Nick Gyss at KordaMentha. It is believed the company simply ran out of funds, having failed to achieve a backdoor listing on the ASX through a merger with M2M. It’s tough enough to raise capital in these markets, let alone for a carbon company in a country with no clear mandate for a carbon market.

Other groups to fall victim of the ETS delay, and government cutbacks on funding for the organizations that supported them, include Landcare CarbonSmart, which has been wound down, and Greening Australia, which has also significantly scaled down its activities.

But some hope may be offered by the Victoria government's energy white paper, which canvasses creating a carbon exchange in Victoria which would provide a market for offsets created by forestry, land management and soil carbon sequestration. “That’s a very pleasing initiative,” says Andrew Grant, the CEO of the listed carbon management firm Co2. “It gets boring repeating it, but you need a carbon price. If that creates some sort of carbon price, then great.”

Solar salt cellar

The first concentrating solar plant to use molten salt as a storage technology was opened this week in Italy by the local utility Enel and the Italian National Agency. The 5MW Archimede plant is located in Priolo Gargallo in Sicily, the largest largest petrochemical district in Europe, and is attached to a combined cycle gas-fired power station. The advantage of using molten salt as the heat transfer fluid is that it eliminates the use of synthetic oils and can operate at higher temperatures. The storage facility means the solar plants can function 24 hours a day for several days without significant sunlight. The plant is expensive – it has cost an estimated $60 million – but it's being portrayed as a paradigm shift in the development of solar technology and costs are likely to fall considerably. It is also expected to create massive opportunities in sun-rich regions such as Australia, north Africa and the Middle East.

Yates goes solo

Oliver Yates, the head of Macquarie Group’s climate change business, has stepped down from his full time role to focus on a new private equity venture called Bronze Boar Investments. Yates says he will “continue his association” with Macquarie, but will use the new venture to provide assistance to small and mid-sized companies, particularly in the climate change sector. Yates says the move will free up his ability to make a “more active contribution” to the debate he says has been lacking in Australia, and he will continue to help establish a carbon market to help the protection of the “few remaining rainforests”around the globe.

Viva Victoria!

Meanwhile, Spanish renewable giant Acciona is one of the first to declare its interest in Victoria’s 5 per cent “big solar” target. Acciona, which has a project in the shortlist of the federal government’s Solar Flagships program, says it will certainly be considering more projects under the Victorian scheme. “This is a pretty substantial target and it does deliver more certainty,” said Brett Thomas, Acciona’s head in the Asia Pacific region. “You have to have a market of enough scale to make it worthwhile, otherwise people will go elsewhere. It’s a competitive global market.” Acciona has teamed up with Mitsubishi and BMD Constructions to propose a 200MW parabolic trough facility at a single site in either Queensland or South Australia. It operates the 64MW Solar One project in Nevada, and is nearing completion of two 50MW projects in Spain.

Riding the desal wave

Perth-based Carnegie Wave Energy is to work with the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination to study if its wave energy technology can be integrated into off-the-shelf desalination technologies and so tap into the $50 billion global desalination market. Carnegie was chosen from 61 applications and will jointly fund the $500,000 research project with the NCED, which will include input from Murdoch University and local and international water specialists. The project will be based near Carnegie’s planned project near Garden Island, where its CETO technology, which uses the natural movement of the ocean to pump water to land, and use the pressure to drive a turbine. “We see the global desalination market as having enormous potential for our business,” Carnegie CEO Michael Ottaviano said.

And in other news...

Porsche is about to go electric. Maybe. The German luxury car maker has apparently been testing prototypes; and has been displaying an all-electric Boxter at trade shows in the past few months. This week, Porsche CEO Michael Macht issued a statement saying: "We will definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future. But such a concept only makes sense if it offers performance and a cruising range comparable to that of a sports car today." Sounds like some more testing is needed.

In Australia, AGL Energy is partnering with the Victoria Racing Club to install more than $100,000 worth of solar energy on-course at Flemington Race Course. The VRC says it aims to implement further solar energy initiatives at Flemington.

And Cardia Bioplastics is partnering with Sulo MGH to provide an “organic food waste solution” for household kitchens, using Cardia’s compostable food waste bags inside Sulo’s aerated kitchen tidy bins. Organic waste comprises about 40 per cent of the domestic waste stream in Australia and councils are increasingly seeking to divert this waste from landfill to composting.